Introduction

Fundamental to effective policy responses to the economic challenges posed by deprived neighbourhoods is an understanding of the processes that produce and reproduce contemporary patterns of concentrated deprivation. This chapter sets out an understanding of neighbourhood deprivation rooted in the interface between wider processes of economic change and the particular place-based characteristics of neighbourhoods embedded within wider local and regional economies. Although the economic drivers that underlie the emerging geographies of enterprise and employment provide insights into the causes underlying concentrated deprivation, they cannot explain their particular constitution in a given place at a particular time. For this the nature and interaction of stocks and flows of different forms of capital within a given locality need to be analysed alongside the operation of mutually interdependent and reinforcing processes operating across labour, housing markets and investment flows.

This chapter first analyses the basic economic characteristics of deprived neighbourhoods and the wider processes of economic and spatial change within which they are embedded. Consideration of commonalities and differences in deprived neighbourhoods is pursued through a number of case studies selected to enable examination of the manner in which particular deprived neighbourhoods are rooted within a range of local economies (for example, inner city, coalfield, coastal, industrial) situated within differing regional contexts. These case study areas are used throughout this and subsequent chapters, to develop an analysis of deprived neighbourhoods rooted within wider economic, governance and policy structures.

The chapter then turns to consider wider economic processes of deindustrialisation, labour market change and the changing geographies of employment and enterprise, which provide the wider spatial context within which deprived neighbourhoods are situated. The focus then shifts to identify place-based characteristics related to location and integration in the local economy, population characteristics and area-based effects, and how these come together to produce different economic dynamics within deprived neighbourhoods. The interplay between these factors is then discussed in relation to mutually reinforcing cycles of decline related to labour markets, housing markets and private and public investment and provision. The chapter concludes by considering the policy implications that arise from an understanding of the economic problems of deprived neighbourhoods rooted within the interaction of wider processes of change and the particularities of individual places via a series of complex and mutually reinforcing socioeconomic processes.