Yesterday afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott unveiled his urban white paper - a far-reaching multi billion pound package of measures that puts tackling inner city decay firmly at the heart of the government's agenda.

Mr Prescott, who runs the super-ministry responsible for the environment, transport and the regions (DETR) spoke of bringing about a "lasting urban renaissance" in England. The aim is to encourage people back into city centres by making them more attractive places to live and work for families and young professionals.

The paper draws heavily on Lord Rogers' Urban Task Force report, particularly in the areas of encouraging better architectural design, providing a substantial number of good homes at affordable prices, making parks and playgrounds safer places and bringing more brownfield land and empty buildings back into use.

The plan is too detailed to list all of the proposals, but here are the majority of the main proposals that will be put in place over the next five years:

• The creation of 12 new urban regeneration companies to help tackle those areas hardest hit by social deprivation and poverty.
• A review of planning policy guidance to put "urban renaissance" at the heart of the planning system.
• Councils are to form local strategic partnerships to produce action plans for improving towns and cities.
• Local communities will be empowered to help themselves through the creation of Local Strategic Partnerships.
• Individuals and communities will be given support to take their ideas forward, through New Deal for Communities, community chests and the Community Champions Initiatives.
• New Centres of Excellence will be opened to improve quality in design and planning.
• A new urban cabinet committee will be formed to co-ordinate policy on health, education and economic regeneration.
• Five more 'millennium communities' will be created, similar to the Greenwich millennium village set up alongside the Millennium Dome.
• Attention will be focused on ensuring that there are ample urban homes for key workers - with £250m over three years to assist them in buying property.
• More homes are to be built on brownfield sites to take advantage of the 1.3 million empty buildings in the UK.
• A new national green flags scheme is to be launched - based on the blue flags for beaches scheme - to encourage and reward excellence in managing parks and green spaces. There will also be a dedicated £96m fund for parks and green spaces from the New Opportunities Fund and £225m from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
• The ideals of culture, leisure and sporting activity will be promoted through creative partnerships for schools and by putting in place the Spaces for Sports and Arts Scheme.
• A £180 million 10 year plan is to be put in place to improve public transport links and reduce dependence on the car.
• A Learning and Skills Council is to be set up with a budget of £5.5bn a year - an increase of £600m. This will help equipping people with the skills needed to find work.
• There will be a drive for better health services, with a major expansion of investment in the health service across a wide range of programmes.
• Across the board measures to cut crime will be introduced.
• To take stock of progress, there will be an urban summit in 2002, followed by a `state of the cities' report in 2005.

These measures come on the back of this months announcement of more than £1 billion worth of tax breaks aimed at contributing to the regeneration programme. This included:

• Exemption from stamp duty for all property purchases in Britain's most deprived communities, at a cost of around £100m a year by 2002-2003.
• More speedy tax relief for developers who clean up contaminated land.
• Tax relief for the conversion of space to create flats above shops.
• VAT on property conversions for residential use to be cut to 5% and abolished altogether on houses that have been empty for more than 10 years.

The powers that be clearly think so. Successive governments have been trying to tackle the problems of deprivation and decline in our cities for years.

Urban regeneration first muscled its way onto the government's agenda in the mid 1970's under the Labour government. Rioting and widespread social action made sure that the 80's was a decade in which urban improvement also figure strongly in Conservative policies. The 1990's saw the launch of City Challenge in yet another bid to refresh run down areas. This policy seemed to have some success, with a downward trend in crime, street robbery and unemployment.

However, in recent years, the age-old problems of poverty, poor schools, police shortages, crime, and traffic pollution have reared their ugly heads, leading to an exodus from the inner cities that some sources put as high as 1800 people per week.

So two years ago, John Prescott set up the Urban Task Force, chaired by architect Lord Rogers. The taskforce last year made 100 recommendations aimed at improving life in English cities. And the government are making it clear that urban revival is to play a pivotal role in social policy for years to come. Speaking on the matter, Chancellor Gordon Brown had this to say:

"The government's strategy is to create attractive places for individuals and business - places that create and share prosperity, and that provide good quality services that meet the needs of everyone". He went on to say that towns and cities should be places where people want to live and businesses wish to be located. This can be achieved through efficient land use, quality design, modern infrastructure and sustainable use of resources. "This is the only way we can successfully tackle the causes of urban decline, bring jobs and investment to disadvantaged areas, end an era of under-investment and laissez-faire planning and cut urban sprawl and wasteful use of land."

The white paper has already garnered widespread support, not least (as you might expect) from within the labour party:

David Blunket, Secretary of State for Education and Employment was full of praise, but took the view that whilst improving the physical environment was a good step, the human side of the announcements were the real key to making the changes last: He argued that, "Education and employment opportunity is key to the urban renaissance. Our towns and cities must become places where people want to live and work and places where we are confident that children can get an excellent education.

Even within the opposition, there was grudging acceptance that the measures were a positive step. Shadow environment secretary Archie Norman was positive about many of the proposals in the White Paper. However, he did suggest that the paper had not addressed many of the recommendations in the Urban Task Force report and had in fact rejected many of them out of hand.

However, the chairman of the task force, Lord Rogers, did not support this view. He said that the measures were "much better" than he had expected, but suggested that it was "a long road" with a lot still to do. "We have done nothing for 30 years and we need to catch up 30 years in comparison with other major cities in Western Europe," added the Labour peer. "Our cities are already improving in the centres, but there is massive dereliction. In east Manchester, four-fifths of the dwellings are derelict or empty sites where the majority of the population has moved out, where anybody who can, will move out."

Some of the measures are sure to be met with approval by Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor. To the disgruntlement of some property developers keen to maximise profits from development investment, he has recently been arguing the case for affordable housing in London. He has gone as far as to say that the lack of social housing could even threaten the capital's economic future and announced a large scale future increase in the number of affordable homes as part of a Homes for a World City report by the Greater London Authority Housing Commission.

He should therefore be particularly pleased with some aspects of the white paper, such as the £250 million earmarked for key workers in urban areas such as nurses and teachers, who he feels are currently being priced out of the housing market.

Meanwhile, the details of the paper have also been welcomed by the Countryside Agency. Recent news articles on this site have highlighted the worry felt by many rural home dwellers at the influx of people from the cities, with the result being an upward pressure on house prices and the cost of living. Richard Wakeford, Chief Executive of the agency feels that, "A better urban environment will reduce the pressure on the countryside. Through an urban renaissance we hope to see the right relationship develop between town and country, helping us to secure the future of rural areas as well as making life better for urban communities."

We're all for it. There are some appalling areas in cities up and down the country and anything that can be done to help improve the quality of life in those areas can only be a good thing.

Improvement won't happen overnight, and requires much more than money and incentives for investment. But, the set of policy proposals looks to be an extremely coherent and well thought out set of measures - so they should be given the length of time that has been spent in their preparation. The government must make sure that the momentum is maintained so that they, or the subsequent government, follows through and sees the projects through to real and lasting change.

Labour has traditionally championed the interests of the less well off in the inner cities. After stinging criticism in recent months and years that they are pandering to 'middle England', you can't help but wonder how much this policy initiative is aimed at winning back lost core labour voters, in preparation for a general election.

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