1. Introduction

Keywords:

• left behind places
• social infrastructure
• regional policy
• levelling up

This book is concerned with the role of social infrastructure in “left behind” places. The problem of “left behind” places has attracted growing political and policy attention internationally. The term “left behind”, in many respects, lacks precision and is problematic insofar as it is pejorative and suggests a limiting judgement. But its currency arises from the role of “left behind” places in producing political shocks such as the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the rise of Marine Le Pen and the Swedish Democrats, and the entry of Fratelli d’Italia into Italy’s government. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose has theorised these moments as the “revenge of the places that do not matter”,¹ manifesting a “geography of discontent”.² These are places that have not shared in the growth and accumulation of wealth that has occurred in big cities and have become marked by multiple forms of social deprivation and deep political resentments. Many “left behind” places have long lagged average social and economic indicators despite being the target of waves of policy interventions, in some cases, over several decades. But recently “left behindness” has come to be seen not merely as a material condition, but also an affective one. The feeling of being “left behind” has both social and political implications, contributing to the rise of populist politics.

In the search for solutions for what seem like intractable problems, policymakers have begun to focus on the role of social infrastructure as an ingredient in the policy mix. Infrastructure provides the framework for social and economic development. It can be economic or social, hard or soft, tangible or intangible: it is relational.³ Although imprecisely or inconsistently deployed in policy debates, Eric Klinenberg defines social infrastructure as “the physical places and organisations that shape the way people interact”.⁴ He defines social infrastructure “capaciously” to include “libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletics fields and swimming pools”, as well as “sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm”. He also counts “community organisations, including churches and civic associations” and “regularly scheduled markets” that allow people to assemble.⁵ For others, social infrastructure also embodies the activities that occur within physical places.

Social infrastructure has begun to appear in policy repertoires in several countries. Responding to growing concern about the decline of “Regional Australia”,⁶ Infrastructure Australia identified “regional opportunities and gaps” in infrastructure provision in non-metropolitan areas. Specifically, it called for improvements in social infrastructure but left the concept undefined.⁷ President Joe Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” made provision for the remediation and redevelopment of “idle real property, and spur the buildout of critical physical, social, and civic infrastructure in distressed and disadvantaged communities”.⁸ Again, this is largely undefined but focuses on care support for children and the elderly. Moreover, Klinenberg suggests Biden’s plans are too focused on investments in physical capital and insufficiently attentive to social infrastructure.⁹ By contrast, in France, responding to the grievances raises by the “Gilets Jaunes” protesters and broader discontent in “peripheral France”,¹⁰ the Ministère de la Transition écologique et de la Cohésion des territoires (Ministry for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion) has developed a programme aimed at helping local efforts to overcome social isolation, recognising that citizens have been creating “third places” (“tiers-lieux”) in order to rebuild social ties.¹¹ In Germany, the Bundesministerium des Innern und für Bau und Heimat’s “Soziale Stadt” programme provided resources for social infrastructure “sozialen Infrastrukturen” provision, with a focus on disadvantaged neighbourhoods.¹² The European Commission has also demonstrated a concern with the need to fix deficits in social infrastructure provision.¹³

1.1 SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND “LEVELLING UP” IN THE UK

In the UK context, recent policy toward left behind places has been framed through the lens of “levelling up”,¹⁴ a policy which received its fullest presentation in the UK government’s White Paper Levelling Up the United Kingdom.¹⁵ The principal authors of the White Paper claim that “levelling up” is a part economic, part social, part moral mission “to unleash opportunity, prosperity and pride in places where, for too long, it has been held back”.¹⁶ For the-then prime minister, Boris Johnson, specifically it concerns investing in “areas that have for too long felt left behind”.¹⁷ “Social infrastructure” is referred to 10 times in 300 plus pages of the “Levelling Up” White Paper, although it is never defined, nor used consistently. (By contrast, the terms “ambition” or “ambitious” are used 69 times.) Curiously, social infrastructure is conceived in terms of how in contributes economic agglomeration, despite the little of the literature on topic making this link. For example:

Social capital and social infrastructure amplify the forces of economic agglomeration. Good housing, high streets, and leisure and cultural activities serve as a magnet for skilled people, meaning those places continue to steam ahead. Historically, culture and creativity were at the heart of the Medici effect. So it is in many of today’s global super-cities.¹⁸

The dominant concern with agglomeration means that much of the White Paper focuses on conventional approaches to regional policy, such investment in physical infrastructure, research and development (R&D) and raising gross value added (GVA), although it is not made clear how this will assist “left behind” places. It is implied that the lack of social infrastructure contributes to left behindness, although the reasoning for this conclusion is unclear. But the decline of social infrastructure is considered a component of self-fulfilling negative “social narratives” that drive behaviour, and economic and financial decisions. Akin to Leo Tolstoy’s dictum that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”,¹⁹ the White Paper acknowledges that while success looks similar everywhere—the presence of factors that underpin economic agglomeration—the opposite is the case for “left behind” places.

