Area-based Initiatives in contemporary urban policy-innovations in city

Over the past ten years regeneration strategies pursued in many European Countries have utilised the concept of partnership as a means of providing a conduit for community participation in the process of regeneration. That is not to say that during the 1980s partnerships did not exist, indeed as Atkinson (1998b) points out the regeneration of that era, involved a form of partnership between public and private sectors. The public sector generally had a role in supporting the investment and activities of the private sector as evidenced in the work of Turok, 1992, and Imrie and Thomas, 1993. Thus, even during the most strident times of property-led regeneration, local authorities played a significant role as enablers and facilitators. What is qualitatively different about the regeneration during the 1990s and the beginning of the new century is the role afforded to the community-at least in the rhetoric of regeneration. This turn to community (Duffy and Hutchinson, 1997), in part stems, from the recognised deficiencies of the property led approach, and the failure of benefits to trickle down to loca