Social Infrastructure and Left-behind Places: building policy from below
By: Ethne James-Souch (Coordinator, UCL Grand Challenges) and Sinéad Murphy (Policy Engagement Coordinator, UCL Public Policy)
“Left-behindness” is a relatively new term for a long-standing social, economic, and political problem. Emerging as a trope in policy and media in the wake of the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU, “left behind places” describes those areas in which multiple forms of disadvantage are acutely felt. Central to left-behindness is a lack of social infrastructure — the idea that shared spaces have a formative effect on the ways people relate to one another.
What is living in left-behindness like?
There are many ways to quantify, analyse, and intervene in left-behindness — whether by shifting focus to more granular statistics, analysing the outcomes of targeted policies, or raising the profile of those experiencing disadvantage through funding and research. But do these approaches capture the lived experience of a left-behind place? This is the basis of the new volume Social Infrastructure and Left Behind Places (Professor John Tomaney, Dr Maeve Blackman, Dr Lucy Natarajan, Dr Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros, Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Dr Myfanwy Taylor). Through a deep-place study of Sacriston, a former mining village in Durham, the authors ask: how do people feel about where they live? Can understanding attachments to place lead to more meaningful policymaking?
Looking backwards, moving forwards
Tomaney describes this deep place study as “a long-term listening and living-alongside exercise” for which community engagement and archival excavation were key. In seeking to understand how the identity of a place is formed, deep place becomes deep time. By revealing a constantly changing history of social infrastructure being built, left derelict, reclaimed, and transformed, the authors uncover how attachments to place are made, unmade, and renewed.
At an event hosted by UCL launching the volume, discussions focused on how Social Infrastructure and Left Behind Places showcases community spirit, cooperation, mutuality, and care — as well as the erosion of this social fabric over time. Can nostalgia for past sense of community inspire visions of the future by the collective, for the collective — or is it symptomatic of an ever-stuck present? As Julian Coman, Associate Editor at The Guardian, asked: what is productive about nostalgia? Not everything and everyone is equally represented in mythologies of place. To thrive, ‘community’ must be an evolving concept rather than a gated one — flexible enough to hold space for new and different attachments to place.
Although nostalgia certainly has its pitfalls, the panellists stressed that what is key is a clear recognition that individuals are not isolated from one another. Focussing on collective feeling is more revealing, perhaps more important, than a fixation on individual experiences of living well (or not). Here, looking back is an aid in diagnosing the present and envisioning possible futures.
Investing in Hard vs Soft Infrastructure
National and local governments can play a vital role in enabling development. The UK Government has shown a focus on strengthening ‘hard’ infrastructure, such as transport, digital networks, and low-carbon energy systems, as seen in the Second National Infrastructure Assessment (2023). However, the First National Infrastructure Assessment (2018) lacked a focus on investment in soft infrastructure, as found in UCL’s Structurally Unsound Report. It is worth noting that there has been little to no change in this approach.
The UK Government’s “Levelling Up” white paper, aimed to address areas that have been left behind, but the concept itself is not new. Despite successive governments’ focus on reducing inequality in large cities, little has been done to effectively address left-behindness. Poverty, in particular, has deepened significantly over the past 20 years, with variations across the UK’s nations and regions.
Tomaney argued that while top-down sponsorship is important, social infrastructure is strongest when built from the bottom up, with the involvement of local communities expressing their values. The re-makers of social infrastructure are often practical and determined individuals motivated by a strong sense of belonging within their local community. As observed in the UCL’s Policy Commission on the Cost-of-living Crisis in the UK, there is significant evidence to support the building of social infrastructure and social capital, which can have positive impacts on local economic growth rates and health outcomes. On a national level, there is also an increase in trust in politicians and the political system.
Arguably, this was apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic demonstrated the importance of communities, social connections, a sense of belonging, and the role of social infrastructure. As Professor Marc Stears, Director of UCL Policy Lab, highlighted at the panel event, the sense of agency does not come from the political centre but from the community itself. The real power of people lies in their relationships and their ability to work in solidarity.
Ordinary hope, extraordinary action
If the UK Government’s prevailing focus is on the development of places, then it is important to empower communities as doing so has a significant impact on social infrastructure and civil society. Therefore, we need to build social policy that can unlock capital across different policy agendas.
Helen Goulden, Chief Executive of the Young Foundation, suggested that if it is difficult to answer the question of how to address the concerns of left-behind communities, there should be dialogue with those communities to understand their priorities and the barriers they face. Communities should be empowered to lead the process, but this requires stable, long-term funding which can only be provided by the state. It is crucial to build trustful engagement with those in the communities. As Sarah Chaytor, UCL Director of Research Strategy and Policy, noted in drawing the discussions to a close, to achieve change in left-behind communities requires extraordinary action to instil ordinary hope.
