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Riots, social exclusion, and endless improvement programmes have been a feature of the poorest neighbourhoods in France and England for the last thirty-five years or more-particularly focused on large social housing estates. Programmes of improvement have followed similar paths in each country, with mixed success. This article sets out a short overview of these programmes in each country, then contrasts and compares the objectives, approaches, and outcomes. Each country has key elements of inter-agency working, local and resident participation and planning, large-scale building rehabilitation and demolition programmes, though the French system is more often based on specific local contracts between cities and the central departments. Similar evaluation outcome indicators and frameworks of 'floor' and 'gap' targets have been set, although evidence of success is limited and, particularly in France, there has been considerable criticism of the approach and framework. In parallel, however, the concept of 'mixed communities' has emerged as an alternative strategic approach-intuitively reasonable, politically popular, but lacking an evidence base and often ineffective in dealing with poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss the work undertaken in the first phase of a participatory theatre project which took place on a council housing estate in the Midlands of England, in which residents were invited to share their memories for a production which would present the history of the estate. This community is often characterised as deficient, ageing, welfare-oriented, low in educational attainment and aspiration. Interviews and field notes suggest that there was not a great amount of hope within the community for the success of a participatory arts project such as this. However, the performance attracted a large number of participants who performed to full houses over five nights. Using a place-based approach, we argue that a model of open participation led to the presentation of alternative, more positive, narratives of this community as a place to live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the intersection between the politics of regionalism and recreation in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels. The relationship between narrative structure and local environment articulated in Trollope's series links the form of the Victorian regional novel to an interrogation of England's relationship to its internal geography by questioning, in effect, how a region can remain autonomous and yet be a resource for national identity. Trollope's response is to use the regional practice of fox-hunting to preserve the West Country's unique place in the national imagination through sport. Situating the Barsetshire novels within hunting's vexed place in nineteenth-century rural communities and focusing on Doctor Thorne, I suggest that Trollope advances a conservative ideology that the region's identity can only be sustained through preserving country house culture. Trollope represents hunting as an ingrained rural custom, thus paradoxically using a national sport to promote regional insularity and justify the landowning class' social control of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1810 some farms on the Lilleshall estate had achieved a degree of consolidation; however, many remained fragmented, dispersed and intermixed in the old enclosed Shropshire landscape. In contrast within ten years a complete reorganisation and consolidation of farm holdings had been achieved by rationalising field boundaries, constructing access roads, improving drainage and replacing traditional farm buildings with new model farms. Building on emerging agendas concerning estate landscapes, this article examines the improvement of farms on the marquis of Stafford's Lilleshall estate in Shropshire, providing a case study of the transformation of the rural, agrarian landscape. Focusing on the impact of James Loch (1780–1855), chief agent to the marquis of Stafford, it seeks to test the thesis that there was a professionalisation of agents reflected in the improved management of landed estates and the growth of a rural elite. Moreover, in assessing the farming economy of the diverse estate locale and the transition which the landscape underwent to a planned, improved condition, it informs debates surrounding the agricultural revolution, and high farming as its local manifestation, including the adoption of specific farming practices and technical innovations, whilst acknowledging the wide-ranging historical continuities evident in the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]