Competitive bidding in urban regeneration: stimulus ...

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2001, volume 19, pages 45 ^ 63

DOI:10.1068/c9928

Competitive bidding in urban regeneration: stimulus or disillusionment for the losers? Peter Taylor, Ivan Turok, Annette Hastings

Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, 25 Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 1RS, Scotland; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Received 17 August 1999; in revised form 30 March 2000

Abstract. During the 1990s competitive bidding became the principal way of allocating resources for urban regeneration. One of the objectives was to invigorate the approach of local authorities by exposing them to the pressure of competition. Another was to open up decisionmaking to a wider spectrum of interests, including the private sector and local communities. The authors examine the consequences for unsuccessful areasöan analysis which is crucial to any overall assessment of the approach. They focus on the competition for Priority Partnership Area status associated with the reshaping of Scotland's Urban Programme under Programme for Partnership. The analysis reveals a modest stimulus to partnership working in several areas, attributable to the need for agencies to cooperate in a time-constrained bidding process and to manage `compensation' funds thereafter. These benefits were offset by the disillusionment caused by the experience and the penalties of losing resources. To avoid widening inequalities in the future, the authors argue, central government must recognise the impact of this disillusionment through improvements in the organisation of competitive bidding and through planning mechanisms for the mitigation of the adverse effects of losing.

Introduction Competition has become a popular instrument for the allocation of public finance during the last decade. In the field of urban regeneration, competitive bidding has become the dominant way of allocating discretionary resources. The long list of overtly competitive programmes introduced by the Conservative government between 1991 and 1997 included City Challenge, the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB), Regional Challenge, Estates Renewal Challenge, Capital Challenge, Local Challenge, and Sector Challenge (Oatley, 1998). The Labour government has continued the trend, with Rounds 4 and 5 of the SRB Challenge Fund, the New Deal for Communities, Employment, Education, and Health Action Zones, and other initiatives. The official rationale for competition has not been spelt out in any public documents. Commentators have inferred various arguments for the principle of competition from the statements of politicians and government press releases. Under the Conservative government, the intention was apparently to improve quality and value for money in urban policy by invigorating the approach of local authorities (see, for example, Edwards, 1997; Hall et al, 1996; Oatley and Lambert, 1995). These authorities were supposed to become bolder and more strategic in their thinking, more action-oriented and sensitive to development opportunities, more imaginative in designing projects and programmes, and more efficient and entrepreneurial in their policymaking and implementation procedures. Competition was also used in an effort to open up decisionmaking in regeneration to a wider spectrum of interests, notably the private sector and local communities. This encouragement of local partnerships can be interpreted as an attempt to build institutional capacity within localities and to decentralise responsibility for urban policy (Healey, 1997; Turok, 1999a). Before the 1997 election, the Labour Party said it would abolish competitive bidding for regeneration funds (Hall and Mawson, 1999; Oatley, 1998). This was

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P Taylor, I Turok, A Hastings

consistent with criticisms of the system expressed by local authorities and other bodies (AMA, 1996; Hall et al, 1996). In practice, the new government shifted its position very quickly. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions' consultation paper on regeneration programmes, issued six months into the new administration, appeared undecided on the issue: ``There are two broad schools of thought on competition. The first maintains that competition is no substitute for a proper assessment of needs and distribution of resources on that basis; ... that competition is expensive and time-consuming ...; that the worst areas and less glamorous but nonetheless essential projects will lose out; and that having a competition enables Government Offices of the Regions and Ministers to pick winners according to their hidden agendas. The other school maintains that competition has raised the quality of projects; that it has brought together real partnerships to an unprecedented degree; that it is essential if scarce resources are to be rationed between projects which nearly all meet minimum standards; and that partnerships stay together despite initial failure to secure resources. There is truth on both sides'' (DETR, 1997, paragraph 5.31 ^ 5.32). Since then there seems to have been little further consideration of the principle. Competition is now taken for granted as being the way to allocate resources. For example, in a major report to parliament by the Prime Minister's Social Exclusion Unit in September 1998 that reviewed past experience of regeneration policy, competitive bidding was not identified as an issue at all (Social Exclusion Unit, 1998). Similarly, in a speech announcing new Social Inclusion Partnerships in Scotland, the Secretary of State did not explain the use of competition, but simply said ``we will invite bids for new areas to be included. Unlike the last administration, this will be an open and transparent process'' (Dewar, 1998, page 6). Competition serves several useful purposes for central government. It helps to shift the onus for tackling difficult problems of economic decline and social disadvantage to the local level, while retaining control over the broad direction of expenditure. It also appears to be a simple way of rationing resources and concentrating them in selected areas to achieve a bigger and more visible impact. Competitions convey a dynamic atmosphere when resources are under pressure, and divert attention from shrinking budgets. They also chime with the ethos of New Labour, which seeks to change the culture of government and society through greater emphasis on enterprise and `winning', at the expense of egalitarianism (Le Grand, 1999). A meritocracy requires improved performance and reward for effort, and competition provides opportunities to `back winners' and to ensure that losers have only themselves to blame. There is a surprising lack of substantial research on or evidence about the effects of competitive bidding. We have little real idea what the benefits and costs are amongst winners, and, crucially, there has been no substantial assessment of the effects on the losers. There is an assumption among exponents that competition generates wider changes and benefits for areas beyond the immediate winners. The pressure of competition is supposed to induce changes in organisational behaviour and culture, which improve regeneration policies and procedures generally. Even those that lose the resources are expected to gain from the stimulus to new thinking and forced exposure to interagency cooperation and partnership working. It is clearly important that any comprehensive assessment of competition policy considers the consequences of failure, as well as the gains for the winners. This form of competition can be viewed technically as a monopsony (a market with only one buyer), which puts a particular responsibility on the government to organise the process fairly and efficiently, and to be aware of its full effects. Our purpose in this paper is to examine the consequences for unsuccessful areas more closely than has been done before, and to consider the implications for

