In particular they experienced major economic decline/restructuring (deindustrialisation – see Martin and Rowthorn (eds), 1986) as the key Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century industries that provided their economic life were closed and gradually replaced by new service and retail based industries. In rather simple terms this can be characterised as a move from an industrial economy to a post-industrial or knowledge-based economy (see Florida, 2000 and 2002). In addition since the 1950s there has been a concern with the impact of what might be termed `urban sprawl' and demographic change. This took two forms, on the one hand, and linked to the deindustrialisation thesis, industries that were not closing for good relocated to suburban and exurban locations and new firms mainly established themselves outside of cities making it more difficult for those living in cities to access these jobs (see for instance Fothergill and Gudgin, 1982; Massey, 1984). The other dimension was that more affluent sections of the population were leaving urban areas en masse, first moving to the suburbs, then to medium sized towns and later to small rural towns and villages leaving behind a poorer population and declining public services. This in itself had the result of leaving behind the poorest sections of the population and automatically increasing concentrations of poverty and deprivation that was intensified as more economic restructuring `kicked in' and other marginal groups, particularly migrants, moved into cities. Thus urban areas in Britain, in common with those across Western Europe and North America, have undergone a major process of restructuring (see Buck et al, 2005 for a recent discussion of these ongoing changes and Brenner and Theodore (eds), 2002 for a more international perspective).
