The regeneration of urban vulnerable neighbourhoods; an EU policy that matters?

This work departs from studies that have stressed increasing vulnerability and a lack of urban regeneration in European Union (EU) cities in the programming periods 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 of the Cohesion Policy. In the context of a new Cohesion Policy period (2021-2027) in which innovative instruments will be crucial in addressing urban poverty and vulnerability – in line with that proposed by the European Green Deal -, this study demonstrates how urban regeneration has lost visibility and relevance in European Commission (EC) instruments and its related policy discourse over time, and how this has resulted in public stakeholders’ decreasing interest in urban regeneration (as shown by the data provided by the STRAT-board of the European Commission) in the period 2014-2020. The diachronic perspective adopted allows us to reveal the changing definition of the EU ‘urban problem’ from the end of the 1980s to the present moment, as well as the evolution of policy priorities; with vulnerable neighbourhoods being particularly identified as receiving insufficient attention. All this confirms the need to rethink and boost urban regeneration at the EU level and to integrate it as a specific objective of the Cohesion Policy for the period 2021-2027.