Competitive bidding in urban regeneration

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competition policy. The particular bidding process examined is the competition for Priority Partnership Area (PPA) status associated with the reshaping of Scotland's Urban Programme (UP) under the Programme for Partnership in 1996/97. In the first section we review previous research on unsuccessful regeneration bids. In section 2 we describe the framework used to analyse the competitive bidding process. In the third section we introduce the Programme for Partnership, and in the remaining sections examine the bidding process and its outcomes in detail. Previous research There have been four studies to date that have sought to examine the consequences of failure in competitive bidding for urban regeneration funds. Their principal source of information was the unsuccessful bidders. All four are useful in their own ways and have helped to open up the issue for public attention, but they acknowledge their own limitations in terms of sample size or survey methodology. Two involved relatively large-scale postal surveys of local authorities that had been unsuccessful in City Challenge (Hutchinson, 1995; Oatley, 1995), and two involved face-to-face interviews with a smaller number of organisations that had bid for the SRB (DLE, 1996) and City Challenge (Russell et al, 1996). A case study of a single unsuccessful bidder for City Challenge should also be mentioned for completeness (Malpass, 1994). The Department of Land Economy study is the most detailed and systematic assessment, although it involved a small and diverse sample of ten out of hundreds of unsuccessful SRB bids. The postal-survey studies were focused on a few simple numerical indicators of the consequences of bidding failure such as the proportion of local partnerships that continued afterwards, and the proportion of proposed projects that were pursued in spite of the failure of the bid. Thus, they provide some summary insights into outcomes, albeit with few details and little explanation. Their main strength is the size of their sample, which offers a broad overview. However, the postal-survey method limits their ability to clarify the veracity and real meaning of the responses given, and to disentangle the factors lying behind the outcomesöparticularly the contribution made by the bidding process itself rather than wider political and economic circumstances. Bearing in mind the complexity of the issues involved in bid preparation, the range of institutions involved in each locality, and the sensitivity surrounding failure and its causes and consequences, there must be some doubt about the comparability of survey responses across different areas. Even the notion of a surviving partnership is open to different interpretations: it may be a loose arrangement of a few interested public officials at one extreme, or a formal structure involving public, private, and community organisations with real power and resources, at the other. The interview-based studies collected more detailed, qualitative information on the bidding procedures and on the effects of failure. They afford a richer understanding of the process and its consequences for the main partners in each area examined. However, their small sample sizes and the deliberate diversity of the case studies provide a weak basis for generalisation. In the case of the SRB study, only one area or project was selected in each English region, and the partnerships were led by a range of organisations including local authorities, trading and enterprise councils, joint arrangements, and voluntary and community bodies. In their study, Russell et al (1996) interviewed only two unsuccessful authorities which had bid for City Challenge. Table 1 (see over) summarises the main findings of the four studies. The considerable variation in the costs of bidding between organisations suggests that some took the process much more seriously than others. Presumably the consequences of failure for them, and their views of the bidding process, were very different from those who

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Table 1. Previous research on unsuccessful regeneration bids. Oatley (1995)

Hutchinson (1995)

DLE (1996)

Russell et al (1996)

Type of study independent

independent

consultancy to DoE a

consultancy to DoE

Single Regeneration Budget (rounds 1 and 2)

City Challenge (rounds 1 and 2)

10 (from hundreds of bids)

2 (out of 34 failed bids)

interview survey

interview survey

mixture

local authorities

16 person weeks (or about £10 000)

na

Focus City Challenge City Challenge (rounds 1 and 2) (round 2) Sample size 24 (out of 25 failed 15 (out of 34 failed bids) bids) Method postal survey postal survey Agencies surveyed local authorities local authorities Average cost of bid preparation £114 000 na b Range of costs of bid preparation £500 ± £345 000 na

up to 40 person weeks na (or about £23 000) Number of local partnerships that have continued in some form despite failure 17 out of 24 10 out of 15 7 out of 10 1 out of 2 (6 have a local focus, (4 are strong, 4 have wider links) 3 loose or weak, 3 have dissolved) Proportion of proposed projects that have been pursued (with other funds) 23 out of 24 bids 0% ± 10% for 2 bids na 1 of the bids has have pursued `some' 11% ± 20% for 4 bids pursued 15% ± 20% of their proposed 21% ± 30% for 3 bids of the proposed projects 430% for 1 bid projects Proportion of bidders that changed their ways of working 14 out of 24 na na 1 out of 2 Proportion of bidders disillusioned with competitive bidding 17 out of 24 na at least 4 out of 10 na Criticisms of bidding process (some expressed by a minority of the respondents) unclear guidance tight timescale tight timescale na unclear selection cost of bidding cost of bidding (with criteria forced partnership some spin-off benefits) unfair or arbitrary unclear selection unclear guidance appraisal process criteria lack of communication lack of feedback unfair or arbitrary unclear selection criteria appraisal process unfair or arbitrary appraisal process a DoEÐDepartment of the Environment. b naÐdata not available.

invested little effort in their proposal. Overall, the table points to a wide variation in the outcomes of bidding failure. Thus, although most partnerships appear to have continued in some form despite their lack of success, only a small proportion of the projects they originally proposed appear to have been pursued. And although many local authorities said that they changed their way of working to facilitate partnership involvement, a large proportion also reported disillusionment with bidding processes. There


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appears to be neither universal despair nor simply a return to the status quo ante. However, despite this, there was clearly no across-the-board stimulus to partnership working. In relation to positive outcomes, the studies indicate that a minority of local partnerships were strengthened by the experience of bidding: partnerships learned how to prepare better bids in the future; there was improved interagency cooperation; there was increased involvement of the private sector and community; there were more strategic and coherent regeneration proposals; there was an increased willingness to target resources geographically; and there was an extra sense of purpose to the regeneration efforts. Some of these partnerships had succeeded in subsequent bidding rounds for City Challenge or the SRB, before the research was undertaken; it is just possible that this could have coloured their judgment of the outcome of their earlier failure. At the other end of the spectrum, some partnerships experienced considerable disappointment and frustration at the outcome. They criticised the cost of bidding, tight timescale, vague guidance and uncertain selection criteria, and unfair and arbitrary appraisal process. Some commented on the lack of feedback and communication generally, and the raised expectations that were then dashed. Several became completely disillusioned with competitive bidding (especially those who experienced two successive failures) and their partnerships disintegrated. Between these positions, many local partnerships continued in a different, often looser, form. In some cases they became narrower and focused on joint working between a few key public agencies. They managed to implement some of the projects that were originally proposed in their bids by securing funds from other sources. There was typically only limited real change in organisational policies and procedures, or in private sector or community participation. Some were anticipating the prospect of a further round of bidding for funds, which is partly why the agencies continued to cooperate. It is not possible to be precise about the balance between these three types of outcome. The SRB analysis conveys a slightly more positive impression than the others, perhaps because SRB incorporated some lessons from City Challenge or because the competition for funds was less intense. The study suggests that the degree of dissatisfaction with SRB may have been limited because few quality bids were rejected. The previous studies are generally rather weak at explaining the different outcomes that emerged. Consequently, they say little about prior conditions in each locality (for example, the experience of interagency cooperation in the target areas, which is bound to affect the durability of partnerships in the event of bidding failure). Most of the studies also say little about the competitive bidding process itself (for example, the scale and structure of the incentives on offer) and how this affects the formation, strength, and survival of local partnerships. The wide spectrum of responses makes it particularly important for future research both to define the outcomes in each area more precisely (how significant were the various benefits of the bidding process, especially in relation to the costs involved?), and to be able to generalise across the unsuccessful bidders more accurately. A framework for analysis Drawing on previous research, our own prior understanding of regeneration competitions as observers and participants, and early interviews as part of this study, in figure 1 (see over) we present a simple framework to assist analysis of the bidding process and its outcomes. We use this framework in subsequent sections to present and make sense of the research findings. The bidding procedure is defined broadly to include the structure and rules of the competition, namely the significance of the incentives, the timescale for bid preparation, the quality of guidance, the transparency

