1. Introduction and Definitions

Time limits : In many cases area-based policies are implemented in form of experimental pilot projects. For example, the EU Community Initiative Urban I and II had and have a timeframe of 6 years, the Danish Kvarterløft programme runs 7 years, the Integrated Castle project in Lisbon was planned for 8 years.

Spatial limits : Area-based policies are based special programmes for deprived neighbourhoods. They do not target cities as a whole but neighbourhoods – mainly inner city mixed function neighbourhoods and large scale housing estates – which show problems in various dimensions. These problems derive from market and state failure, which are sought to be solved or at least softened by the new forms of collaborative governance employed in area-based approaches.

Limits in scope : Area-based policies do not replace ongoing sectorally organised servicing of the areas in question. They add another additional layer, trying to integrate the sectoral interventions through various forms of negotiation. Decisions, however, are in most cases taken outside their influence/reach. In many cases, they still have a physical bias and target at improvement of the built environment.

Given these limits, area-based policies still represent a policy innovation as they see urban areas as multidimensional fabrics and seek for improvement in all dimensions. A second innovative element is that in addition to strúctural aims (improving the area) they also include the procedural aim to change mainstream policies. Turok (2003) identifies three ways, by which this change can occur:

• “'Bending' mainstream programmes towards poor communities by reallocating resources to reflect their greater need”,
• “'Sensitizing' core programmes to local circumstances”,
• “Cutting across the ‘silos' through which services are delivered” (Turok 2003, 8).

A common feature of area-based policies is that they operate via projects. The project-based implementation eases the involvement of a broad range of actors and allows for innovations in a sense of the implementation of new ideas which wouldn't be possible for one actor alone. However, as the development approaches are limited themselves, so are projects. For the development of an area, the most critical issue here is the deadline. Whilst a clearly formulated end is essential to mobilize and organize resources, it might well be that the success of a project – be it a new training scheme or the joint construction of a playground – is dependent on its sustainability, its anchoring in the neighbourhood. So, an essential issue in area-based policies is to find or build long-term institutional structures which can take over responsibility for the innovative projects.

Thus, if we take area-based policies as time-limited - as “temporary systems” – they are facing two tasks in order to ensure a sustainable impact on the course of the area in question:

• They have to change mainstream policies which will continue to exist after the policy is terminated – this is what we refer to as “mainstreaming”.
• They have to find and create institutional arrangements which take over the responsibility for the projects which have been started after the policy is ended – this is what we refer to as “anchoring”.

All of these policies are based on some form of partnership between state, market and society. They recognize that all three sectors have a responsibility, a stake and a benefit of the development of an area.

In the ENTRUST network, we have looked at area-based policies in eight European cities. In this thematic paper we try to identify evidence for mainstreaming and anchoring from these cases. The empirical basis for this study is provided by a) case evidence for each city presented in the ENTRUST case studies, b) a set of questions answered by practitioners in each city, c) a joint cross-check of the findings by the work group “mainstreaming and anchoring”. The policies we have looked at are shown in the following table:

These policies are in different stages and have to be seen in the light of national traditions and legislative frameworks of urban regeneration. These preconditions are presented in the case studies as well as in the thematic paper on “Aims of regeneration”. For the task at hand here, it is important to note that some of these programmes have just started or are even just about to start, whilst other are just about to be terminated and the local actors are right in the middle of debates about future institutional designs and funding frameworks. For the latter - of which Copenhagen is a good example - the issue of mainstreaming is pressing at the moment, whilst for the comparatively young - of which we would like to highlight Valletta , where the Regeneration Agency is just being implemented - there is time left to provide for exit strategies at an early point. Altogether it has to be said that we are looking at ongoing policies and are not in position to pose an ex-post view on the cases.