managing diversity? 'community cohesion' and its limits in neoliberal urban policy

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Geography Compass 2/2 (2008): 538–558, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00100.x

Managing Diversity? ‘Community Cohesion’ and Its Limits in Neoliberal Urban Policy

Julie MacLeavy*University of Bristol

AbstractThe concept of ‘community cohesion’ has played a defining role in the institutionof a new policy agenda for regenerating urban areas in many liberal welfare states.Its particular interpretation supports the installation of urban programmes that arebased not on the improvement of the built environment, but rather investmentin the social and cultural composition of cities. In particular, the economic andcivic participation of individuals living within deprived urban areas is positionedas a key means of redressing situations of inequality and disadvantage. This articlereviews the concept of ‘community cohesion’, its use in urban policy in the UK,and the recent literature on this subject. Through an indicative discussion of theNew Deal for Communities programme, it explores the potential implications of‘community cohesion’ for disadvantaged policy subjects and considers especiallyits provisions for ethnic minority groups: a constellation of community in whichindividuals are understood to experience a ‘double disadvantage’ as a result of theirdisproportionate concentration in deprived urban areas, and their subjection tothe consequences of racial discrimination (as well as language and cultural barriers).

Introduction

‘Community cohesion’ is referred to as a key idea governing urban policyin many liberal welfare states. It implies a need to recapture lost forms ofsocial solidarity and postulates that practical means for doing this requiresan increase in the levels of involvement of local residents in urban regen-eration schemes (Foley and Martin 2000). This is perhaps most evident inthe UK where the notion of ‘community cohesion’ has been recentlyused to institute a new agenda for revitalising deprived urban areas andimproving social and economic conditions for all, which is based not onthe improvement of the built environment, but rather investment in thesocial and cultural composition of cities (e.g. Blair 2001; Department ofCommunities and Local Government [DCLG] 2007). In the last 10 years, theNew Deal for Communities programme has been launched in England,the Social Inclusion initiative in Scotland, and the Communities Firstscheme in Wales. Each stipulates an enhanced role for ‘empowered’ and‘mobilised’ communities in the development and implementation of

© 2008 The Author Geography Compass 2/2 (2008): 538–558, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00100.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Managing diversity? 539

urban policy agendas. Such programmes have placed local communities atthe heart of regeneration initiatives, ascribed a central role to partnershipworking and interagency collaboration, and led to the proliferation andgrowing complexity of area-based initiatives (Lawless 2004).

This article considers a critical debate surrounding the institution of thisnew policy approach. Specifically, it explores tensions arising from theframing of urban policy applications around the concept of ‘communitycohesion’ in England’s New Deal for Communities. By privileging thepolitical and economic dimensions of the government’s social inclusionagenda through an explicit focus on communities of place (Imrie and Raco2003), I argue that this policy’s emphasis on ‘community cohesion’ haseroded the legitimacy of other competing claims to policy resources. Inparticular, the long-standing claims that link race/ethnicity to socio-economic disparities have become increasingly difficult to sustain (compareElizabeth and Larner forthcoming). This generates a situation in whichthe promotion of ‘community cohesion’ undermines the claims beingmade by interest groups seeking to target government resources to theamelioration of racial/ethnic injustices (as well as other dimensions of socio-economic disadvantage including gender, sex, age and religious disparity).

The article starts with a review of contemporary forms of state inter-vention, in which I explore how shifting accounts of ‘community’ inurban policies and programmes have assisted the rise of ‘community cohe-sion’ and its specific conceptualisation in the UK. Through an indicativeexamination of the New Deal for Communities programme, I tracethe changing status of ‘community’ in this new urban policy, and outlinethe complex politics of race/ethnicity in the urban sphere. Detailing theapparent racial neutrality of New Deal for Communities, I describe howrace/ethnicity continues to shape urban policy arenas and, more specifically,how race/ethnicity mediates the consequences of urban programmes fordifferent policy subjects. In conclusion, the case is made that a tensionexists between the policy emphasis on the social and economic participationof individuals – as stipulated within ‘community cohesion’ generally andmanifest in New Deal for Communities specifically – and comparativeassumptions of sociocultural renewal emergent from community-ledregeneration policies. That is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive,but rather that the predominance of the former currently indicates thaturban policy programmes aimed at crafting ‘community cohesion’ aredelivered in ways that frequently embed, rather than address, pre-existingaxes of inequality, and so perpetuate the already disadvantaged positionsof vulnerable social groups.

Neoliberalism and the Construction of ‘Community’

The new political salience of ‘community’ has emerged in and throughthe raft of economic and social welfare initiatives introduced in the liberal

540 Managing diversity?


welfare states of the UK, USA, Canada and Australia (see, for example,Arthurson 2002; Bradford 2004; Clutterbuck and Novick 2003; Walker2002). These invoke a move away from the ‘more market’ policy approachesof the 1980s and 1990s through political endeavours to build more ‘inclusive’partnerships between local government, voluntary sector organisations andbusiness interests (Cochrane 2007). By combining the former neoliberalemphasis on the private sector provisioning of goods and services, withnew efforts to complement the work of state agencies with those ofcommunities and families, these new policies and programmes are intendedto regenerate urban areas ‘from the bottom up’.

