Urban development corporations and enterprise boards revisited: A survey of current policies and practice

This article aims to fulfil three functions. First, it provides a brief survey of the current state of policy and practice amongst two categories of local economic development institution, Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) and Enterprise Boards. This includes forming some impressions of the impact on Enterprise Boards of the abolition of the GLC and the Metropolitan Councils, and of the provisions of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 (Part V). And it includes some assessment of the responses of Urban Development Corporations to the largely critical assessments of them made by the National Audit Office (1988) on Liverpool and LDDC, and the House of Commons Employment Committee (1988) on employment effects. The recent expansion of numbers of UDCs (five “second-generation” ones set up in 1987, and four “third-generation” ones established during 1988 and 1989) also allows wider analysis of the form to be carried out.

The second aim of the article is to explore the extent and causes of diversity both between and within the two groups. This includes analysis of the degree of overlap and convergence between the two groups as well as the range of models within each.

A third aim is to explore the validity of either model for future implementation of local economic strategies.