Deindustrialization, planning and class structure: A study of the effects of social policy on social structure

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between planning programmes in three industrial areas in the North East of England since 1945, and the socio-spatial structure of these places as it has changed over time with a focus on the period since 1975 during which all three areas have undergone a process of major de-industrialization. The study employs secondary data analyses of successive censuses of employment and population to chart the nature of industrial and socio- spatial change, with particular reference to the possible emergence of a spatially segregated and socially residualized 'underclass'. This spatial data is complemented by household level material drawn from the Cleveland Social Survey. The study concludes that there is a spatial segregation between the 'prosperous', defined in terms of housing tenure and location in the labour market, and the 'dispossessed poor' defined in terms of tenure and absence of work relation, but that the benefit dependent 'dispossessed poor' live in close relation to the low waged 'working poor' and more closely resemble a traditional 'industrial reserve army' than a surplus population. The planning history of the areas is reviewed in both its modern and post-modern phases. The study concludes that the socio-spatial structure of the early 1990s is a product of the interaction between global processes of industrial transformation and the local processes of land-use and housing planning in the places studied. Thus, planning programmes are identified as constitutive of social structure as opposed to merely responsive to economic changes.