For forty years area-based initiatives (ABIs) were the primary tool used by UK governments to tackle problems of concentrated deprivation and dereliction. The last decade saw these initiatives end, replaced by new forms of city-wide or region-wide governance: Local Strategic Partnerships in England and Community Planning Partnerships in Scotland. It was argued in both policy documents and policy analysis that this change would deliver more effective regeneration for all communities. Challenging this narrative, I present this policy shift as a change in the meaning of regeneration policy using the methodology of interpretive policy analysis. The evidence from Scottish experience suggests that for a key policy actor—community activists in deprived neighbourhoods—the approach of ABIs had a great deal of meaning as regeneration. Furthermore, this meaning was still present a decade after an ABI had ended. Meanwhile, the newer strategic partnerships were delivering little meaningful change. This difference in meaning is used to reimagine strategic regeneration as a more positive process.
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