Revitalising Deprived Urban Neighbourhoods: An Assisted Self-Help Approach (Urban and Regional Planning and Development Series)

The New Labour government has made an institutional turn, from doing things 'to' people to enabling them to do things 'for' themselves. This self-help approach is perhaps most clear in areas such as health, pensions and education. This text explores how the approach can be applied to deprived urban neighbourhoods. Answers are sought to a range of questions. What are the rationales for purusing an "assisted self-help" approach? To what extent are deprived neighbourhoods already using self-help? does such activity reduce or reinforce the social and spatial inequalities produced by the formal labour market? The book is divided into three sections: the rationales for an assisted self-help approach; how self-help is practised in everyday life in deprived urban neighbourhoods; and the strategies that could be adopted to enable people to help themselves.