Comment on Rhodes et al. (2005)—Some Further Thoughts on Assessing the Effects of Area-based Initiatives on Local Outcomes: A Reply

We are pleased to have the opportunity to respond to the most helpful comments made by Dr O’Reilly on our paper in Urban Studies ‘Assessing the Effect of Area Based Initiatives on Local Area Outcomes: Some Thoughts Based on the National Evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget in England’ (Rhodes et al., 2005). As our paper argues extensively, we believe firmly that it is important that social scientists grapple with issues relating to the assessment of the achievements of area-based initiatives on outcomes and it was to advance this debate that we wrote the paper in the first place. However, we are not so pessimistic as our commentator on what can be achieved, nor do we feel that we are guilty of being too optimistic about the attainments of the specific programme we used to illustrate the issues that arise. We remain convinced that much has been learned and achieved over recent years—partly as a result, in the UK, of many more resources being devoted to evaluation in this important area by government. Helpfully, our commentator does not appear to take issue with the general thrust of our paper, but rather focuses on three specific issues. These are: a tendency to be overoptimistic in interpreting outcome changes in relation to the benchmarks in the policyassisted areas; problems associated with aggregation of case study results; and, the omission of a number of methodological considerations. We address each of these in turn before making some concluding comments.