BOOK REVIEWS
The British EZ has two significant elements . A deregu-
latory element, i .e . a speeding up and rationalisation of
local government procedures to `make it happen' . This
represents, to a degree, the ideological content of the EZ
legislation. The fiscal element of EZ legislation permits all
commercial and industrial operators within the boundary
to pay no local rates for 10 years and all new industrial
and commercial buildings attract 100 percent tax allow-
ances in the first year.
So far as the deregulatory element is concerned not one
new company has approached me (in my capacity as
development manager for the Clydebank Enterprise Zone)
spurred on by the prospect of simplified development
procedures alone - and almost 100 new companies have
moved into Clydebank in the past 18 months . The fiscal
element is of much more interest to business . The EZ is the
first spatial initiative to use preferential tax treatment as
an incentive . Local rates are an unpopular tax and their
removal is an attractive bonus . The tax allowances are,
perhaps surprisingly of more interest to commercial devel-
opers than to either manufacturing companies or develo-
pers of industrial property, the reason being that manufac-
turing companies, should they be in the enviable position
of actually making profit, have other means at their
disposal to offset tax rather than building a new factory .
Also industrial developers can already offset building
costs, against profit, albeit at a lower rate, in all areas
outside an EZ . The office developer, however, contrasts
100 percent allowances claimable in the first year with zero
allowances outside the EZs . The differential can be dra-
matic . For example, the net cost of a £4m office block
could be only £2m if erected in an EZ .
The EZ is seen as a 10-year experiment in economic
rejuvenation and presumably after that period, if not
before, some assessment as to its effectiveness will be
made. To isolate the EZ impact from other factors at
work in an area will be difficult . The Clydebank area, for
example, is not only an EZ but also a Special Develop-
ment Area, attracting the highest level of regional devel-
opment grant and selective financial assistance ; a Steel
Closure Area which allows the town access to `soft' loan
monies from Europe, and the focus of a special initiative,
the Task Force, set up by the Scottish Development
Agency to act as a `delivery mechanism' for economic
development programmes . Clydebank is in no way a
`stand back and let it rip' zone . Other development
programmes and organisational layers are drawn together
with full force. Clydebank may not provide the best
measure of the effectiveness of the EZ: it will however
provide a good test of the effectiveness of conventional
regional policy in Britain . If sufficient private investment
cannot be attracted to Clydebank at least to halt the
economic decline, with the wide range of tools currently
available, then perhaps the main thrust of regional policy
- moving work to the workers - will need a fundamen-
tal reappraisal .
STUART GULLIVER
Scottish Development Agency
42 5
Inner City Regeneration
by ROBERT K . HOME . London : E . & F . N . Spon .
1982 . pp. 188 . £10 .50 H/B; £5 .50 P/B
The introduction to this book notes that the inner cities
face many of the same problems that big cities have always
faced ; for example, slum housing, poverty and congestion .
However, it is argued that a distinction has become
necessary between the inner and outer areas of conurba-
tions as jobs and people have moved out of inner areas
and as new elements appear, including ethnic minorities .
Economic problems are now supplanting social problems
in terms of their importance and urgency, although inner
areas cannot be described as homogeneous or uniformly
bad . Nor do they contain all the deprived people, nor even
a majority . The author acknowledges that ideology and
political judgements affect the selection and definition of
problems and notes that inner city regeneration involves
the resolution of complex multidisciplinary problems .
The argument that the term `inner city' has become
virtually meaningless is recorded and it is admitted that
the inner city debate has become confused and formless .
However, the author argues that inner cities' problems
remain relevant and important, notwithstanding such
criticisms.
The starting point taken for the book is the develop-
ment of inner city policy consequent upon the rise and
decline of the industrial city . Subsequent chapters develop
in great depth and detail the various separate themes
contained in the 1977 White Paper, Policy for the Inner
Cities. Hence individual chapters examine the agencies for
inner city regeneration, planning and land issues, eco-
nomic regeneration, improving the housing stock, social
provision, and experimental initiatives (partnerships,
industrial improvement areas, enterprise zones, and urban
development corporations) . A brief review of overseas
experience is the subject of the penultimate chapter fol-
lowed by a discussion of the future for inner cities .
Appendices contain statistical tables (taken from previ-
ous publications by other authors), maps and information
on five English inner cities, and short descriptions of
various inner city regeneration projects . There is also an
extremely useful and fairly comprehensive listing of refer-
ences and further reading for each individual chapter . The
text is complemented by a series of interspersed photo-
graphs, presumably to give an impression of inner cities
for readers unfamiliar with them 'on the ground' .
