Housing market renewal is one of the most controversial urban policy programmes of recent years. Housing Market Renewal and Social Class critically examines the rationale for housing market renewal: to develop 'high value' housing markets in place of the so-called 'failing markets' of low-cost housing. Whose interests are served by such a programme and who loses out?

Drawing on empirical evidence from Liverpool, the author argues that housing market renewal plays to the interests of the middle classes in viewing the market for houses as a field of social and economic...