Mind the Gap? The Persistence of Pathological Discourses in Urban Regeneration Policy

Urban regeneration policy has historically framed policy problems using a discourse that pathologizes areas and spatial communities. Since 2001 in England and 2002 in Scotland, a structural change in policy has occurred where city‐wide partnerships are now meant to overcome structural spatial inequalities, countering pathological explanations. This paper uses historical and discourse analysis to evaluate one of the major community regeneration strategies developed by the Scottish Executive in 2002: Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap. It seeks to ask whether structural change in policy was paralleled by discursive change; what discursive path dependence is evidenced? The text is placed in the historic context of UK urban renewal policies dating back to the launch of the Urban Programme in 1968, and particularly the policy discourse created by the influential Conservative government policy of 1988 – New Life for Urban Scotland – and the wider discourses of poverty and neighbourhood renewal policy created by Labour governments since 1997. The close textual analysis of the text shows that Better Communities in Scotland continues to pathologize spatial communities. Although this suggests a degree of historical path dependency, the historic breadth of the analysis also problematizes simple historical determinism.