The spatial targeting of urban policy initiatives: a geodemographic assessment tool

Government frequently adopts an area-based approach to the targeting of urban policy initiatives as an indirect way of reaching the individuals that the initiatives are intended to help. The paper develops a method for assessing the success of this spatial targeting. It uses a geodemographic classification system to produce a generalised socioeconomic profile for a particular initiative. This profile can be used to examine the targeting of the initiative in different localities, in order to assess whether targeting has been <i>inefficient </i>(the targeted areas have been defined so that many of the people they contain are in fact not those for whom the initiative is intended) or <i>incomplete </i>(deserving cases have been missed because the initiative’s boundaries have been drawn too tightly). The utility of the method is demonstrated by employing the P^{<font size=-2>2</font>} People and Places geodemographic system to assess the targeting of the Sure Start initiative in eight large provincial cities in England.