For left behind places, the picture is more complex. Depletions or deficiencies in physical, human, intangible, financial, social or institutional capitals can have knock-on effects to the other capitals in a self-enforcing, vicious spiral of low income and weak growth. Many “left behind places” are weak in different ways, with a complex and interacting mix of economic, financial and social problems.²⁰ The White Paper calls for a focus on “local communities and social infrastructure” and “the role of neighbourhood policies and strategies for building community capacity in left behind areas”²¹ and makes one of its targets the restoration of “a sense of community, local pride and belonging, especially in those places where they have been lost”.²²

The White Paper proffers “stronger pride in place” as the intended outcome of these efforts, but this objective is weakly defined. The approach outlined in the White Paper owes much to Rachel Wolf, author of the 2019 Conservative Manifesto, who identified the need for, what she termed, “levers and tests” to guide levelling up, in effect, central government funds aimed at local communities.²³ Wolf states:

If the government wants to show it really understands people and places, it is going to need to use its vast plethora of funds—the leveling up fund (sic), the towns fund, the safer streets fund—to invest in the physical fabric of places, and in supporting shops, events, and culture. Bluntly, it needs hanging baskets: the “small stuff” that sounds boring in a speech, but actually matters to people and gives them renewed pride in where they live.²⁴

In the Levelling Up White Paper, this translates into centrally determined “Pride in Place” targets.

By 2030, pride in place, such as people’s satisfaction with their town centre and engagement in local culture and community, will have risen in every area of the UK, with the gap between top performing and other areas closing.²⁵

In this book we show how these policies aimed at improving “pride in place” offer a thin and impoverished version of place-making, at odds, in fact, with the White Paper’s own analysis that “left behind” places are complex and diverse. The White Paper demonstrates little grasp of the factors behind the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure and the role it plays in communities: hanging baskets are unlikely to be the answer. In summer 2023, the UK government had yet to propose measures for improving “pride in place”, or a mechanism for assessing the effectiveness of expenditure in pursuit of this objective. This task is likely to prove difficult because the way people feel about where they live is intrinsically difficult to measure. As we show in this book, measuring the non-economic aspects and benefits of social infrastructure is particularly difficult. Moreover, the notion that targets can be set centrally, levers pulled and outcomes achieved overlooks the importance of attachments, commitments and collective action in the production of social infrastructure. The White Paper suggests that “communities must have strong civic institutions, assets and relationships that anchor local pride in place”,²⁶ but gives little indication of the long-term challenges involved in creating these. Overall, provisioning social infrastructure seems likely to be something done to communities rather than by communities. This may also be true of efforts to rebuild social infrastructure in other countries.²⁷

1.2 STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

While current UK policies toward “left behind places” are framed by the Levelling Up White Paper, our aim is to move beyond current policy fads and short-term fixes to develop a deeper account of how social infrastructure is made, unmade and remade, in order to inform a broader policy debate. We show that the making and remaking of social infrastructure is a long-term process that rests on myriad civic actions. In order do this we deploy methods that allow us to develop a deeper understanding of these processes. In particular, we pay attention to contemporary efforts to remake social infrastructure in unpropitious circumstances. Our aim is to develop a deep place understanding of social infrastructure-building. We achieve our objectives through a case study of the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure in one village in North East England, Sacriston in County Durham. The solutions we propose for the development of social infrastructure in “left behind places” have been developed with our partners in the communities we have studied.

In chapter 2, we unpick the debate about “left behind” places, seeking to go beyond the view of them as bundles of social and economic indicators to see them, in the words of Robert Wuthnow, as “moral communities”, and examine how the making of social infrastructure gives expression to this. Also, we review the emerging literature on social infrastructure, focusing especially on the claims it makes about the absence or loss of social infrastructure in “left behind” places. We use Mindy Fullilove’s concept of “root shock” to describe the effects of this loss and identify and use Jonathan Lears’ concept of “radical hope” to describe the conditions under which people act to remake social infrastructure. We arrive at these concepts inductively based on our understanding how social infrastructure is (re)made, arising from our ongoing relationship with our case study village and the social infrastructure builders whose commitments bring it into existence.

In chapter 3, reflecting our aim to develop a deep-place understanding, we set out our methodological approach to studying the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure in “left behind” places. The aim is to develop a “deep place” study that can tell the story of change, rather than capture a moment or highlight a deficiency. We introduce our case study, Sacriston, the former coalmining village in County Durham. We suggest our methods are useful for offering a richer account of the factors that both produce social infrastructure and might bring it into crisis. Our methods involve developing close relationships with the actors in the village in order to understand their struggles and the nature of their achievements both historically and contemporaneously. We believe these methods as offering improved insights for policy.

In chapter 4, we briefly introduce our case study, Sacriston, a village whose life, from 1839 to 1985, was centred around a colliery, but in which people sought to form a community and build the social infrastructure that supported it. This context is vital for understanding the long-term process through which social infrastructure is made, unmade and remade.

In chapter 5, we describe the making of social infrastructure in Sacriston, showing how it gave expression to a particular moral community and the legacies bequeathed by these early efforts.

