Britain’s Urban Crisis

This book argues that the late twentieth-century urban crisis fundamentally transformed modern Britain. Through the distinct story of Liverpool – the city which quickly became the archetype of Britain’s urban crisis – the book shows how efforts to address social and economic inequality enabled the reformulation of the welfare state, the transition from social democracy to neoliberalism, and the shift away from empire and towards European integration. With vast tracts of land taken over by nature, it argues that urban crisis also helped to change how people understood the ‘environment’ as the process of urbanisation itself seemingly went into reverse.

Britain’s urban crisis first emerged in the 1960s with the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ as a crisis of urban governance. Following the story into the 1980s, Aaron Andrews explains how the character of the urban crisis changed, as fears grew that cities were becoming ungovernable. Inner-city communities rose up to demand their right to the city while local authorities resisted efforts to further cut their budgets and powers. This book reveals how the central state’s response to this resistance brought the crisis to new heights but also established and enforced a consensus which shapes Britain’s cities, and the challenges they continue to face, today.