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"

Prior conditions Local socioeconomic conditions geography of deprivation and need scale and intensity of deprivation development opportunities Institutional conditions support for area targeting among the partners experience of interagency cooperation breadth of interagency cooperation stability of institutional arrangements previous experience of challenge bidding

Bidding procedure Significance and nature of bidding procedure level of resources at stake chances of success a one-off or recurring process timescale for bid preparation clarity of selection criteria quality of guidance rules governing eligible areas transparency of selection process feedback and support

Outcome Stimulus öpartnership is strong and enduring ~

Subsequent ! " partnership is loose/ events availability of narrow; compensation funds some projects are level and adequacy pursued ~ of this funding " ! policy shifts in key Disillusionmentö organisations partnership disintegrates existence of wider or partners withdraw institutional structures from competitive (area-wide partnerships) bidding other funding opportunities consequences of failure for mainstream programmes and other relevant agencies

Figure 1. Impact of competitive bidding process on unsuccessful bidders.

of bid selection, and the level of subsequent feedback and support from central government. It is easy to imagine how some of these factors could affect the commitment of local partners to take the process seriously and to work together and consult other interests. In theory a well-designed competition would stimulate activity and generate a momentum among the bidders that might continue even if they did not succeed straightaway. The consequences of the bidding procedure are also likely to be influenced by prior local conditions. The better the `fit' between preexisting conditions and the bidding rules, the more positive and sustainable the likely outcome, since it would be going with the grain of local circumstances. Even if the bid failed, the process of bidding might prompt new initiatives which would continue afterwards. Local socioeconomic characteristics are important, including the geography of deprivation. Consistency between the rules governing the size of eligible areas and actual conditions on the ground is more likely to facilitate a durable proposal than would be the case where they are incompatible and artificial boundaries have to be drawn. Prior institutional conditions are also likely to be significant. The existence of political support for the principle of area targeting, and experience of partnership working, mean there is fertile ground for a bidding procedure that requires this. It will be easier to involve the community and private sector in preparing a bid, and to sustain their involvement afterwards, if relationships have already been built up and if there are systems in place to help them cope with the time pressures of bidding and the setbacks of failure. Organisations facing the prospect of losing substantial resources and bidding to protect projects may also be more committed to mounting an effective bid than those hoping to obtain extra funds. They may also react differently to failure. The framework also suggests that the consequences of bidding failure depend on subsequent events, including broader policy developments and opportunities to bid again. If some level of compensatory funding is available, or if local authorities and other bodies decide to maintain support for the unsuccessful areas, the local initiatives may be sustained. Conversely, the consequence may be disillusionment and possible disintegration if in the short-term previous funding levels are unsustainable, and if in the longer term organisations begin to transfer their resources to the winning areas, either to be consistent with national spatial priorities or because of greater availability of cofinancing for their projects.


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The Scottish policy context Competitive bidding for area-based programmes was introduced later in Scotland and on a smaller scale than was the case in England. The annual national competition for individual Urban Programme projects survived largely unchanged until the mid1990s, with a steadily expanding budget. This served a useful purpose in helping to lubricate the relationships between poor communities, local authorities, and central government by providing small funding packets for a wide range of ad hoc, experimental, and community-based responses to all kinds of problems. However, by the early 1990s various weaknesses of the procedure had become apparent, including its unpredictability, marginality, and fragmentation (Turok and Hopkins, 1998). Meanwhile, broader and more integrated area-based initiatives had been pursued in several deprived areas. Some of the earliest were introduced by partnerships led by local authorities (Keating, 1988; Scottish Office, 1993; Turok, 1999b). In 1988, four Urban Partnerships led by the Scottish Office were designated. In the early 1990s a larger group of Smaller Urban Renewal Initiatives were led by Scottish Homes. In all cases, initiative areas were selected by the lead agencies, with some emphasis on need. It was after pressure from the Treasury and internal recognition of its weaknesses that the Scottish Office launched a major review of the Urban Programme in 1993. Their ostensible purpose was to identify how it would be possible to introduce `à comprehensive, co-ordinated, long-term, strategic approach to regeneration'' (Scottish Office, 1993, page 1). A key underlying objective was the concentration of resources on a smaller number of priority areas in order to achieve greater impact. The consultation paper identified four possible ways of selecting these areas, ranging from local choices via a negotiated arrangement to central decisions. Competition along the lines of City Challenge was also mentioned as a possibility: `ìts potential advantages lie in the stimulation of new ideas which a competitive environment would engender'' (Scottish Office, 1993, page 32). No other possible benefits or costs of competition were mentioned. Many of the responses expressed support for the principle of an integrated strategic approach based on local partnerships, but there was concern about the possibility of a brutal `winners take all' competition and the elimination of `need' from the selection process (Scottish Office, 1995, page 2). After several delays, in March 1996 a competition was launched for local authorities to submit one or more bids for PPA status. These bids had to include regeneration proposals for a target locality set within the context of a regeneration strategy for the whole council area. They also had to include plans for a local partnership and a `council-area-wide' partnership involving at least the Local Enterprise Company (LEC), Scottish Homes, community, and business representation. No explanation for the use of a competition to select the areas was given. Sixteen local authorities submitted bids for a total of twenty-nine PPAs. In a process analysed elsewhere (Turok and Hopkins, 1998), twelve areas were selected for PPA status. The other seventeen unsuccessful bids are the focus of this paper. These bids and their eleven lead local authorities are listed in table 2 (see over). Councils could also submit bids for a Regeneration Programme, seeking residual Urban Programme funding for non-PPA areas. After this research was completed the new Labour government announced a second regeneration competition in Scotland. This gave unsuccessful areas the opportunity to bid again (Dewar, 1998) for designation as Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs), consisting of a mixture of area-based and theme-based initiatives, with existing PPAs and Regeneration Programmes also evolving into SIPs. The competition was similar to Programme for Partnership in its strong emphasis on the creation of multisectoral partnerships working to a long-term strategy and in

