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This paper aims to evaluate whether early‐stage entrepreneurs and the established self‐employed in rural communities trade off‐the‐books and whether this tendency varies across deprived and affluent rural localities.

Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with 350 households in both affluent and deprived rural communities in England.

In both the affluent and deprived rural communities surveyed, wholly legitimate enterprises represent just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is a large hidden enterprise culture of both registered businesses trading off‐the‐books and unregistered wholly off‐the‐books enterprises. However, the preponderance of both early‐stage entrepreneurs, as well as the established self‐employed to trade off‐the‐books is greater in deprived than affluent rural communities, intimating that deprived rural communities are perhaps relatively more enterprising and entrepreneurial than is currently recognised.

These findings are based on a small‐scale study of five English rural communities. Further studies are now required to evaluate whether similar findings are replicated elsewhere.

The paper reveals that legitimising the hidden enterprise culture in deprived rural communities could be an important but so far untapped means of promoting enterprise and economic development.

Evaluates the extent of informal entrepreneurship in rural communities and how this varies spatially.

A dominant belief is that the continuing encroachment of the market economy into everyday life is inevitable, unstoppable and irreversible. Over the past decade, however, a small stream of thought has started to question this commercialization thesis. This paper seeks to contribute to this emergent body of thought by developing a “whole economy” approach for capturing the multifarious economic practices in community economies and then applying this to an English locality.

A survey conducted of the economic practices used by 120 households in a North Nottinghamshire locality in the UK is reported here, comprising face‐to‐face interviews in an affluent, middle‐ranking and deprived neighborhood.

This reveals the limited commercialization of everyday life and the persistence of a multitude of economic practices in all neighborhood‐types. Participation rates in all economic practices (except one‐to‐one unpaid work and “off‐the‐radar” unpaid work) are higher in relatively affluent populations. Uneven development is marked by affluent populations that are “work busy”, engaging in a diverse spectrum of economic practices conducted more commonly out of choice, and disadvantaged populations that are more “work deprived”, conducting a narrower array of activities usually out of necessity.

This snapshot survey only displays that commercialization is not hegemonic. It does not display whether there is a shift towards commercialization.

Recognition of the limited encroachment of the market opens up the future to alternative possibilities beyond an inevitable commercialization of everyday life, intimating that the future will be characterized by the continuing persistence of multifarious economic practices rather than market hegemony.

The paper provides evidence from a western nation of the limited commercialization of daily life.

Social entrepreneurs engage in action because social entrepreneurs want to solve social problems. Consequently, to see more social entrepreneurship in contexts with the most severe social problems is expected. This paper argues that this is an oversimplification of the problem-action nexus in social entrepreneurship and that action does not necessarily correspond to the observed scale of social problems. Drawing on the theoretical framing of crescive conditions, this relationship is affected by forms of public investment as institutions that distinctively promote engagement and public interest amongst social entrepreneurs. Thus, this paper assesses the relationship between varying levels of social problems and social entrepreneurship action (SEA) and how and to what extent public investment types – as more and less locally anchored crescive conditions – affect this relationship.

The hypotheses are tested with a series of random-effects regression models. The data stem from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) 2015 social entrepreneurship survey and Chile's 2015 National Socioeconomic Characterisation Survey (CASEN). The authors combined both data sets and cross-matched individual-level data (action and investment) with commune-level data (social problem scale) resulting in unique contextualised observations for 1,124 social entrepreneurs.

Contrary to current understanding, this study finds that SEA is positively associated with low-social problem scale. This means that high levels of deprivation do not immediately lead to action. The study also finds that locally anchored forms of investment positively moderate this relationship, stimulating action in the most deprived contexts. On the contrary, centralised public investment leads to increased social entrepreneurial action in wealthier communities where it is arguably less needed.

The findings contribute to the literature on SEA in deprived contexts, social and public investment as well as policy-level discussion and broader issues of entrepreneurship and social problems.

In recent years, Japanese co‐operative banks have been attracting new interest among academics and the population generally as institutions through which deprived communities can be revitalized. They have been shown to be capable of promoting both social co‐operation and economical development through the financing of new social enterprises by investments coming mainly from local residents and existing social organizations. This paper aims to address the central questions of what Japanese co‐operative banks can do to encourage co‐operation among local residents and social enterprises so that they willingly invest their money in the development of their local community.

In order to explore these questions, two Japanese co‐operative banks are compared by means of a questionnaire survey and semi‐structured interviews with their investors and boards of directors. The main reason for focusing this investigation on these two banks was that despite the similarity of their political, economical and demographical backgrounds, one of them showed a steady growth in local investment while the other failed to produce a similar level of local engagement.

