Jonathan S. Davies - Partnerships and Regimes: The Politics of Urban Regeneration in the UK

PARTNERSHIPS AND REGIMES

Contents

This project has been supported by more than one hundred people and I am very grateful to all of them. It could not have been completed without the contribution of the many people working in central and local government, TECs, Chambers of Commerce and the wider business community. All these individuals and organisations took an interest in my work, giving of their time to answer my questions and find interesting material for my study. I have benefited from the advice and friendship of many colleagues over the past three years and I thank everyone who has given advice on the papers I have presented in various seminars and conferences, which constitute this work. I am grateful to my family for their encouragement, their support and their love. Allan Cochrane and Andy Jonas provided me with valuable comments on draft chapters of this work and I was very lucky to get advice from Clarence Stone. His extensive comments provided me with a major boost and confidence that I was on the right track with this study. I would also like to thank Simon Parker and Gerry Stoker for their detailed and perceptive comments. At the University of York, Neil Carter and Mark Evans have been exceptionally supportive. Their advice has been extensive, thorough and well founded. Of course, responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation is mine alone.

During the 1990s, urban regeneration partnerships proliferated in the UK. It is now common place for many individuals and organisations, including businesses, community groups, the voluntary sector and other public sector bodies, to co-operate with local authorities in a wide range of activities. Collaboration of one kind or another has always occurred (see Hall and Hubbard, 1996 and Stanyer, 1999), but partnership working became much more widespread in the 90s than in previous decades. This process of collaboration, usually described as local governance, has become a major theme in urban studies (see Stoker, 1999; 2000). Local governance is a broad concept, encompassing all governing activities which require collaboration by a local authority with other organisations. It can be defined as