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

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...