20
The integrality of explicit national urban policy
In the United Kingdom the principle is that integrality has to be encouraged on the
national and local levels. The four Ministries (Environment, Employment, Training and
Industry) most involved in the national urban policy are working together in the newly
created "Government Offices in the Regions’. To stimulate cooperation on the local level,
only qualitatively good and integral plans are accepted for financing. The philosophy
underlying that strategy is that competition of local plans will push up their quality. In
France, integrality is an aspect of the Contrats de Villes, which are put up for discussion
among the parties involved, who will then try to reach agreement on a joint approach.
However, the integration refers only to social questions, for integration with economic
policy is not guaranteed. The Chartes d’objectifs do not aim at integral policy on the local
level, but great store is set by an integral development of the national urban system. The
medium-size towns involved are committed to choose a functional economic
specialisation for the sake of proper national spread. One spearhead of the Dutch Major-
City Policy is to make policy more comprehensive, not only on the national level in terms
of input from the (eleven!) ministries involved, but also on the local level, where
bottlenecks in the approach to metropolitan problems are just as likely to develop when
sectorial initiatives are not properly adjusted. An integral approach implies on the
national as well as on the local level a restyling of administrative culture. That is a
necessary condition for a successful Major-City Policy.
Explicit national urban policy and the channelling of financial flows
The explicit policy in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands is supported in the two
countries by different methods of financing. In United Kingdom, the City Challenge
programme has been completed with the Single Regeneration Budget, in which all urban-
regeneration funds of the above mentioned ministries have been combined. Moreover, the
funding of local initiatives is not a matter of course. Several local plans compete for the
available resources (31 out of 57 proposals have been accepted). In the Netherlands too,
the idea of a fund coupled to the Major-City Policy was considered, but in the end the
decision was to channel the financial flows within each department concerned, and give
the municipalities more freedom of expenditure, thus widening their scope for
independent policy making. Actually, in the Netherlands as well the quality of the local
plans is tested by the national government. In France, local authorities are less free to
dispose of their means. The State furnishes the money needed and also keeps an eye on its
spending.
Area-oriented approach: neighbourhood level, town, or urban region?
The present spatial scale of the Dutch Major-City Policy is in certain respects an
impediment. The policy focuses on towns rather than metropolitan regions, which is due,
for one thing, to the delayed creation of town provinces. Within the town borders there is
room for some spatial flexibility. In the United Kingdom, the explicit national urban
policy is not tied to administrative borders; the national government concludes deals with
’urban areas’. In France, too, the spatial scope is wider, because the state bargains with the
regional bodies and allocates its resources through the regions. That spatial flexibility is
indeed necessary, since certain problems cannot always be solved within the borders of an
administrative spatial unit, but the solution may be found in a neighbouring commune.