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Table 2. List of unsuccessful Priority Partnership Area (PPA) bids. Lead local authority

Name of bid

Clackmannanshire Dundee City a

Alloa South and East Priority Partnership AreaÐTwo (Lochee, Beechwood and Charleston) East Ayrshire Archipelago PPA Edinburgh South Fife (a) Drumchapel (b) Gorbals (c) Greater Govan (d) Greater Pollok Three Towns (a) Airdrie North (b) South Coatbridge (c) South Wishaw (a) Cambuslang (b) North Hamilton/Blantyre Castleview West Lothian

East Ayrshire Edinburgh City a Fife Glasgow City a

North Ayrshire North Lanarkshire a South Lanarkshire Stirling West Lothian a

Authorities which also submitted one or more successful bid.

seeking to bend mainstream programmes. However, at the time of the present research, local authority and other partners could have had no definite expectation that there would be any further opportunity to bid for government support. In the event, in 1999 the government designated a total of forty-seven SIPs in Scotland (including existing PPAs and Regeneration Programmes), by means of spreading the limited resources rather thinly. As a result, every one of the bid areas ùnsuccessful' in 1996 now has at least a partial share in Partnership status. Our research, however, focuses on unsuccessful bidders at a stage where the policy environment still offered no certain new incentive to Partnership working. Methods Our study drew on the experience of the people most closely involved in the PPA bids and in subsequent partnership work. One postal questionnaire for each ùnsuccessful' bid area was sent to The Scottish Office's contact officer in the appropriate local authority in December 1997. The original PPA bids had been submitted in June 1996 and refusals notified in November of that year. All the questionnaires were returned and all questions were answered with only minor omissions. This information was supplemented by extended interviews with the contact officers, senior officers of every LEC that had a direct interest, officers of the relevant areas of Scottish Homes, and representatives of some of the relatively few community and voluntary sector organisations that had had an active involvement in PPA bidding. We also drew upon the PPA bid documents and other documents included in the overall submission by each local authority. No attempt was made to assess the quality of these submissions or the reasons for The Scottish Office's decisions. Previous research that considers these issues is reported in Turok and Hopkins (1998). The combination of a postal survey with a 100% face-to-face follow up allowed interpretations to be clarified and confirmed the validity of the responses. Quotations in the text below are from local authority officials unless otherwise stated. Interviews with other partner organisations yielded fuller qualitative insights and understanding.


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The study is therefore based on a complete coverage of all the unsuccessful bids and detailed insights from a range of perspectives in each case. This diverse body of evidence has been scrutinised to inform summary assessments of the impact of competitive bidding on partnership working in the target areas, approximately fourteen months after refusal. The distinction between the effects of engaging in the bidding process itself and the financial consequences of failing to succeed is not always easy to disentangle, but is important for an accurate evaluation and understanding of the process of competition. The qualitative evidence has been used to draw this distinction. Longer term quantitative monitoring of the possible processes by which resources may be concentrated increasingly upon successful bidders has not been attempted. Prior conditions There was general acceptance among local authorities of many of the basic objectives of the restructuring of the Urban Programme. They endorsed the move away from individual project funding, the development of longer term strategies, the need to draw in additional resources from different sources, and the principle of working in partnership with other agencies, local communities, and the private sector. `Ìt put down on paper what a lot of Councils were doing and moving towards anyway. It was almost a good-practice guide, and that's why there was less resistance to the concept.'' However, local conditions could make substantial differences to practical preparedness. First, the geography and intensity of deprivation differed widely across urban Scotland. The application of standard eligibility rules posed difficulties. The rules required proposed PPAs to have populations of 5000 to 30 000, with at least 50% living in census enumeration districts within the most deprived 10% in Scotland. An àrchipelago' of smaller areas could be designated where large concentrations of deprivation did not exist. In many areas there were problems in identifying bid areas that corresponded with local perceptions of sensible territories. This affects the potential to maintain these areas as priority areas afterwards. Old mining settlements and other dispersed communities could not meet the lower population threshold, whereas several deprived areas in Glasgow had to be `pruned' to fit the population ceiling. Elsewhere, boundaries had to be redrawn at the last minute to meet the unexpected `50%' requirement. Eight bids were for àrchipelago' areas, which made it difficult to develop coherent strategies and sustain community involvement. Second, institutional conditions were very different across the country. The Scottish Office expected a wide range of organisations to be consulted, and to sign each bid having reached agreement on the structure of the partnership and its programme of action. The key public agencies were expected to commit substantial resources as well. In practice, the level of institutional preparedness varied greatly between areas. A few had long experience of interagency cooperation and community involvement within the proposed areas, but other localities had very little. The local authorities in this last group had to do considerable work to persuade other bodies to give special priority to particular neighbourhoods and to commit themselves to a novel partnership structure. A few local authorities, such as Glasgow, had anticipated the competition for PPA status after the 1993 consultation paper and had begun to prepare regeneration strategies for some of their deprived areas in consultation with other agencies. Two other areas had recent experience of unsuccessful bidding for an URBAN Community Initiative, which required evidence of partnership working. Such areas seem to have been better placed to respond to the PPA competition when it was announced.