In the UK, this policy approach finds its basis in the CommunityDevelopment Projects of late 1960s and 1970s (McCulloch 2004; Schneiderand Ingram 1997). Introduced by Harold Wilson’s second Labour govern-ment, Community Development Projects sought to ‘enable communitiesto stand on their own in the future by their own efforts’ (Richard Crossman,former Secretary of State for Social Services, quoted in Topping andSmith 1977, 9). In particular, they sought to promote citizen involvementand ‘self-help’ (the origins of this concept are found in Smiles 1859) byinvesting in people through the funding of area-based initiatives (Foley andMartin 2000). In this sense, Community Development Projects mobilisedthe founding assumptions of a number of academic studies from the 1950sand 1960s, which sought to understand urban areas through the ‘communitypower structures’ that ran ‘in and through’ urban space (e.g. Hunter 1953;Pahl 1968). They also progressed the emphasis on community that wasalready evident in policy endeavours in the USA, which sought to integrateurban black populations into the political mainstream (Cochrane 2007)through the manifestation of a positive connotation of community as asocial space of harmony, affection, consensus and stability.

The contemporary conceptualisation of community as a positive entityhas a long history in British and Western public policy (e.g. Burnset al. 1994; Cochrane 1986; Donnison and Middleton 1987; Gans 1962,1968; Higgens et al. 1983; Hoggett 1997; Moynihan 1970). Since the late19th century when the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies proposedcommunity – Gemeinschaft – as a desirable condition, the loss of whichwas to be feared and regretted (Tönnes 1957), a positive connotation ofcommunity has been visible in public policy debates (Schofield 2002). Inthe UK, five distinct periods in the development of urban policy canbe observed. These broadly reflect the development of state-led welfareprogrammes in the USA, Canada and elsewhere (but for a comparativeperspective see Carmon 1999, in which three generations of urban policyare identified across the USA, UK and several other European countries).Each period has manifest a grounding-view of the pre-existence of com-munities as local entities, ‘encompassing latent community “values” thatsuitably devised government programmes would revive, and even define’(Fremeaux 2005, 271). In some instances, ‘community’ has been positioned



as a logical ‘solution’ to a growing number of social ills and/or the ‘target’of urban policy interventions (Atkinson 2000). At other times, it hasrepresented a separate ‘extra-urban’ concern (see also Buckler 2007).

In the late 1960s and 1970s, for instance, community became the focalpoint for area-based social welfare initiatives such as the CommunityDevelopment Projects and the Urban Programme in the UK. Politicalcritiques of the then newly built housing estates and high-rise apartments,created in the post-war physical redevelopment efforts, were framedaround the perceived ‘soullessness’ and ‘lack of community spirit’ that hadbeen ‘engendered’ by the bulldozing of old pre-war housing and therelocation of people away from traditional working-class neighbourhoods(see Department of Environment 1972; Home Office 1968). This was acourse of action seen to have produced ‘powerless’ places that were laterfound to be problematic. As a result, a series of programmes were intro-duced to define, activate and empower local communities in the pursuitof specific ‘social’ objectives.

The contrasting treatment of ‘community’ as the solution to emergentsocial deprivation did little, however, to reinvigorate local economic con-ditions in the subsequent years. As the Gilding the Ghetto report that wasprepared by the Community Development Project personnel noted, itconcealed both the concentrated deprivation of inner-urban areas and theinequalities of residents (Community Development Projects 1977). Thenewly established ‘development agencies’ found it difficult to recruit expe-rienced or highly qualified professionals to assist with social regenerationin target areas and there were problems communicating effectively withdisenfranchised urban residents to reduce levels of apathy and the low take-up of welfare services. These factors all made programme delivery difficult.Monitoring and evaluation further indicated the partial nature of Com-munity Development Projects. Programmes were tailored to ‘standard’urban residents and the unequal distribution of power and influence inprogramme organisation further militated against particular social groups(Community Development Projects 1977). With the added impedimentsof government-imposed targets and stringent deadlines for projects, theemphasis of the Community Development Projects and Urban Programmeon social renewal was succeeded in the late 1970s and 1980s by programmesthat prioritised the physical regeneration of urban areas (Stewart et al. 1976).

In this period, Urban Development Corporations were introduced tobolster communities through an initiative based on neoliberal economicprinciples of deregulation and privatisation. With poorer neighbourhoodscharacterised as ‘sink estates’ if they were deemed to be suffering from thedisenfranchisement of urban residents (signalled by rising rates of crimeand antisocial behaviour), Urban Development Corporations were estab-lished by Margaret Thatcher’s newly elected Conservative government in1980. As public–private agencies invested with wide powers over land use,Urban Development Corporations were charged with the task of creating



an urban environment that was attractive to private investment (Cochrane1999; see also Higgens et al. 1983). Such policy effectively represented theConservative’s view of the task of government, which was ‘to help indi-viduals to help themselves’. In congruence, ‘community’ was presented asan arena in which government intervention was unnecessary (Hoggett1997). Expenditure was diverted from community programmes to initiativesthat sought to provide ‘opportunities’ for business development and fundswere made available for projects that aimed to facilitate a ‘more market’economy (Oatley and May 1999).

