Disorderly cities and the policy-making field: the 1981 English riots and the management of urban decline

Abstract

This article develops a framework for understanding policy-making responses to the crisis of the post-industrial urban economy in Britain through an exploration of the policy event of the 1981 English riots and the policy-making field that surrounded it in which the rival positions of 'managed decline' and concerted urban regeneration became reconciled through a roll-out of neoliberal governance mechanisms. The value of this framework for contemporary analyses of urban policy in the context of social marginality and uneven economic development is discussed in the conclusion. Keywords Urban unrest • Urban policy • Managed decline • Liverpool • Bourdieu Alone, every night… I would stand with a glass of wine, looking out at the magnificent view over the river, and ask myself what had gone wrong for this great English city. The Mersey, its lifeblood, flowed as majestically as ever down from the hills. Its monumental Georgian and Victorian buildings, created with such pride, still dominated the skyline. The Liver Building itself, the epicentre of a trading system that had reached out to the four corners of the earth, stood defiant and from my perspective very alone … everything had gone wrong.

And in The End: A 1980s Liverpool Youth Magazine

“…Following his fact-finding mission in response to the riots, Howe was determined to get one particular point to PM Thatcher prior to Heseltine’s review. 5 In August 1981, Howe conceded that Liverpool must be viewed as a city that required financial planning and considerate management of future investment, but not in a manner its citizens would recognize as positive, or as Parker and Atkinson (2020) have put it, that the city “ be left to rot. ” Indeed, this special consideration was expressed with some trepidation by the Chancellor, and the words “ managed decline” and much needed financial investment for Liverpool was like making “ water flow uphill” and should be wisely spent elsewhere for a greater return.…”