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After several delays, which caused considerable uncertainty, the local authorities were given just over two months to submit their proposals. This made it exceedingly difficult to undertake the analysis, consult the partners, secure additional investment, and involve the community in anything other than a token manner. These tasks were further complicated by local government reorganisationöthe new unitary authorities had taken over full powers less than a month before. Staff movements and political reconfigurations made it very difficult to develop a strategic collaborative approach. Although all respondents criticised the tight timescale for bid preparation, some acknowledged that the pressure had helped to accelerate the process: ``maybe that external hand pushed us a wee bit further and faster, though it also brought problems''. Bidding rules and procedure Various features of the bidding procedure influenced the quality, realism, and robustness of the proposals submitted. First, local authorities were required to indicate resource commitments from each partner for up to ten years. Yet the resources on offer through the Urban Programme were modest. Consequently the direct incentives for redirecting or attracting major resource flows were, arguably, not very significant: ``The tail is wagging the dogöwe had to demonstrate a huge amount of regeneration spend by the partners in order to bid for a small amount of Urban Programme.'' Second, the process appeared to be a one-off event. There was no hint of an opportunity to bid again, which would have offered an incentive to keep partnerships going. Some authorities were well aware that the Urban Programme faced a 20% overall cut in funding. `Òn balance there was a feeling that it was a fairly cynical exercise to reduce the Urban Programme and put the responsibility for managing a reduced Programme locally.'' Third, the bidding guidance was unclear in certain respects. For example, it drew a distinction between strategies for the proposed local area and broader council-wide strategies, without defining the relationship between them or how they would be funded: ``Programme for Partnership emphasised city-wide strategies and linkages to economic development. But the funding allocation ... doesn't support joint action across the city.'' This reduced the strength of some proposals and commitment to them afterwards. The guidance was also unclear about how detailed the proposals should be. A common response was to list specific projects dependent on Urban Programme funds and to outline much more tentative proposals for activities based on other funding sources. Both had reduced viability without PPA status. A fourth issue was the selection process itself, which was criticised principally for its lack of transparency: ``Why was it ours failed? There was hardly any feedback. It led to a feeling in a number of places that ìt was just a pauchle [a fix] anyway' '' (Scottish Homes official). The surprising pattern of winners and losers across the country, and uneven allocation of funding among the winners, caused uncertainty about the roles of need and quality in determining the outcome and the suspicion that politics had intervened in some of the decisions (Turok and Hopkins, 1998). Few, if any, areas believed that they had failed because of the poor quality of their bids. Even those with relatively low levels of need, who understood that their chances were never going to be high, felt that their cases were as strong as some of the successful bids. This could provide an incentive to continue, but some feedback might also have encouraged local partners to consider how their procedures could be improved for the future.


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The bidding partnerships The institutional arrangements in place at the time of the bid had been influenced by the extent of prior partnership working and the willingness of the key agencies to follow the bidding rules. By the bid deadline of 30 June 1996, most areas had reached agreement on the form of the partnership for their PPA (table 3), but few had fully constituted local partnerships in operation: most had the beginnings of a structure in place. In nine cases, meetings were being held of some kind of interim partnership. Seven of the other eight areas said that the bid was prepared or approved by a small joint steering group, which in most cases extended beyond the local authority to include Scottish Homes and the LEC. Table 3. Status of partnerships at bid deadline.

(a) Was there an agreement on the membership and structure of a partnership for the PPA? (b) Was a partnership body already meeting? If answer to (b) was ``no'', was the bid prepared or approved by any joint group or body?

Yes

No

14 (82%)

3 (18%)

9 (53%) 7

8 (47%) 1

These arrangements are the baseline for our analysis of the subsequent impact of refusal. These partnerships were, in the main, not yet strong or well developed, so that their subsequent survival or development was clearly open to influence stemming from the refusal of their bids. The draft bids were, in the main, written by a few council officers, or even one individual, and sent direct to the other partners for comment. The interagency groups had varying roles: the discussion of priorities and formats for drafts; agreement on what contribution each agency should make; contact with other potential partners; and arrangement of public meetings and conferences for community and voluntary organisations. The role of a few groups was essentially formal in that partners were presented with proposals for signature with minimal time for comment. Although bidding rules did not require partnerships to be fully operational, evidence of partners' involvement in the proposals was highly desirable and their signatures on the bid were essential. Every area claimed the support of some private sector representative body or company. All except one claimed to have consulted communities within the bid area or relevant organisations serving wider areas, although only six working groups claimed to have had any organised community representation. An obvious reason for the limited formal involvement was lack of time: ``the process was wholly dictated by the timetable and though we were in dialogue with ... groups, it was a matter of getting them signed up.'' Another was the artificial definition of the target area: ``We were left with a patchwork ... without any congruence that would allow us to identify a representative community group.'' Some believed that formal representation was only appropriate if new resources were definite: ``We weren't going to bring people on and then find that The Scottish Office wasn't going to resource regeneration in their areas. This would be a recipe for massive disappointment.''

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Subsequent events The effects of competitive bidding are also influenced by whether any alternatives are available afterwards. The outcome announced by the Scottish Office in November 1996 was more varied than a simple acceptance or rejection of the bids. `Successful' bids were only awarded a proportion of what had been bid for. In many unsuccessful areas some smaller scale funding was given to the council through a shorter term Regeneration Programme. Most of these authorities saw this as compensation funding and decided to focus their Regeneration Programmes on their unsuccessful PPA areas. With one exception, the Regeneration Programmes provided only a fraction of the funds of the previous Urban Programme, or the amounts applied for. Yet, in some areas they provided just enough discretionary funding to be seen as a partial substitute for PPA status: ``Getting something was very significant. It undoubtedly makes it easier to get the partners active and involved if there's some money there.'' In other areas the awards were insufficient to prevent the closure of many communityrun projects that had previously been funded. Even here some institutional arrangement was required to appraise potential projects and monitor progress of the Regeneration Programme. Developments in the EU Structural Funds also influenced the local partnerships. The Objective 2 programmes in both western and eastern Scotland ring-fenced resources for projects in deprived areas. All but one of the unsuccessful PPA areas were eligible to apply for these funds if they had some kind of partnership in existence. Nevertheless, any loss of previous Urban Programme funding put them at a disadvantage as this is an important source of cofunding. The future of local partnerships also depends heavily on what happens to mainstream policies and programmes. These effects are felt over a longer timescale than that covered by this research. Outcomes We judged the outcomes as perceived by participants in December 1997/January 1998, eighteen months after bidding and fourteen after refusal. The first issue examined was the extent to which planned regeneration activity went ahead despite the PPA bid having failed. Respondents were asked whether they could identify proposed projects which: (a) had since gone ahead as planned; (b) had gone ahead on a smaller scale or in a different way; (c) had proved to be impossible; or (d) any existing projects which had been discontinued. Ten of the seventeen respondents could identify examples of projects in every category: that is, there were both progress and setbacks in most areas. It was not possible to provide a comprehensive assessment of project implementation, as there had been no requirement for bidders to be precise about their proposed objects. The second issue was that of whether multisectoral partnerships now existed for the target areas. Use of this criterion as a measure of progress involves the assumption that area regeneration is facilitated by interagency collaboration and the involvement of local communities and the private sector. This corresponds with the broad consensus of opinion among relevant practitioner organisations in Scotland, as well as the findings of previous research (Robson et al, 1994; Russell et al, 1996). Respondents were asked what partnerships existed at present; a distinction was drawn between local partnerships whose `main purpose is to serve the PPA bid area' and those whose `main purpose is to serve the whole Council area' (table 4). Fourteen of the seventeen areas were directly served by a regeneration partnership at some level. Four of these were restricted to a council-wide arrangement, of which three gave