The findings of the paper clearly demonstrated that when a co‐operative bank acts as “community organizer”, undertaking tasks which are outside its usual sphere of activities as financier, and its board includes members of the social enterprise sector, its positive impact on community development is more effective. However, it also became clear that a vital feature of this kind of endeavour is the utilization of expertise derived from members of the local community.

The paper makes an important contribution to the understanding of co‐operative banks as community organizers. Its originality lies primarily in the fact that it was the first time that this type of research has been conducted on Japanese co‐operative banks.

The Village model, most extensively developed in the USA, is an innovative response to ageing populations and older adults who wish to remain living independently within their community. The “Urban Villages” participatory action research study aimed to test the potential of the Village model to work with groups of older adults in two economically deprived, inner-city neighbourhoods in Manchester, UK.

Participatory methods were used to work with residents to, first, adapt the Village model to the Manchester setting, and second, to develop and deliver community projects that supported ageing in place. The study aimed to involve marginalised individuals and groups in the co-design, leadership and implementation of the projects. Ethnographic methods were applied to observe and reflect on the development of “Urban Villages”. Interviews and focus groups were organised to gather the views of the residents involved in the community projects.

Residents were supported to develop and test seven projects, all aimed at reducing social isolation and supporting ageing in place. The study provides new insights into challenges related to co-production with older people in deprived neighbourhoods. These challenges are presented under the following headings: individual capacity and expectations; collective capacity including communication and knowledge; and the capacity of place.

To date, only a limited amount of literature is available showing how co-production with older adults can be realised when working with marginalised groups and deprived communities. The paper explores the potential of participatory approaches to develop age-friendly initiatives through strengthening the capacity of older adults to age in place.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of regeneration on one community – Speke in Liverpool, indexed as the most deprived area in England with a population of 9,000 people. The focus is on the role, activity and capacity of the third sector as part of the regeneration effort.

The study period was 2000‐2009. A “practitioners point of view” was sought. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted and triangulated method followed using NVivo.

There is no evidence to indicate the success of national third sector policy and its intent to improve the capacity of the sector at the local level. Service delivery is largely being led by public sector delivery structures. The local third sector is found to have significantly weakened. Community representation in regeneration is also weak, with no community forums in place. As a model, Social enterprise is underdeveloped.

The findings are contribution to theory, policy and practice and provide a practitioners view of third sector delivery at a local level. The evidence is of use to the researchers host organisation to undertake a lead role in developing as a fully representative area development trust.

Recent UK policies emphasise increased community participation in decision‐making. However, research points to an “implementation gap” whereby policy has not led to genuine community empowerment in practice. This paper aims to investigate community empowerment and influence over service providers brought about by the Communities First programme in Wales, a regeneration programme which aims to empower local communities.

The research analyses nine Communities First partnerships with a mixture of interviews, focus groups and community‐led partnership reviews. The case studies reflect the rural/urban geography of Wales and the varied governance models evident in Communities First.

Through Communities First, residents feel empowered to manage positive change in their communities. However, key public agencies have not responded adequately to this policy agenda. Notably, there has been a failure to “bend” mainstream services.

The findings point to future research with public sector agencies to identify the exact points at which community “voice” is lost and how it could be better assimilated into policy development and service delivery mechanisms.

Community empowerment requires adequate training for development staff and support mechanisms for community participants. Roles of public sector organisations attending community partnerships need to be clearly defined. At an organisational level, incentives, including funding, and sanctions are needed in order to change ways of working.

Communities and public agencies face challenges in delivering the empowerment agenda. The research identifies key issues in achieving empowerment objectives by examining the eight‐year experience of the Communities First programme.

This paper takes a prudent approach to assessing the quality of greenspace in low- and high socio-economic status (SES) settings. Socio-economic data from deprivation indexes were used to systematically define low- and high-SES suburbs. A Geographical Information System (GIS) observation of greenspaces was used to score spaces according to a scoring criterion contingent on six quality facets. Statistics were then synthesised, producing a Cohen effect score highlighting disparities in each criterion between the two SES groups.

As the phenomena of locational prejudice and meritocratic inequality continue to garner global attention, this paper extrapolates this to a world-renown metropolis, Melbourne. This paper endeavours to provide invaluable insights into the environmental injustice paradigm within greenspace and its respective quality.

Conclusive results affirmed a concerning disparity in the quality of greenspace between Melbourne's low- and high-SES settings. Cohen's effect size found that on average, there was a “medium” distinction between the spaces, whilst an individual focus on the quality facets concluded diverse findings.

The core of study adopted a meticulous virtual assessment to critique the quality of selected greenspaces opposed to an in-person-real world assessment which could garner more nuanced findings.

Existing literature on Melbourne has prioritised distribution, proximity and accessibility domains when assessing inequitable greenspace and, consequently, has catalysed a research gap in greenspace quality. This is also one of the first papers to provide insight into the “Plan Melbourne” policy regarding urban regeneration and ameliorating public open spaces.