Towards a European urban policy

Summary

In the face of some opposition from those who plead subsidiarity as the central plank of European policies, the emergence of an urban dimension to European policies has been significant in the last five years. Now, reinforced by a research base, with the European Parliament and the Committee of the Regions providing a political route to influence, and with a modest programme of experimentation in urban projects in progress, the “urban” appears genuinely fixed on the political agenda of Europe. From a UK perspective the substance of the programmes is limited; small in scale and following many of the lines established within City Challenge or the Urban Partnerships, the new European urban initiatives are substantively modest and marginal. Much more important is the symbolic importance of a European urban perspective. This gives impetus to the policy debate at both European and national levels with the Commission's Community Initiative directing attention not simply to growing polarisation, marginalisation and exclusion in cities, but also to issues of urban fiscal crisis — the interaction of heavy expenditure needs with inadequate tax or grant base. Increasingly fierce competition between cities for investment and growth, with both Brussels and nation states involved as regulators and/or co‐competitors is certain to exacerbate inter urban differentials and to reinforce the salience of questions of social exclusion and urban fiscal crisis.