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Table 4. Number of partnerships at time of survey. Bid area only

Council area only

Both

Neither

3 (18%)

4 (26%)

7 (41%)

3 (18%)

Note: Figures relate to the number of bid areas covered. The existence of a Partnership covering Council area was reported in 6 of the 11 Council areas in the study. In one case, a `local' structure actually covered more than one unsuccessful bid area.

special priority to the bid area. Five of the ten areas that had a specifically local partnership said it was different from their PPA proposal. So most of the unsuccessful PPAs maintained or developed a partnership, but just under one third believed that it was in line with the previous bidding guidance. The local partnerships all involved the local authority, Scottish Homes, LEC, and the Health Board. Five council-wide partnerships included police representation, two included local educational institutions, and two the Employment Service. Community groups were involved in only half of the local partnerships. This was a slight increase on the number involved in the bidding process, although community group involvement clearly remained either a problem or a low priority. However, the widespread inclusion of representatives of voluntary organisations meant that only four of twentyone partnerships at either level were purely public sector consortia. Direct business involvement was less developed, especially at the local level. If these areas had gained PPA status most would probably have been required by The Scottish Office to do more to involve the private and community sectors. Partnerships can have different roles, from exchange of information to strategic and operational functions. The current partnerships had fewer functions than those proposed for the PPAs. All except three had adopted à strategy for their area', although a substantial proportion did not claim to `coordinate the strategies of the partners'. Four fifths of the local partnerships and a quarter of the council-wide bodies were involved in appraising and approving specific projects, mainly concerned with the Regeneration Programme, but few had any responsibilities for implementation. The growth of partnerships at different scales caused some uncertainty and misgivings. As one LEC interviewee said, ``there's a confusing map of Partnerships out there''. One Scottish Homes Region calculated that its staff were involved in sixty-seven partnerships of various kinds across several local authority areas. The long-term sustainability of council-wide partnerships may depend more on their ability to coordinate other interagency partnerships and programmes than on the outcomes of individual competitions. The form and functions of the partnership that emerged in each area (table 5, see over) appeared to be influenced most by the overall priority afforded to that area within the wider council territory. This was affected by the concentration or dispersion of deprivation in the wider area, its local intensity, whether other parts of the area had obtained PPA status, and political and other pressures (for example, from existing local initiatives aimed at preventing their areas being downgraded). The PPA bidding process appeared to have had very little influence on the subsequent status of the bid area. Most areas with top priority had active partnerships. In two of these cases the partnerships were retained or revived without Regeneration Programme status being awarded. The `two-tier' approach was most common in council areas where other neighbourhoods had PPA status (for example, Glasgow and Edinburgh). Here, the unsuccessful areas still received some attention. The four areas lower on the local priority list had little or no involvement in partnerships. Those with dispersed patterns

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Table 5. Types of outcome. Priority now given to bid area

Cases

OutcomeÐpartnership structures at time of survey

Top priority in the council area

Cambuslang East Ayrshirea Stirling

Active partnerships with sole or major focus on area in question.

Alloa South and East

Partnership with major focus on area being developed.

Edinburgh South

Two-tier partnership structure

Drumchapel Gorbals Greater Govan Greater Pollok

Two-tier partnership structure being developed or surviving from previous initiatives.

Airdrie North South Coatbridge South Wishaw

Two-tier partnership structureÐlower tier covers all three areas.

Lower priority than approved PPAsb

Limited attention

Dundee (Lochee, etc) No partnerships with major focus on North Hamilton/ these areas. Blantyre

Under development

Fifea West Lothiana

a b

No current partnershipÐpossibilities being discussed.

Target areas may vary significantly from Priority Partnership Area bid. PPAÐPriority Partnership Area.

of deprivation were still trying to get to grips with the relevance of area targeting and partnerships. The PPA competition had at least prompted them to consider the issue. The impact of the bidding process To assess the specific impact of the bidding process upon these outcomes we asked the key actors for their opinions on (a) the effects of the procedure they followed (including the rules of the competition and the experience of preparing a bid), and (b) the consequences of failure. This distinction was not always easy for people to draw in practice. Nearly three quarters of the respondents were inclined to agree with the statements that the bidding process helped partners to take a more strategic view of regeneration, focused more attention on the problems of the target area, and improved cooperation between public agencies (table 6): `À clear signal worked its way down everyone's line of communication that this was important. That impetus was certainly helpful to developing linkages at local level''. A respondent in another area said: It forced some of the big players to sit down and get on with learning about each other and co-operating.'' According to an official from Scottish Homes, `À lot of chemistry was generated. Much more of it was constructive than destructive''. Yet, others felt the process added little to the existing local response: Existing cooperation was well developedöif anything the tight deadline and prescriptive process resulted in tension.'' In just over half the areas, people were inclined to say that the dialogue had improved the quality of the regeneration proposals. However, few believed that it made any difference to council or other partners' basic policies, partly because of the tight timescale or the lack of specificity required in the bids. Views on whether the


