Regeneration redux? What (if anything) can we learn from New Labour?

The European Union referendum result in England focused increasing political attention on 'left behind' places sidelined in the ‘post-regeneration’ (Matthews and O'Brien, 2015) era of 2010 onwards. This shift creates space for thinking anew about reviving and reconfiguring regeneration policies to address enduring forms of place-based disadvantage. To this end, this chapter takes a close look at the 'New' Labour approach to urban regeneration from 1997 to 2010 and what can be learned from it. It offers a new conceptual analysis of how the New Labour years were characterised by a tension between 'ameliorative' and 'transformative' policy logics; with valuable ameliorative outcomes around improving neighbourhood conditions eventually reassessed as failure through the lens of transformative objectives around wholesale economic regeneration. We conclude these tensions and contestations need to be acknowledged and resolved in less binary and divisive ways than in recent policy history within any new round of regeneration policy.