Beyond the boundaries: vacancy chains and the evaluation of urban development corporations

Recent years have seen the establishment of numerous spatially bounded rege neration agencies in the United Kingdom, prominent amongst which have been urban development corporations (UDCs). Attempts to evaluate such agencies h ave so far focused almost exclusively upon the impacts within formally deli mited areas and have neglected to consider the effects on surrounding nonde signated areas. In this paper, an attempt is made to address this by devisi ng a technique for assessing the wider effects of spatially bounded regener ation agencies and programmes. Drawing from a government-commissioned evalu ation of UDCs at Leeds, Bristol, and Central Manchester, we explore the ext ent to which government intervention in delimited areas has generated a net beneficial impact on the wider local economies of the three cities. By use of data on the nature of vacancy chains for commercial properties in the t hree UDCs and in their respective surrounding areas, an attempt is made to measure the degree of displacement or additionality engendered by UDC activ ities.