Urban Partnerships, Economic Regeneration and the ‘Healthy City'

This chapter considers some experiences in the city of Plymouth, predominantly focusing upon the relationship between urban partnerships, economic regeneration and the ‘healthy city’. A need for closer inter-organisational co-operation for the healthy city project was recognised in 1993 with the establishment of an officer-based steering group, including city council and health service staff. An important question for the healthy cities project is whether it is capable of bringing poverty, inequality and exclusion to the centre of urban policy. The chapter begins by locating the latter within a broader health promotion context, before going on to describe developments in Plymouth since the late 1980s. The heterogeneity of health promotion joins a diverse array of practices in its name, and several means of interpreting similarities and differences are available. Tensions and contradictions between economically oriented urban regeneration strategies and health and social objectives arise independently of the city but find their expression within particular social settings.