Subject:
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Institute for Management Research |
Abstract:
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Local economic development is a much used tool for the regeneration of urban areas. Although
the designation and effectiveness of local economic development policies has been studied extensively
in existing literature, the question as to whether these policies are aimed at the areas that
are most in need of these policies remains relatively understudied. This question has been
answered using the case of industrial sites in the Netherlands. This particular type of urban area
in the Netherlands has experienced problems with rapid urban area decline and has therefore
been targeted by various area-based regeneration initiatives for many years. The economic performance
is the main justification for the designation of industrial sites that are in greater need of
regeneration. However, another pertinent and unanswered question is: are the industrial sites targeted
for regeneration really the ones that underperform economically? (Multinomial) logistic
regression analysis is used to answer this question. Differences in economic performance, measured
by the growth in employment figures, the number of companies and property values,
between industrial sites that are targeted for regeneration in two different rounds of regeneration
initiatives and non-targeted sites are studied. The analysis shows that the differences in economic
performance are negligible between these groups. It indicates that other criteria, such as
political and strategic decision making influence policymakers’ decisions to target industrial sites
for regeneration, thus making it at least doubtful that public money for the regeneration of industrial
sites is being spent on what it is meant for.
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