Introduction

This study seeks to explore the ‘aconstitutional’ but growing involvement of the European Commission in urban policy matters. There is no Treaty basis for a European urban policy although an urban dimension to the Structural Funds has developed incrementally in the post-1988 period. There are two main sections to the book; the first, chapters one to three, concentrates on answering why, and how, the Commission has ventured into the urban arena. The second section, chapters four to seven, concentrates on the implementation of one specific European programme, the Community Initiative (CI) URBAN in the United Kingdom (UK) and France. Reference is made to the experience of two European cities, London and Marseille. The comparative approach explores the relationship between national and European policies in the two Member States. Chapter eight draws conclusions from the Commission’s urban policy experiment and our two case studies.