By the 1990s, a rhetorical shift back to ‘participation’, ‘partnership’ and‘empowerment’ in urban policy was sufficient to reposition ‘community’as a means of developing and delivering the same neoliberal objectives(Schofield 2002). City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budgetwere introduced, both of which required competitive bidding for resourcesby partnerships comprised of members of the local authority, privatesector, voluntary interest groups and local area (Department of Environ-ment, Transport and the Regions [DETR] 1998c; Oatley and May 1999).While enabling a more inclusive conception of community in rhetoric,these partnerships did little that was different from the corporatist-stylecoalitions redolent of the Thatcher years (Raco 2003). They were foundto lack democratic accountability, were socially stratified and did little toreduce the alienation of disaffected individuals and groups. Elsewhere –for instance in Canada and New Zealand – this (re)turn to ‘community’was similarly enabled by heterogeneous conceptions of the spaces, socialities,and subjectivities of urban (and regional) policy (see, for example, CanadianJournal of Sociology 2003; Imrie and Raco 2003; Larner 2005).

Against this backdrop, New Labour’s emphasis on ‘community’ andmore specifically ‘community cohesion’ represents a further attempt torejoin the span between urban economic inequality ‘that is the inevitableresult of the application of neoliberalist policies’ ( Jones and Ward 2002,485) and the public commitment to deal with the issues stemming fromthe persistence of structural injustices in the political economy (oftenframed in terms of ‘social exclusion’) in the UK. Through the introductionof the New Deal for Communities programme, the governments of TonyBlair and Gordon Brown are currently (re)creating a focus on small areasas a convenient territory for action, and communities as a resource to bemobilised, shaped and activated in urban regeneration schemes. Deliveredby the newly created Department of Communities and Local Government– having been installed by the DETR and then managed by the Officeof the Deputy Prime Minister – New Deal for Communities is deliveredin England only, as the process of devolution has established separatepolicy administrations in Scotland and Wales.

This historical lineage of ‘community’ in political rhetoric is illustratedin Table 1, which details the changing status of the concept of ‘community’alongside a brief summary of these five periods in British urban policy.

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Table 1. The changing status of the concept of community from 1945 to the present (for further details on the historical trajectory of British urban policy, see Pacione 2005).

Phase Articulation of community Urban policy

1. 1945–1968 Community viewed as a natural and desirable social formation, but not yet the subject of urban policy.

Urban problems largely seen in physical terms and tackled by the reconstruction of the city (through slum clearance and comprehensive redevelopment), the dispersal of urban problems through the creation of new towns, and the fostering of regional policy (spatial Keynesianism).

2. 1968–1977 Community viewed as the base of moral, dutiful and cohesive society; thus, something that needs to be defined, activated and empowered in the pursuit of specific ends and (policy) objectives.

Poverty and disadvantage persist in the cities, despite the establishment of the welfare state. The government is forced to acknowledge that physical measures have been insufficient in tackling city problems and introduce a series of area-based social welfare initiatives, which attempt to respond to economic, social and environmental problems resulting from the structural decline of the economy (particularly in inner city areas). Schemes include Community Development Projects and the Urban Programme.

3. 1978–1990 The strength of community is said to hinder the development of an enterprise culture. It is argued that individuals are best served by initiatives that provide development opportunities, the (economic) benefits of which will inevitably ‘trickle down’ to local residents.

There is a gradual shift away from policies that invest in people back to programmes that aim to deliver physical regeneration as the problems in cities are suggested to result from shortfalls in the physical infrastructure of urban areas. Supply-side constraints to private investment are removed through the use of public subsidies and tax breaks. In addition, planning controls are reduced by minimising local government and community intervention. Programmes include Urban Development Corporations and Enterprise Zones.

4. 1991–1997 Community is framed as a resource to be used in developing and delivering neoliberal policies. Resident groups are mobilised to tap into the resources of the private sector and free government money for projects that would otherwise not go ahead.

The increasing use of property-led regeneration results in an intensification of inequality and poverty in particular parts of cities. Poorer neighbourhoods become ‘sink estates’ and problems of crime and antisocial behaviour grow. This prompts a return to policies framed around community participation, partnership and empowerment – albeit in the context of competitive bidding. Initiatives include City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund.

5. Post–1997 Community is presumed a natural form of social organisation and thus a prime arena through which to pursue the overarching (workfarist) ideals of government.

Urban regeneration is initially based on policies designed to provide people (in communities) with skills and capacities to reduce (their) poverty and dependence on welfare. To a degree this involves ‘bending’ mainstream spending programmes – health, education and housing – to better tackle disadvantage and deprivation in cities. More recently, there has been a move towards the amalgamation of various schemes and the use of a single-pot approach to regeneration funding. Programmes include New Deal for Communities and Action Zones.



‘Community’ Governance and the Politics of Race/Ethnicity

The New Deal for Communities programme was launched in April 1998in 17 of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. In 1999, it wassubsequently ‘rolled out’ to further 22 areas. Together, these 39 areas actas a ‘test-bed’ for policy ideas and initiatives supporting renewal, with theassumption that ‘what works’ in the most deprived neighbourhoods in thecountry will work in the rest of the nation’s cities. Common problemswithin New Deal for Communities areas include poor job prospects, highlevels of crime, educational underachievement, poor health, problemswith housing and a poor physical environment (DETR 2000). Change isbelieved to involve the increase of ‘community capacity’ (enabling peopleto do things for themselves), the improvement of local services (throughprivate inwards investment), and the adoption of an ‘evidence-basedapproach’ to policy implementation (i.e. getting proof of what works inpractice; DETR 1998b, 1999). In the policy literature, key characteristicsof the programme are listed as a long-term commitment to deliver ‘realchange’, community involvement and ownership, and ‘joined-up’ thinkingand solutions (DETR 2000).

