The geography of urban deprivation is both real and ‘imagined’. The combination leads to biased and often quite polarized views of cities, their dynamics and their future. Unfortunately the tendency is to depict poverty and deprivation as ugly, as an ‘improper’ part of urban life which should be eradicated and replaced by ‘proper’ middle‐class physical constructions and social structures. But research which avoids the ‘imagining’ shows that this is an unacceptable view of the the inner city where in fact people, despite their poverty, set up a wide array of social, cultural and economic networks of real meaning, which enable them to enter the labour market, to develop mutual support and to participate in cultural activities of all kinds, just like anybody else.