Disadvantaged neighbourhoods
Cities have long had a tendency to concentrate wealth and poverty in different neighbourhoods.
In some cities the disadvantaged areas were in the valleys while the wealthy lived higher up away from pollution on surrounding hills. In other cities like Glasgow the East End became disadvantaged compared to a more prosperous (and up wind) west end. Other cities have concentrations of poor people and migrants in the inner city, while in France the suburbs became the areas in which many first and second generation migrants live.
This sifting process is determined by public and private housing markets, by land values and by the ability of the wealthy to have greater choice about how and where they live. Early efforts to deal with these concentrations often focused on public health through provision of clean water and drainage. This was followed by wholesale slum clearance and construction of tracts of social housing followed with large scale relocations of the poor and working class into new neighbourhoods and even new towns.
Urban policy has had a focus on disadvantaged neighbourhoods for over 40 years with early efforts to provide additional support in areas where high proportions of migrant children were enrolling in schools. This early focus on education was followed by community development approaches and later by efforts to improve neighbourhood economies by local development. The current vogue is for a focus on combating worklessness.
Within URBACT a number of projects are focused on integrated approaches to disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Here the integration is about ensuring that people are at the centre of the policy that connects physical development with tackling worklessness, drugs, crime and other problems in the areas.
RegGov is working on regional governance and sustainable integrated development of deprived urban areas and exploring the role of regions as Managing Authorities as the key actor for mainstreaming this approach within convergence and competitiveness programmes. They focus on how to build a long term relationship between cities and regional authorities. They argue that this becomes decisive for a successful development, implementation and funding of integrated urban development policies.
Co-Net is exploring current approaches to strengthen social cohesion in neighbourhoods. In response to the challenge of increased social segregation and polarisation, even and sometimes especially in rich European cities - in spite of the fact that a lot has been done to improve sustainable living conditions in deprived areas and to better the chances of the inhabitants. The aim is to exchange area-based and integrated approaches to local development which strengthen communities and neighbourhoods improve education and build the economy and employment.
JESSICA 4 CITIES is exploring how cities can make the most from Urban Development Funds aimed at financing integrated plans for sustainable urban development. The project does not only focus on financing disadvantaged areas although urban regeneration is a strong theme. Each city in the working group is developing strategies and integrated plans for sustainable urban development; which will contain projects that are capable of being funded by JESSICA type instruments (that are developed at regional level). They are working on a two way bridge, on the one hand to determine how in practice European cities can draw the maximum benefit from Urban Development Funds supported through JESSICA and on the other hand how the implementation of JESSICA can be structured having regard to existing Structural Fund regulations to best accommodate the needs of cities. The project has the close involvement of the EIB.
To find out more about the aims, methods, events and outputs being planned by these networks read the synthesis of their baselines studies.