Because rebuilding revolves around the community, New Deal forCommunities is said to differ from previous urban initiatives in that itsexecutive boards (charged with organising the scheme at a local level) arenot given the bulk of their funding until they have ‘engaged’ local residents.Money is then paid directly to the New Deal for Communities ‘partner-ships’, as opposed to being channelled through local authorities (Imrie andRaco 2003). This signals New Labour’s efforts to ‘unleash the latentinnovative capacities of local economies, to foster a local entrepreneurialculture and to enhance the flexibility of local governance systems’ (Brennerand Theodore 2002, 342). In this sense, it represents a continued endeavourto deliver urban policy in line with the principles of neoliberal governance:lean government and a withdrawal of ‘the state’ from particular territoriesof action (Raco 2003). Partnerships are given ‘complete flexibility onwhat programmes can cover’ (Social Exclusion Unit [SEU] 1998, 49) toset in motion a ‘virtuous circle’ of regeneration, with improvements injobs, education, health and housing in designated areas (SEU 1998).

Of particular interest to urban scholars is the manner in which this newpolicy approach (also) embodies expectations for the participation of policysubjects. As a notion of the market is introduced into the state system to‘aggressively . . . promote economic rejuvenation from below’ (Brenner andTheodore 2002, 342), communities are positioned in instrumental termsas both the subject and object of urban governance. Mike Raco and RobImrie (2000, 2195), for example, argue that ‘communities are encouragedto provide for themselves in recognition that many services will be “un-attractive to the private sector locally” and that state intervention will takeon only limited forms.’ Ash Amin (2005, 614–615) notes the inherent



problems of such new ‘expectation[s] of responsibility, moral uprightness,and conformity’ in areas of policy delivery.

For the most part, these discussions focus on the differential impacts ofthis new emphasis on ‘community’ for different groups of people, particu-larly residents of disadvantaged urban areas. Barry Schofield (2002), forexample, claims that community is reified in policy, which may affect thesuccess of community-based regeneration initiatives. Because disadvantagedurban areas are the typical focus of such programmes, it is often the casethat policies delivered in these areas attempt to engage communities wheresocial fragmentation is a symptom of – not solution for – long-term socialand economic decline. The requirement for communities to establish‘partnerships’ as a basis for the conferral of state funds means that thisform of policy may not only be ineffective, but also potentially dis-advantageous to local residents, as they become excluded from state investmentbecause the combined defects of structural poverty, discrimination andprejudice leave them ill-equipped to bid for and manage programme funds.

In this article, I seek to broaden this discussion by exploring in detailhow this particular policy approach – as exemplified by New Deal forCommunities – might be inflected by distinctive forms of racial andethnic politics despite its claims to be ‘colour blind’ (Lister 1998). Indoing so, I wish to make a broader point about the politics of inclusionand exclusion embodied in community-based urban initiatives. While‘community’ is evidently not a single, uncontested entity its presentationas such in contemporary urban policy serves to reduce the legitimacy andawareness of different ‘groups’ claims to state resources. Similar argumentsabout competing claims can – and have – been made through an empiricalfocus on social class and gentrification (see Butler 2007; Newman andWyly 2006; Slater 2006), as well as the analysis of the representation ofgender, sex, age and religious interests in urban policy agendas (Andersenand Siim 2004; Jones 2003; Smith 2004). This article’s focus on race/ethnicity allows it to contribute to these discussions by foregrounding theimplicit tension between communities of place and communities of interest(Imrie and Raco 2003) in this high-profile New Labour policy.

In the UK context, the management of race/ethnic diversity is a par-ticularly pertinent issue because of the tone of debates leading up to the2005 General Election. This suggested a decline in popular support forwelfarist programmes, which had in the past proved popular with voterswishing to ensure for themselves a minimum standard of living, as well asa security net against unforeseen future events (Bochel and Defty 2007;see also Page 2007). Questions were raised about the individual tax burdenof funding benefits, as well as personal obligations to support individualswho ‘chose’ to follow ‘counter-culture’ lifestyles (particularly those whichinvolved periods of economic inactivity) (Goodhart 2004; Pearce 2004).As this was conducted alongside heated discussion about the politics ofimmigration, social commentators began to talk increasingly of a conflict



between ‘community cohesion’ secured by a (generous) welfare state andthe imperative to foster and sustain cultural and ethnic diversity in urbanareas (e.g. Phillips 2004).

In this context, it might be argued, the expressed political imperativeto eradicate the disparities that exist between individuals from ethnicminority backgrounds and the UK population as a whole is now (only)included in area-based urban programmes such as New Deal for Commu-nities. In part response to waning public support for targeted social policies,programmes delivered in discrete urban areas attempt to overcome theparticular ‘rooted’ aspects of inequality and disadvantage that particularlyaffect individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds because of theirdisproportionate concentration in deprived urban areas. They do so byprioritising community innovation/enterprise, the formation of newrelationships, and the state and the (re)production of a new scale ofgovernance. Herein, I use a detailed examination of New Deal forCommunities to consider the merits of this particular approach and tocontemplate what an explicit consideration of race/ethnicity might meanfor geographical analyses of neoliberal urban policy in general, and NewDeal for Communities in particular.

