Mobilizing Communities to Regenerate Deprived Urban Neighborhoods in Glasgow

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, British urban policy has been characterized by its understanding of the concentration of multiple disadvantages in inner and peripheral urban neighborhoods as “social exclusion”, which are to be tackled by means of strategic partnerships between public, private and community sectors (Social Exclusion Unit 1998, 2001). Within these partnerships, it has been expected that local communities would play a leading role in initiating and managing urban regeneration projects, although such community-led projects have not necessarily been altogether successful in sustaining themselves. Drawing on the case study of a sport-based social regeneration project targeted at young people, this chapter considers the way in which a community-led, locally-based, small-scale urban regeneration project might be able to sustain and develop itself within the wider framework of urban regeneration policy. This chapter consists of two main parts. The first provides an overview of the chronological development and recent tendencies of British urban regeneration policy, with a particular focus on the difference between English and Scottish approaches. In doing so, it will set up a backdrop to the case study through a review of the issues around the relationships between the recent urban regeneration partnership schemes and communities. The second half presents the findings from the case study. After briefly summarizing the study that this chapter is drawn upon and its methodology, the subsequent three subsections present the key findings from the study. First, the nature of multiple disadvantages that young people in the