Can Place-Based Initiatives Remove City Inequalities?

The promotion of place-based initiatives is a common strategy used by public authorities to remove city inequalities. According to the multidimensional character of ‘neighborhood deprivation’, some of these initiatives promote integral interventions in deprived neighborhoods order to: first, increase their quality of life, and second, increase socio-spatial cohesion as a reduction of urban inequalities among city neighborhoods. From 1990’s European Union has promoted this kind of initiatives under the Cohesion Policy (as the well-kwon URBAN programme). Applying a quasi-experimental approach, this paper will analyze the impact of these urban-based interventions promoted by the European Union in Spanish cities using as dependent variable a composite index of socio-economic status. Have these initiatives increased neighborhood welfare?, have these initiatives increased socio-spatial cohesion in cities?.