New Labour and New Deal for Communities

The notion of ‘activated’ and ‘self-sustaining’ communities embodied inNew Labour policy assumes (at least) the potential of functional, cohesiveand spatially bound social groups to coalesce in order to campaign onbehalf of their locality. In doing so, it creates an impression of urbanresidents as individual resources to be mobilised, shaped and activated in thepursuit of urban renewal objectives. The consequences of this constructionare essentially two-fold: first, community is reified in place to produce ageographical emphasis for policy that overlooks the ‘imagined’ aspects ofarea-based communities (in Anderson’s 1983 understanding) and second,the explicit focus on the contributions of individual residents ignoresother aspects of personal identity (and thereby other potential axes ofsocial inclusion/exclusion) aside from place of residence (Raco 2003).

This can be problematic because – as commentators such as ClaireWorley (2005) argue – the positioning of ‘community’ as the potentialsolution to problems of urban deprivation in programmes such as NewDeal for Communities neglects the manner in which the individualswithin those ‘communities’ are disadvantaged, dissociated and deprived ofthe material and other resources necessary to participate in urban regen-eration schemes. A key debate is thus whether the prioritisation of‘community’ may help to increase economic prosperity and policy partici-pation in localised areas, or militate against increased equality of socialgroups by making regeneration funds dependent on community action. Ithas been suggested both that there may be limits to the form and scope



of community cohesion embedded in and through this policy approach,and instances in which the implementation of this policy can work tofurther disadvantage vulnerable social groups (see, for example, Amin2005; Atkinson 2003). Analysis of key policy texts from the period 1997–2007 allows the further identification and discussion of discourses of‘community’ and ‘community cohesion’ in New Labour policy to elaborateon these claims, and demonstrates here the broader importance of con-sidering how understandings of race/ethnicity are being reconstituted incontemporary forms of neoliberal governance. The two (sub)sections thatfollow illustrate how neoliberalism – initially conceptualised as ‘a set ofnational state policies favoring privatization and unfettered free marketcapitalism as ideal mechanisms for regulating social, political and economiclife’ (Elwood 2002, 121) – is being progressed through the downsizing ofstate apparatus enabled by the devolution of state responsibilities to localcommunities, and the goal of greater efficiency sought through the policy’semphasis on institutional and individual competition and entrepreneurialism.

‘COMMUNITY’ AS A GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

The New Labour government, through New Deal for Communities,stipulates the geographical space of policy implementation as the ‘com-munity’. It bypasses local authorities to provide monies for regeneration‘directly to the people’ living within the administrative boundaries of aspecified area. These residents are then expected to work with public andprivate organisations to deliver regeneration. As foregrounding literaturefrom the SEU makes clear, this primary focus on small functional spacesof New Labour governance (e.g. urban wards) is intended to facilitate an‘intensive’ and ‘coordinated’ response to the multiple and overlappingproblems existing within deprived urban neighbourhoods. In particular,

[N]ew types of body like housing associations, schools and voluntary organi-sations will be given the chance to lead regeneration programmes, and the verylocal focus will allow community to closely identify with the programmes andbe actively involved [in their formulation and delivery]. (SEU 1998, 49)

In specifying the formation of ‘partnerships’ between residents, businessand key fractions of the local state, New Deal for Communities portrays‘community’ as a single, uncontested entity – internally coherent and spatiallycontinuous (compare Haylett 2003). Paradoxically, this ‘community’ ispresented as apolitical – a seemingly natural and self-evident social organ-isation (to paraphrase Rose 2000) – but with the potential to becomepolitically engaged. This ‘dual aspect’ is inferred through pronouncementsby key government personnel. For instance, Gordon Brown (1999) hasstated that,

[M]any social problems, once addressed only by the state gaining more power,can today be solved by giving much of its power back to the people. This is



why there is renewed interest in devolving more power from governmentaltogether, and into the hands of local communities.

Similarly, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal noted,

It is now well recognised that for local regeneration to be effective localcommunities need to be involved. But too often, community involvement ispaid no more than lip service. (SEU 1998, 34)

The implication that community participation can ‘break open’ the systemof governance, increasing accountability, and improving the effectivenessand efficiency of urban programmes, includes within it an assumption ofthe congruence of the boundaries of place with the existence of ‘commu-nity’. The term ‘local’ is used as a prefix to suggest the solidarity of peopleliving within a demarcated urban space. More explicitly, the Places andCommunities departmental group (which provides expertise and skills tothe DCLG in area-based regeneration, neighbourhood and housing marketrenewal) asserts that,

. . . ‘[P]lace making’ is central to [the government’s] commitment to creatingsustainable communities – ones where health and crime prevention, citizeninvolvement and educational improvement, recreation and housing develop-ment are sensitively combined to create a sense of local well being. (DCLG2006, 9)

Geographers and other social scientists have raised important questionsabout the validity of this presumption of area-based ‘community’ and theextent to which community participation can be effectively realised insituations of multiple disadvantage.

Imrie and Raco (2003) suggest that New Deal for Communities risksneglecting the vital complexities and contingencies of community formation(see also Atkinson 2000; Jones 2003; Meegan and Mitchell 2001; Raco2000). Sense of community is individual and encompasses differentialfeelings of belonging based on the variety of factors that make up personalidentity (e.g. family, friends, race, religion and background). Under NewLabour, however, place of residence is brought to the fore. This mightproduce specific and significant effects for urban residents, whom aredisadvantaged as a result of (other) socially organising relations (e.g. gender,class and race/ethnicity). By enabling the unified treatment of people livingwithin the boundaries of a specified area, New Deal for Communities canoverlook their individual levels of access to, and rewards from, communityregeneration activities. It can also (re)inscribe axes of inclusion and exclusionbased on place of residence (through the selective establishment of NewDeal for Communities programmes).