59

Table 6. Responses to the questionnaire of the seventeen partnerships asked about the impact of the competitive bidding process. (Percentages are given in parentheses.) Response The process:

strongly agree

tend to agree

neither agree or disagree

tend to disagree

strongly disagree

``Helped the partners to take a more strategic view'' `Ìmproved the quality of the regeneration proposals'' ``Helped to focus attention on the area's problems'' ``Led to changes in Council policy'' ``Led to changes in other partners' policies''a `Ìmproved co-operation between public agencies'' `Ìncreased community involvement'' `Ìmproved links with the business community'' ``Was an efficient use of resources''

4 (24)

8 (47)

4 (24)

1 (6)

0

1 (6)

8 (47)

7 (41)

0

1 (6)

4 (24)

8 (47)

2 (12)

1 (6)

2 (12)

0 0

2 (12) 2 (12)

9 (53) 11 (65)

6 (35) 3 (18)

0 0

3 (18)

8 (47)

5 (29)

1 (6)

0

3 (18) 0

5 (29) 3 (18)

4 (24) 9 (53)

2 (12) 2 (12)

3 (18) 3 (18)

0

0

5 (29)

5 (29)

7 (41)

a

No response in one case.

process increased community involvement were quite divided. Some had been encouraged to consult the community more than they would normally have done, whereas others were already doing this and yet others did not do very much because of the lack of time. Turning to the consequences of failure, the most common setback was in `giving priority to the bid area'. This was normally attributable simply to the loss of previous special funding. Conversely, in one area it became easier to give priority to a neighbourhood because ``the Council didn't feel it had got what it deserved'', and it ``will be protected within any programme''. Lack of funding also made it more difficult in some areas ``to work in partnership'', and ``to involve communities'': ``We've got less to take to them. Not so much the failure as such, more the failure to attract funding''. It also affected the ability to attract private investment: ``No ability to pump prime, and leverin external resources''. In several areas the impact of refusal was thought to be felt most keenly by the local community groups. Even if they had not been fully involved in the bidding process, most were at least aware of the attempt to obtain priority status for their area. The loss to them was not offset by gains elsewhere, as it was for many public organisations with wider jurisdictions. Their concern related to the loss of political influence as well as funding: ``We had viewed PPA as a real opportunity to have a real say over local issues, because the resources didn't belong to one organisation and we would have had an input into bringing them to the area. Our group was sick to death, we had worked hard and we didn't get paid for it like the other partners'' (community representative). More than two thirds of the respondents regarded the bidding process as an inefficient use of resources, even taking into account the beneficial effects as well as the costs. Yet, when asked whether their partnerships would bid again if the opportunity arose, all said ``yes''. Many qualified this with expressions of considerable resignation and reluctance. They would bid simply because they could not afford to ignore the possibility of gaining resources, rather than because of any other benefits associated with the process.

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The 1998/99 competition for SIP status provided such an opportunity. The new bidding process showed that some lessons had been learnt from the previous competition. The selection process was more open and transparent, involving an advisory group drawn from beyond the civil service. More emphasis was given to need in selecting areas, and the bidding process was in two stages to help improve the quality of poor proposals from needy areas. So the harder edge of competition was softened in order to rectify the perceived unfairness of the previous exercise. This was particularly clear in the outcome, which produced twenty-six winners and only six losers. Overall assessment Our assessment of the balance between the positive and negative effects of the competitive process on the losers is based on a broad judgment of the aforementioned factors. It includes the effects both of the process of bidding and of the immediate aftermath of failure, such as the loss of funding and the gains from Regeneration Programme status. We focus on the issue of whether Programme for Partnership influenced the creation of partnerships serving the target areas. Fourteen months after refusal, thirteen of the seventeen areas had some kind of partnership that gave special attention to the target area. We believe that only four of these would not have existed in any form without Programme for Partnership. Interestingly, these four are among the less active of the partnerships examined, and owe much of their existence to the need to administer a Regeneration Programme. The other nine partnerships would probably have existed anyway. In most cases the stimulus to partnership working predated Programme for Partnership and had independent origins. In Glasgow, for example, a city-wide alliance existed with a long-term agenda to create or strengthen regeneration partnerships in the major deprived areas of the city. Programme for Partnership may still have accelerated or enhanced the process of partnership formation in some areas; table 7 summarises such effects. We believe that there were three localities where the existing partnership arrangements were relatively unaffected, mainly because there was already a strong drive to establish partnership structures. In four areas where there was little or no current partnership working, the bidding process had little lasting effect. These judgments do not imply that the process had no effect at all in these areas; however, the effects were not significant in terms of developing partnership working. Table 7. Types of impact of Programme for Partnership on partnership formation. Impact

Number

Largely unaffected Partnership stimulated Overall setback: immediate bidding process was: positive neutral/negative Partnership little or never developed

3 5 3 2 4

There were ten areas where the impact seems to have been greater. In five areas we consider that the overall impact was, on balance, a positive stimulus to partnership working. The most important feature in every case appears to have been the need to get organised to manage a Regeneration Programme. In some cases there had actually been limited collaboration involved in producing the PPA bids. In the other five areas the overall impact can probably be considered negative. In every case the partnerships that now exist would have existed without Programme for Partnership. Some of these


61

partnerships experienced quite intensive processes of bid development. In our judgment, these processes viewed in isolation had a positive effect in three cases. However, the effect of not obtaining PPA recognition and funding set the process back severely. For example: ``Programme for Partnership focused minds on forming [the area] as a partnership formally and on how to represent different communities. Stresses and strains reemerged when it became clear that we weren't going to get funding directly as a partnership.'' Conclusions and implications Identifying the effects of competitive bidding is clearly rather difficult, so there is a need for research methods equipped for the task. It is desirable to distinguish the process of engaging in a bidding event from the financial consequences of being unsuccessful or gaining some partial alternative, though it is the combined effect that determines outcomes. We have identified wide-ranging effects distributed unevenly across the unsuccessful areas. There were many relatively small gains arising from local authorities getting involved in a time-constrained process that required them to consult other interests. These included a stimulus to a more strategic problem-centred perspective, improvement of policy proposals, and a greater willingness to prioritise particular areas of need. Any changes in institutional culture and learning from the process are more likely to be the preserve of local authorities and other public bodies than of neighbourhood-based interests such as community groups. The bigger prize of creating new lasting partnership structures in which multisectoral interests are combined was more elusive. These were either being developed in some simpler form anyway, or the pressures and inducements of a one-off bidding opportunity were insufficient to change organisational policies or behaviour in order to bring this about. In a few cases the bidding process did give rise to more intensive partnership working, but being unsuccessful seriously undermined this. Most of the more substantial increases in partnership activity appeared to be associated with the management of `compensation' funds rather than the bidding process itself. This task is short-term and the commitment to partnership working remained rather fragile and narrowly based in several areas. The most negative effect of the bidding process was the loss of funding for most areas as a direct result of the bid being unsuccessful. This caused substantial disillusionment with very tangible consequences in the form of the forced closure of projects and programmes in areas of severe social need. In addition, the lack of discretionary funds made it harder to justify special treatment of these areas and to lever-in additional resources. There was also a substantial cost associated with bid preparation in some areas. Looking at the balance of effects over the first fourteen months after refusal, it appears that the process provided little or no lasting stimulus to partnership activity in seven of the seventeen areas. The overall impact was probably positive on balance in five other areas and negative in the remaining five areas. The longer term significance of these effects and the survival of local partnerships depended on the fate of wider resource streams and mainstream programmes. One of the most important wider implications of this analysis is that the organisation of the bidding process in such competitions could be greatly improved. Changes could be made which would enhance the benefits and reduce some of the detrimental effects. Incentives and pressures can clearly make a difference to organisational behaviour provided they are structured effectively and suitably tailored to the prevailing conditions. Many of the difficulties with Programme for Partnership arose from relatively

