Learning from experience? Reflections on two decades of British urban policy

Twenty years after the publication of the seminal 1977 White Paper on the inner cities, the promise of a more coordinated and strategic approach to urban policy still remains to be realised. This paper addresses the issue of why British urban policy has been characterised by a form of 'policy amnesia' - a failure to learn from past experiences. In arguing for the importance of policy learning and adaptation, the paper identifies 10 key lessons that emerge from the operation of urban policy since the late 1970s.