In addition, Isabelle Fremeaux (2005) notes that the highly strategicways in which ‘community’ is invoked in New Labour policy can lead toassociated meanings that neglect the intrinsically complex nature of theconcept and may further essentialise group identities, thus adversely affecting



the most deprived sections of society. As it is long established in academicliteratures, there is no necessary solidarity of people living within ademarcated urban space and no necessary geographical place to representthe solidarity of people (Amin et al. 2000; Anderson 1983; Rose 1997).Rather, community is constructed through the ‘simultaneous coexistenceof social relations and interactions at all spatial scales’ (Massey 1994, 264). Incontradistinction to this, New Labour’s presumption that space and com-munity are (largely) coterminous is problematic as it diminishes and reifiesdifference through the construction of ‘community’ in area-based terms.

‘COMMUNITY’ AS A FUNCTIONAL SPACE OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

The policy focus on area-based communities crucially enables the govern-ment to combine ‘old’ Labour traditions with a revised neoliberalapproach – the ‘Third Way’ renewal of social democracy (Giddens 1998).This, ostensibly, helps to facilitate state intervention at a time wherevisible government is discursively synonymous with an ‘intrusive state’,which in neoliberal rhetoric is seen to ‘prevent’ the exercise of free choiceon the part of social and economic actors (Imrie and Raco 2003). AsDavid Miliband the Minister of Communities and Local Governmentfrom May 2005 to May 2006 claims, the economy ‘works better’ underNew Labour because of the ‘fundamental changes’ the government hasinitiated in the roles, rights and responsibilities of government, individualsand business:

[Social, economic and political relations] have been fundamentally reshaped ina way appropriate for global competition and technological change. This is the neweconomic contract: government helping businesses and individuals prosper in acompetitive world . . . [It embeds] shared expectations of what citizens will dofor themselves and for each other, and shared understanding about what they canexpect from government. Shared expectations that embody moral commitmentsand common values. Shared expectations that unite self interest and commoninterest. (Miliband 2005, emphasis added)

New Deal for Communities exemplifies this new approach by instal-ling a new agenda for revitalising deprived areas through the increasedinvolvement of local residents in urban regeneration schemes. In keytexts, as noted above, community is presented as a seemingly ‘natural’social organisation, with unrealised capabilities for contemporary governance(DETR 1999, 2000). Moreover, a recent House of Commons Debatepositions ‘community’ as the site for new relationships betweenindividuals, the (national) state and local socioeconomic, natural andarchitectural environments. This is framed in rhetoric about (increasing)sustainability and quality of life:

The government’s strategy is a true vision of a sustainable community. It is avision for a community that is committed to increasing its prosperity while at



the same time increasing equality of access to that prosperity, and which isinterested in its physical environment, but also in the quality of life of thecitizens who live in that environment. It is the vision of a city driven not byremote bureaucracy, but by close partnership involvement of all of its commu-nities. (House of Commons Debate, 13 June 2005c, 138)

By presenting community as a self-emergent and sustaining unit thegovernment is here, apparently, legitimising contemporary urban policythrough the suggestion of a context in which communities and individualsare taking increasing responsibility for their own (self-)governance (compareRaco and Imrie 2000; Wintour 2002). In congruence, the role of thestate is said to be changing. At one level, this change is semantic with bothTony Blair and Gordon Brown describing the role of the new ‘enablingstate’. Imrie and Raco (2003) marshal the following quotes in evidenceof this construction:

Just as mass production has departed from industry, so the monolithic provisionof services has to depart from the public sector. Out goes the big state. Incomes the enabling state. (Blair, quoted in Wintour 2002, 1)

And,

[T]here is flexibility and resources in return for reform and delivery . . . a newera – an age of active citizenship and an enabling state is in our grasp. At itscore is a renewal of civil society where the rights to decent services and theresponsibilities of citizenship go together. (Brown 1999)

At another level, however, this change is manifest in the infrastructureof the state. In line with the new emphasis on ‘community cohesion’ inurban regeneration policy, the Community Cohesion Unit was establishedin the Home Office in 2003 and a Community Cohesion PathfinderProgramme piloted in various local authorities between April 2003 andNovember 2004 (for details, see http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/organisation/directorates-units/communities group/ccu. html?version=1).More recently, the DCLG has been founded (in May 2006) to bringtogether key responsibilities for local government, housing and planning,neighbourhood renewal, civil renewal, community cohesion and equalitiesin England for the first time. This indicates broad changes in the organi-sational machinery of New Labour governance (see also MacLeavy 2007).

Commentators claim that this strategic invocation of community isnecessary to establish and support neoliberal technologies of governmentin the context of a retrenched welfare state (Brenner 2002; Jessop 2002;Jones and Ward 2002). The progressive dismantling of welfare provisions– deemed necessary to overcome the pervasive impacts (and related costs)of economic restructuring and employment change, which has resulted inthe UK from the massive losses of manufacturing employment in recentyears (Hoggett 1997; for some historic details, see Turok and Edge 1999)– has given way to supply-side endeavours. These are based on ‘a positive

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/organisation/directorates-units/communities%20group/ccu.%20html?version=1



endorsement and enhancement of the market mechanism, [and] anobeisance to capitalist business as a form of organisation that is inherentlysuperior to the forms developed by the local and national state’ (McCulloch2004, 135). As ‘community’ is used to secure the broader conditions forsustainable capitalist production, it therefore becomes fundamental tothe new politics, not simply an abstract slogan (Fremeaux 2005; Worley2005). It helps to position the devolved state – and within this frameworkthe local community – as a key actor or entrepreneur in local economicdevelopment strategies.

