This book has sought to dig beneath the surface of the borders within to unearth the complex social mechanisms that sustain them. Addressing geographic divides within countries that have deeply entrenched spatial inequalities like the UK and the United States requires accounting and acknowledging these social mechanisms in the logics of regional development policy. This chapter argues that all too often regional development policy fails to do this, and is frequently reliant upon a set of flawed logics.

A major hurdle to addressing regional inequality is overcoming normalised notions of development; the conventional wisdom and taken- for- granted assumptions that are drawn on when developing solutions. These are assumptions, principles and ‘ways of doing things’ that helped to create the problems of regional inequality in the first place. For example, the assumptions that are embedded within educational and labour market policy in terms of how we think education is linked to the world of work. These assumptions and orthodoxies are so ingrained within our minds that it takes a major cognitive shift to think beyond them.

In his book Injustice, Danny Dorling argues that there are ‘five social evils’ that have driven inequality and injustice – elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair. What these evils produce is a ‘sham hierarchy’ where people are pitted against one another with the creation of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Underpinning each of these evils are a set of myths that many people in society implicitly believe to some extent, which only emboldens them further.