'It's not community round here, it's neighbourhood': Neighbourhood change and cohesion in urban regeneration policies

Neighbourhood has become a key spatial scale in the UK government's policie s for urban regeneration and social inclusion, resuscitating the long-stand ing debate over the efficacy of area-based policies. The paper argues that the latter need to be sensitive to the interaction between macro-structural and local, reinforcing processes and that 'people-based' policies need to be complemented by 'people and place' ones. The complexities of 'neighbourh ood' definition are explored, using the distinction between 'neighbourhood' and 'place- based community' to support an argument for seeing neighbourho ods as an appropriate spatial scale for understanding the operation of 'eve ryday life-worlds'. Drawing on research based on a specific regeneration in itiative, the 'Pathways to Integration' priority of the Objective 1 Structu ral Funds Programme for Merseyside (1994-99), the paper goes on to explore the political and operational issues surrounding the spatial targeting of p olicy and some of the partnership issues surrounding 'neighbourhood' and 'c ommunity'. It argues that area-based policies and spatial targeting are inh erently political as well as technical exercises that need to be sensitive to the social-spatial construction of neighbourhoods and that the operation al definition of policy areas should be part of an evolutionary process of community engagement.