Anthony Giddens (1998, 79), one of the key proponents of NewLabour’s Third Way policy approach, notes that community cohesion‘doesn’t simply imply trying to recapture lost forms of social solidarity; itrefers to the practical means of furthering the social and material refur-bishment of neighbourhoods, towns and larger local areas.’ In New Dealfor Communities, the notion of ‘community cohesion’ helps stipulatethe participation of subjects through a norm of ‘active citizenship’ (afterKearns 1992, 1995). This articulates the constitution and regulation ofindividual liberty to make good citizens out of poor and to expand thelimits and maximise the powers of government by making people self-governing (see Cruikshank 1998). Of particular concern to urban scholarsis the manner in which communities who possess the ability to helpthemselves are rewarded in and through the conferral of beneficial sub-sidies, while those who are unable to do so are pathologised and punishedby the removal of state assistance (Schneider and Ingram 1997). Thispoints towards the politics of subjectification – the manner in which thespecific needs of disadvantaged urban residents are overlooked in andthrough the prioritisation of ‘community’ in urban policy endeavours.

In essence, this policy approach reflects a broader transition in thenature of New Labour governance, wherein individual contributions tosociety are valorised through a series of moralising political pronounce-ments (a development that may also be traced in the USA where a processof ‘welfare reform’ has proceeded through a gender and race-codeddiscourse of morality). As a crucial part, personal deficiencies – such aslack of responsibility or a failure to obligate or fulfil citizenship duties – arepositioned as root causes of social (and particularly urban) decline. In theaftermath of the ‘civil disturbances’ that occurred in the towns of Bradford,Burnley, Oldham, Leeds and Stoke-on-Trent in 2001 (see Amin 2002;Lewis and Neal 2005), for example, a lack of ‘community cohesion’ anda high level of segregation between ‘Asian’ and ‘White’ communities wereidentified and positioned as central motivating factors behind the dis-turbances that occurred. Both the Denham Report (Home Office 2001a)and the Cantle Report (Home Office 2001b), which were released in theaftermath of the disorders, attributed responsibility for the disarray withthe communities themselves. Issues of racism, deprivation and socialinequality were not counted as substantive issues (Worley 2005). The key



contention is that while seeking to institutionalise neoliberal policy in andthrough the activities of the local community, programmes like New Dealfor Communities harness local residents only or primarily to its agendaand priorities.

Racialising New Deal for Communities

Given the appreciation of the racialised effects of neoliberal economicreforms in the UK (Cabinet Office 2000; Strategy Unit 2003), it is perhapssurprising that issues of race/ethnicity are not explicitly recognised inNew Deal for Communities. The policy literature notes the high incidenceof ‘multiple disadvantage’ in low-income groups, but does not explicitlydocument the over-representation of individuals from ethnic minoritybackgrounds in the low-income population. Instead, the racialisation ofdisadvantage is inferred through the linking of ‘social exclusion’ withparticular geographic locations that contain a high proportion of individ-uals from ethnic minority backgrounds (DETR 1998a, 1999, 2000). Thispolicy presumes that individuals within deprived locations will cometogether to bid for and manage programme funds. In doing so, they learnskills necessary to improve their position in the workforce, they attractinwards investment to the area in which they live (thereby increasing localjob opportunities), and they develop or improve the collective camaraderiein their local ‘community’. This policy approach is in line with the‘minimal state’ emphasis of New Labour. As Gordon Brown (2002) notes,

Our comprehensive solution to urban poverty and unemployment has toinvolve raising levels of economic activity – more businesses if you like ratherthan more benefit offices. We should start to see inner cities and old industrialareas not as no-go areas for business or simply ‘problem’ areas but areas ofopportunity: [to identify] new markets where businesses can thrive because ofthe competitive advantages they often offer – with strategic locations, untappedresources, a high density of local purchasing power and the potential [new]workforce.

A key contention of recent political, economic and urban geography isthat while new measures to promote economic and civic integration maybuttress social cohesion, they cannot fully mitigate the impacts of otheraxes of social inequality, such as race/ethnicity (Elizabeth and Larnerforthcoming; Worley 2005). A neoliberalist policy framework, it is asserted,needs to combine locally based ‘community cohesion’ strategies – whichdraw citizens into active engagement with local social and political issuesacross ethnic boundaries – with policies for ethnic minorities (and otherdisadvantaged social groups) that strive to achieve equal citizenship(compare Moon and Atkinson 1997). As many of the localised problemsassociated with deprived areas arise, in part, from weak local capacity andauthority to address on-the-ground issues, targeted policies remain necessary



to support the implementation of ‘community cohesion’ policies that aimto achieve urban regeneration.

This is not a new argument. There is a long history of claims to policyresources on the basis of race/ethnicity in the UK and across the liberalwelfare states. The success of these has depended on the temporal inflectionof a wider debate about the allocation of policy resources. Graham Moonand Rob Atkinson (1997) characterise this as a pragmatic dilemma overwhether welfare measures targeted at individuals from ethnic minoritybackgrounds increase their stigmatisation and the tensions existing withpoor ‘White’ groups, or whether it is preferable to provide welfare measureson a geographical basis, directing them to all people living in areas wherethere are problems of deprivation, unemployment and crime.

