ABSTRACT
The provisioning of social infrastructure is a historical process and part of active place-making founded on attachments and belonging. The unmaking of social infrastructure is both cause and effect of the emergence of left behind places. Today, “left behind” places exhibit major deficiencies in the provision of social infrastructure. A new generation of social infrastructure-makers in “left behind places” deploys “radical hope” to navigate the challenges of renewal in order to make hope practical rather than despair convincing. Signs of a chronic crisis in social infrastructure began to appear just as full employment seemed secure, symbolised by the crisis of the Co-operative movement in the 1960s. From the 1980s, a more pervasive sense of decline through deindustrialisation and the erosion of public services shaped County Durham. The loss of social infrastructure can similarly have long-term impacts that barely figure in the calculations of policymakers.