62


simple aspects of its design, such as its timing, inflexibility, opaque procedures, and one-off nature. We may suggest several improvements which could be made, based on our analysis. These include: extension of the timescale for bid preparation; improvements to the selection process, to make it fairer and more transparent; the provision of feedback to the losers; the offer of opportunities for further rounds of bidding; extension of the incentives to all partners to participate; and increases in the flexibility of rules and procedures to allow for wider variations in local circumstances. Greater consideration also needs to be given to the financial consequences of failure. We have shown the significance of compensatory funding in the short term. In the longer term, inequalities between areas may be widened through progressive diversion of resources away from the losers, as a result of the skewing of other programmes and a tendency of institutions and markets to follow investment, development, and general success. If the government is genuinely interested in shifting the culture of the public sector towards a meritocracy, in which improved performance is required and a stimulus to effort and quality without widening divisions is provided, then it must recognise the disillusionment that also often stems from failure. It has a clear obligation to manage competitive processes more closely and actively. This would require it to strengthen the capacity of localities which lack the preconditions to compete effectively; to plan ways of moderating the adverse effects of losing; and to be watchful of the possibility that divisions between areas will become increasingly entrenched. At first sight, competitions appear to shift responsibility for deciding the approach to tackling difficult urban problems from central government to local institutions. But in fact they give the centre the new and different responsibilities of the promotion of equality of opportunity, the limit of excessive inequalities between areas, and the containment of the cost and bureaucracy of bidding procedures. Acknowledgements. The original study on which this paper is based, by Taylor, Turok, and Hastings (1999) was funded by The Scottish Office. We would like to acknowledge their support. Thanks also to Ade Kearns for several ideas in the paper. The usual disclaimers apply. References AMA, 1996 A New Deal for Regeneration Association of Metropolitan Authorities, in association with Association of County Councils, 35 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 2PN DETR, 1997, ``Regeneration Programmesöthe way forward'', consultation paper, Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, Eland House, Brassenden Place, London SW1E 5DU Dewar D, 1998, ``Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum inaugural annual lecture'', 8 May, Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum, Fairfield House, Ibrox Business Park, 1 Broomloan Place, Glasgow G51 2JR DLE, 1996, `Èvaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund: an examination of unsuccessful bids'', DP74, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Edwards J, 1997, `Ùrban policy: the victory of form over substance?'' Urban Studies 34 825 ^ 843 Hall S, Beazley M, Bentley G, Burfitt A, Collinge C, Lee P, Loftman P, Nevin B, Srbljanin A, 1996, ``The Single Regeneration Budget: a review of Challenge Fund Round II'', Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham Hall S, Mawson J, 1999 Challenge Funding, Contracts and Area Regeneration (Policy Press, Bristol) Healey P, 1997 Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies (Macmillan, London) Hutchinson J, 1995, ``Can partnerships which fail succeed? The case of City Challenge'' Local Government Policy Making 22(3) 41 ^ 51 Keating M, 1988 The City That Refused to Die (Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen) Le Grand J, 1999, ``How to cage the fat-cats'' New Statesman 26 July, pages 25 ^ 27 Malpass P, 1994, ``Policy making and local governance: how Bristol failed to secure City Challenge funding (twice)'' Policy and Politics 22 301 ^ 312 Oatley N, 1995, ``Competitive urban policy and the regeneration game'' Town Planning Review 66(1) 1 ^ 14 Oatley N (Ed.), 1998 Cities, Economic Competition and Urban Policy (Paul Chapman, London)


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Oatley N, Lambert C, 1995, `Èvaluating competitive urban policy: the City Challenge initiative'', in Urban Policy Evaluation: Challenge and Change Eds R Hambleton, H Thomas (Paul Chapman, London) pp 141 ^ 157 Robson B, Deas I, Parkinson M, Robinson F, 1994, `Àssessing the impact of urban policy'', Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Eland House, Brassenden Place, London SW1E 5DU Russell H, Dawson J, Garside P, Parkinson M, 1996 City Challenge Interim National Evaluation (The Stationery Office, London) Scottish Office, 1993 Progress in Partnership: A Consultation Paper on the Future of Urban Regeneration Policy in Scotland (HMSO Scotland, Edinburgh) Scottish Office, 1995 Programme for Partnership: Announcement of the Outcome of the Scottish Office Review of Urban Regeneration Policy (HMSO Scotland, Edinburgh) Social Exclusion Unit, 1998 Bringing Britain Together: A National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal Cm 4045 (The Stationery Office, London) Taylor P, Turok I, Hastings A, 1999 An Examination of Unsuccessful Priority Partnership Area Bids Scottish Executive Central Research Unit, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh EH6 6QQ Turok I, 1999a, ``Localisation or mainstream bending in urban regeneration? European experience'' Local Economy 14(1) 72 ^ 86 Turok I, 1999b Inclusive Cities: Building Local Capacity for Development (European Commission, Brussels) Turok I, Hopkins N, 1998, ``Competition and area selection in Scotland's new urban policy'' Urban Studies 35(11) 2021 ^ 2061

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