Soft spaces and soft outcomes: Experiences from City Strategy on local partnership working and measures of success

Duncan Adam and Anne E Green

Environment and Planning A, 2016, vol. 48, issue 8, 1514-1531

Abstract: This article uses the concepts of ‘soft spaces’ and ‘soft outcomes’ previously developed in relation to the study of local economic development and planning and applies them to the related, but not identical, field of localised welfare-to-work initiatives. The specific example of the City Strategy initiative in Great Britain provides evidence of these concepts in action. This initiative foregrounded the importance of local partnership working whereby various stakeholders joined together to operate in soft space to achieve commonly agreed goals. The article considers how local partnerships operate in soft space and the appropriate measures of success to be used when assessing the efficacy of their interventions. It is argued that both ‘soft outcomes’ and ‘hard outcomes’ can be used to understand success; but that assessment of soft spaces only in terms of ‘hard outcomes’ is far from comprehensive.

Keywords: City Strategy; soft spaces; soft outcomes; local partnerships; welfare-to-work; worklessness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:8:p:1514-1531

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16642225

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