In Chapter 6, we describe the growing crisis of social infrastructure. We trace the long history of the unmaking of social infrastructure, but show how decline accelerated in recent decades to manifest in the form of “root shock”. We map the scale of these losses. The destruction of key components of social infrastructure, symbolised by the closure of key buildings, feeds a sense of “left behindness”.

In chapter 7, we report the herculean efforts of local people to remake social infrastructure in the most unpropitious circumstances in order meet community needs, seeing these efforts as examples of “radical hope”. Our account emphasises the importance of local attachments and the commitments these affect among, at least some, members of the community dedicated to repairing the social fabric.

In chapter 8, we present our conclusions and policy recommendations. We note how successful social infrastructure affects the commitments of local people, often over generations. and cannot be legislated centrally. Local and central government cannot set targets and operate levers to create it, either in County Hall or Whitehall. Rather, the role of government shifts to one of enabling the flourishing of social infrastructure by respecting, listening to, resourcing and supporting locally embedded actors and organisations. The work of enabling itself holds the potential to stimulate further learning and policy innovation, transforming place-based development policy beyond the frame of social infrastructure. Our deep place study—and the methods we used to conduct it—are themselves modes of policy development that help to show how community actors identify needs but require time and resources to produce results.

Notes

1 Rodríguez-Pose A (2018) The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it). Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1): 189–209. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsx024

2 Dijkstra L, Poelman H and Rodríguez-Pose A (2019) The geography of EU discontent. Regional Studies, 54(6): 737–753. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2019.1654603; McCann P and Ortega-Argilés R (2021) The UK “geography of discontent”: Narratives, Brexit and inter-regional “levelling up”. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 14(3): 545–564. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsab017

3 Pike A, O’Brien P, Strickland T, Thrower T and Tomaney J (2019) Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788118958

4 Klinenberg E (2020) Palaces for People. How to Build a More Equal and United Society. London: Vintage, at 5.

5 Klinenberg (2020), at 16, see Reference 4.

6 For instance, Chan G (2018) Rusted Off. Why Country Australia is Fed Up. North Sydney, NSW: Vintage; see also Tomaney J (2019) Book review: Rusted Off: Why Country Australia is Fed Up by Gabrielle Chan. LSE Review of Books, 11 June. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2019/06/11/book-review-rusted-off-why-country-australia-is-fed-up-by-gabrielle-chan/

7 Infrastructure Australia (2022) Regional Strengths and Infrastructure Gaps, at 39–40. https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-03/1_RSIG_Introduction_0.pdf

8 White House (2021) Fact sheet: The American Jobs Plan, 31 March. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/; see also Klinenberg E (2021) Infrastructure isn’t really about roads. It’s about the society we want. New York Times, 26 April. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/opinion/infrastructure-biden.html

9 Klinenberg (2021), see Reference 8.

10 Colomb C (2021) The revolt of the “periphery” against the “metropolis”? Making sense of the French Gilets Jaunes movement (2018–2020). International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. https://www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/urban-revolts/the-revolt-of-the-periphery-against-the-metropolis/; see also Abboud L and Nolsøe E (2022) The corner of France that explains Macron, Le Pen and a deep political divide. Financial Times, 22 April. https://www.ft.com/content/5bd5e791-9561-42a0-ac8c-f5bdeeb81309

11 Ministère de la Transition écologique et de la Cohésion des territoires (2022) Territoire. 11 August. https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/territoires

12 Bundesministerium des Innern und für Bau und Heimat (2018) Programmstrategie Soziale Stadt. https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/themen/bauen/wohnen/programmstrategie-soziale-stadt.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2

13 Fransen L, de Bufalo G and Reviiglio E (2018) Boosting investment in social infrastructure in Europe (European Economy Discussion Papers No. 2018/74). Brussels: Directorate-General for Economic and Social Affairs, European Commission. https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/boosting-investment-social-infrastructure-europe_en

14 For some background on the politics of “levelling up” in the UK, see Tomaney J and Pike A (2020) Levelling up? Political Quarterly, 91(1): 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12834

15 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) (2022) Levelling Up the United Kingdom (CP 604). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-​the-united-kingdom

16 DLUHC (2022), at x, see Reference 15.

17 DLUHC (2022), at viii, see Reference 15.

18 DLUHC (2022), at 46, see Reference 15.

19 Tolstoy L (1878/2014) Anna Karenina, trans. R Bartlett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, at 1.

20 DLUHC (2022), at 46, see Reference 15.

21 DLUHC (2022), at 247, see Reference 15.

22 DLUHC (2022), at 95, see Reference 15.

23 Wolf R (2021) Tests for the delivery of levelling up, and levers with which to deliver it. https://conservativehome.com/2021/05/10/rachel-wolf-tests-for-the-delivery-of-levelling-up-and-levers-with-which-deliver-it/

24 Wolf R (2020) Boris Johnson must sweat the small stuff to change lives post-Brexit. https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-must-sweat-the-small-stuff-to-change-lives-post-brexit/

25 DLUHC (2022), at 121, see Reference 15.

26 DLUHC (2022), at 205, see Reference 15.

27 Klinenberg (2021), see Reference 8.