Understanding Urban Policy - A Critical Approach

Cochrane (public policy, Open U., UK) examines the emergence of urban social policy in the United Kingdom (with frequent cross reference to the United States). He is concerned with why particular problems are identified as requiring social policy intervention at particular times and why urban problems come to be defined or understood in particular ways, often in ways that differ markedly from the perceptions of those who are the apparent targets or supposed beneficiaries of policy. He takes a thematic approach to the subject, devoting individual chapters to issues of race and poverty, managerialism in the public sector, the concept of "community" in urban policy, urban disorder and social disorganization, the rise of urban entrepreneurialism, investment in cultural activities, and neoliberalism and the globalization of urban policy. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Allan Cochrane is Professor of Public Policy at the The Open University. His previous publications include Comparing Welfare States (editor, second edition, 2000), Rethinking the Region (1998), and A Global World? Reordering Political Space (editor, 1995).