However, it seems that decisions over the allocation of resources are alsodetermined by strategic judgments. The Labour governments of the late1960s and 1970s, for instance, shied away from policies targeted specifi-cally at individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds for fear of ‘alienating’key sections of the ‘White’ electorate (Abbas and Anwar 2005). WhileSection 11 of the Local Government Act (1966) provided funds for projectsintended to assist individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds to prospereconomically and suffer less discrimination, the principle scheme – UrbanProgramme – sought to improve the most deprived areas with the hopethat individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds would (also) benefitfrom the additional resources.

In this context, it might be argued that New Deal for Communitiescurrently provides a means for the government to redress the socialand economic injustices arising from the continued inequalities of race/ethnicity. Early commentaries suggest that it does so through the discursiverecognition of sociocultural disparities, as opposed to redistribution andreform (Lawless 2004; Perrons and Skyers 2003; Popple and Redmond2000). Amidst vocalised concerns about the practicability of welfareschemes in conditions of increased diversity (after Willetts 1988), NewDeal for Communities represents not so much an end in itself but ‘anopportunity to reshape and improve mainstream funding spent in an area’(DETR 2000, 9). This could be to the benefit of individuals from ethnicminority backgrounds. However, as I have demonstrated here, the(re)construction of structural issues as problems pertaining to the localcommunity in and through the discourse of ‘community cohesion’ risksembedding, rather than ameliorating or addressing pre-existing axes ofinequality, because it ascribes ‘community’ with primary responsibility forresolving structural problems.

Race/ethnicity continues to shape urban policy arenas. It impacts thedynamics of social, cultural, economic and political life and, in doing so,mediates the consequences of urban programmes for policy subjects. Toavoid the (further) entrenchment of such contributors of social inequalityand disadvantage, practitioners – and students of urban policy alike – must



be aware of the extent to which political initiatives such as New Deal forCommunities fail to redress, and may even exacerbate, the issues of social,cultural, political and economic exclusion. The apparent racial neutralityof New Deal for Communities belies the fact that urban policy pro-grammes aimed at crafting ‘community cohesion’ are intersected withdivisions of race/ethnicity. This failure to recognise and respond specificallyto these divisions results in the greater marginalisation of individuals fromethnic minority backgrounds. Paradoxically, this marginalisation helps toposition individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds as key beneficiariesof community-led regeneration programmes. It also legitimises the removalof targeted state schemes. In instances when area-based interventions arerevealed as ineffective, the attribution of responsibility for regenerationwith the ‘communities’ themselves absolves the state of liability and mayalso lead to the (increased) stigmatisation of deprived groups.

Conclusion

Geographical analyses of neoliberal urban programmes have provided usefulinsights into the discourse of ‘community cohesion’ in liberal welfarestates. In the UK, in particular, scholars have noted the manner in which‘community cohesion’ helps to stipulate the ‘space’ of urban policy inter-ventions and the functional status of local residents. In this article, I havefocused especially on the manner in which the prominent New Deal forCommunities programme emphasises the primary responsibility of area-based communities for overcoming situations of inequality and disadvantage.Furthermore, I have argued that the consequences of this construction areparticularly marked for individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds.

‘Community cohesion’, as I have outlined, operates within a neoliberalpolicy context to uniquely position individuals from ethnic minoritybackgrounds as both the targets and agents of urban renewal. The continuedsalience of race/ethnicity in shaping the material and social well-being ofpeople explains, in part, the overrepresentation of individuals from ethnicminority backgrounds in areas eligible for New Deal for Communitiesfunding. However, it also points towards the overrepresentation of indi-viduals from ethnic minority backgrounds in the areas in which localresidents are called on to deliver urban regeneration.

The implications of this are important. As deprived local areas emergeas key sites of political and economic activity, the all-encompassing discourseof ‘community’ becomes involved in the establishment of a new politicsof inclusion and exclusion, in which diversity and disadvantage operate askey unifying factors but also mitigate claims for redistributive justice andpolitical-economic reform. Recognising this, I assert that we must remainalert to the complex intersectionalities of race/ethnicity and urban regen-eration in urban policy evaluations as in political, economic and urbangeography scholarship.



Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support of Economic and SocialResearch Council award number PTA-030-2002-01628. I would also liketo thank Martin Jones, Mark Whitehead and Columba Peoples for theirinsightful comments on an earlier version of this article. Keith Bassettprovided helpful assistance and Phil Hubbard and the referees wereinvaluable in providing constructive feedback that helped to shape thefinal article.

Short Biography

Julie MacLeavy is Lecturer in Human Geography at the University ofBristol, UK. The majority of her research has explored intersectionsbetween welfare state restructuring and labour market policies in the UKand, more recently, the USA. Her published work has focused on topicsincluding the language of social exclusion in New Labour policy, the ‘sixdimensions’ of the New Labour state and the gendered dimensions ofworkfare policies in the UK. She also has interests in urban issues and thecommunity regeneration programmes commonly associated with ‘ThirdWay’ modes of governance.

Note

* Correspondence address: Julie MacLeavy, School of Geographical Sciences, University ofBristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

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