The approach adopted by the book is extensive and
exhaustive. Any issue remotely related to the inner city is
dealt with in depth ; for example, problems posed by
homelessness and the agencies involved, the mechanisms
of Housing Investment Programmes, Transport Supple-
mentary Grant, Transport Policies and Programmes,
Housing Associations, voluntary organisations, regional
policy, planning, the various employment programmes
funded by central government, small firms, education,
recreation, health and so on . The reader covers what
appears to be a bewildering number and variety of
separate issues . Whilst the introduction warns that this is a
multidisciplinary area, the following chapters only serve to
426 URBAN STUDIES
confirm that the inner city problem has become
increasingly confused and formless . The book does not
confine itself specifically to the inner cities but rather
covers the whole range of urban problems and many other
problems too . Indeed little use is made of the aforemen-
tioned appendices, there being no direct referencing of
them in the text . Chapter 7 is reached with some relief
since here the book appears to examine experiments
specific to inner cities . Dismay soon follows, however,
when the reader realises that not all Enterprise Zones lie
inside the defined inner city areas . Thus Liverpool's
Enterprise Zone is totally outwith the inner area and
Manchester's overlaps the boundary . Furthermore why
should Enterprise Zones and Urban Development Corpo-
rations exist simultaneously and yet be so fundamentally
different in approach? Is there any rational explanation,
for example, of differing circumstances?
The book fails to defend the concept of the inner city in
terms of its usefulness for policy formulation . Rather it
provides ammunition for the argument that so-called
inner city initiatives are derisory both in terms of their
cash resources and their rationale . Inner city problems
simply do not exist as clearly distinct from urban
problems and the implications of general expenditure
programmes for inner cities are clearly of far greater
consequence than are any policies specifically designed for
inner areas . The concept of the inner city is clearly a
premise for ad hoc intervention and cosmetic action and
only serves to divert attention away from the fundamental
problems of urban areas and the lack of attention paid to
them by central government . This is amply demonstrated
by the shift of major sources of finance away from the
cities, e .g . the Rate Support Grant .
Notwithstanding such fundamental criticisms the au-
thor is to be applauded for such a comprehensive overview
of such a wide-ranging subject . He clearly demonstrates a
thorough understanding of the multitude of issues rele-
vant to the inner city debate, but in describing them all he
presents a very strong case in support of the meaning-
lessness of the term `inner city' and its irrelevance to
effective policy formulation .
S . J . BAILEY
Glasgow College of Technology
Helping Networks
by DONALD I . WARREN . Notre Dame, Indiana : Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press. 1981 . pp . 248 . £6 .60
In one of his films, Woody Allen as protagonist complains
`Why do all analysts have to go on vacation in August?'
After reading this valuable study which raises conscious-
ness of how much we are likely to be supported by the
social fabric woven by informal relationships in the set-
tings of everyday life, a more contemporary film can be
imagined in which Allen, who can no longer afford his
analyst, says `Why does my helping network have to go on
holiday in August?'
This report of extensive research in the US on `how
people cope with problems in the urban community', the
subtitle of the book, affords not only the message of field
work undertaken in 1974 and 1975 but also an entry point
into the social network domain and the deliberations upon
it . Though parts of the report do require translation from
the jargon for non-aficionados of transatlantic methodo-
logical media, nevertheless, the book frequently lapses
into important insights not only regarding how a majority
of people manage to survive modern urban wastelands,
but also how they are putting Humpty Dumpty society
together again as it undergoes continuous dislocation by
the Captain Marvel of our scientific-technological estab-
lishments and our military-industrial complexes .
The report: 1) outlines the research methodology ; 2)
reviews the literature on helping behaviour and suggests a
way of understanding the links between available help and
specific problems; 3) describes the overall pattern of
helping networks ; 4) analyses the variable influences of
`real' and `perceived' neighbourhoods on helping net-
works from survey data and extended interviews ; 5)
considers the differing effects of wider municipal commu-
nities on the neighbourhoods themselves ; 6) looks at how
the social background characteristics of people affect their
selection of available help, and 7) treats the perceptions
professional agencies have of the informal sources of help
and how they relate to them . The concluding chapters
summarise the findings of the helping network project and
present both broad and specific policy issues .
The extensive field work included 4,100 interviews in
eight communities around Detroit and in 59 neighbour-
hoods in Detroit and elsewhere . The persons sought were
of moderate income . A follow-up study was completed a
year later. Ethnographic studies of 25 neighbourhoods
were included as well .
The study attempted to answer the following guiding
questions :
1) What are the helping resources individuals utilise for a
range of frequently experienced problems, and how are
these distributed between informal and formal systems
of helping?
2) How are the patterns of help-seeking of the individual
related to the individual's social context - class, race,
age, local neighbourhood, and community social orga-
nisation?
3) What are the effects of using particular kinds of helping
resources (or not using them) on the individual's well-
being?'
A complex picture emerges . The behaviour of people
seeking help is related to combinations of variables involv-
ing the perceived and real relationships to kin, friends, co-
workers, neighbourhoods and professionals. Neighbour-
hoods tend to mediate help . In general it is having choice
from the widest possible array of reliable sources of help
from the foregoing categories that makes the real differ-
ence to well-being.
From these conclusions the author goes on to recom-
mend that in the midst of the burgeoning informal
network activity the aim should be to find the appropriate
partnership between the informal and the formal helpers
with the caveat that the latter cannot be imposed on the
former but require to be both circumspect and accessible .