Community strategies in England: reshaping spaces of governance?

The preparation of Community Strategies (CS) has been required of LSPs and Local Authorities in England since the passing of the Local Government Act 2000. This paper examines the process and content of two Community Strategies in southern England as part of an ongoing project to understand their impact and explore ways that CSs may be carried through in a meaningful and effective manner. The paper concludes that the two CSs studied illustrate the challenge faced by LSPs in producing Strategies that are meaningful, inclusive and which follow the spirit of the government CS guidance. LAs and LSPs are also posed with a difficult challenge of seeing through an implicitly required transition from a traditional representative democratic structure/process with a more fluid participatory model. Thus we detect that at least two forms of conflict may arise – firstly with elected councillors threatened by a loss of power and secondly between communities and the LAs who are encouraged to problematise local policy and service delivery in the context of limited resource availability

Delivering Flagship Projects in an Era of Regulatory Capitalism: State-led Privatization and the London Olympics 2012

Much of the urban studies literature on the London Olympics has focused on its social legacies and the top-down nature of policy agendas. This article explores one element that has been less well covered — the contractual dynamics and delivery networks that have shaped infrastructure provision. Drawing on interviews and freedom of information requests, this article explores the mechanisms involved in the project's delivery and their implications for broader understandings of urban politics and policymaking. It assesses contemporary writings on regulatory capitalism, public–private networks and new contractual spaces to frame the empirical discussion. This article argues that the London Olympic model has been characterized by the prioritization of delivery over representative democracy. Democratic imperatives, such as those around sustainability and employment rights, have been institutionally re-placed and converted into contractual requirements on firms. This form of state-led privatization of the development process represents a new, and for some, potentially more effective mode of governance than those offered by traditional systems of regulation and management

Private consultants, planning reform, and the marketisation of local government finance

This chapter examines the co-evolution between recent reforms to planning systems across the UK, and the growing influence and significance of private sector expert consultants. It shows that in the wake of austerity cuts, local authorities are being incentivised to act more entrepreneurially by increasing the amount of development in their areas and maximising planning gain returns. These reforms are creating new market opportunities for a growing consultancy sector and contributing to the gradual privatisation of the planning system. The chapter assesses the form and character of these changes, and their implications for how places are governed and planned

Towards a pluralistic understanding of Chinese homeowners: the case of 'ordinary' buyers

In this paper we address ‘ordinary’ Chinese buyers in London’s residential real estate market. We argue that current academic and policy analysis, particularly of elites, has focused on the higher-end of the market and over-emphasised the detached nature of international buyers. In contrast, building on, but departing from, existing analyses of the multiple classes of Chinese investors evident in London (see Glucksberg, 2016), we reveal the tactics and motivations of buyers with budgets of less than £500,000. We show that they are motivated by good schools, easy commutes and use similar technologies to mediate and understand the market to local buyers. Such aims and approaches, we argue, show the ordinariness of many Chinese buyers. Underpinning their aims is an aspirational, class-defined desire based on making sacrifices so their children can have a ‘normal British life’. This becomes an elective belonging, as they integrate into the norms of London’s housing market. In demonstrating how the realities of ordinary buyers contrasts with existing narratives of Chinese investors, we highlight plurality of experiences, strategies and aims of Chinese people buying homes. We argue such an understanding forces us to rethink the form and character of Chinese investment practices in western cities by de-centring London’s prime areas and purchasers when analysing property acquisition’s internationalisation. In turn this evidences the false binary of local and international demand and shows the complexities hidden behind narratives of international capital

The Work That Place Does: The London Landed Estates and a Curatorial Approach to Estate Management

Writings on urban development and planning in Europe have been dominated by a combination of technical studies of the real estate sector and more structural political economy approaches on land expropriation and financialisation. In this paper we draw on the example of the London Landed Estates, to critically assess how land-owning real estate companies, that we call cityowners, perform their roles and what models and knowledge sources they draw upon in managing and carefully curating urban spaces and places. Data sources include interviews with Estate Managers, others involved in, or affected by their management, and other corporate public information. Our theoretical framing draws on performativity theory that we see as a valuable addition to existing research approaches. We describe and analyse the ways these agencies construct narratives and practices of socially responsible and historically established forms of performance, that they label ‘place-stewardship’, and the specific mechanisms they use to bring places into existence. Collectively, the discussion calls for an increased focus on how models abstracted from local context and politics can be ‘localised’, in the study of the governance of the built environment. Greater attention also needs to be paid to the work that place does in influencing the strategies, tactics, and activities of property owners

Postcolonial narratives and the governance of informal housing in London

Housing informality has traditionally been associated with cities in the Global South. And yet, there is growing evidence that informal practices are also present in Northern cities, especially those traditionally considered ‘successful’ or ‘developed’ such as London, in which housing pressures are most acute. This paper, drawing on detailed policy analysis and qualitative in-depth interviews, uses the example of London to examine the rise of informal housing, the ways in which it is both represented and conceptualised as a ‘problem’ of governance to be tackled, and its institutionalisation into programmes of enforcement. It focuses on the emergence of a phenomenon known as ‘beds in sheds’, or the construction of informal housing in between existing buildings. By discussing a planning issue that is generally associated with the Global South in a Global North context, the paper engages with writings on postcolonial theory. It adopts a nexus approach to examine how the issue is embedded within particular configurations of social, political, economic and cultural circumstances. The evidence indicates that the ways in which the problem is framed and understood are underpinned by colonialist views that see migrants and their socio-ethnic communities as agents of informality, whose removal or sanction will ‘solve’ the problem. The paper concludes with reflections on broader debates on informality in urban studies

The Politicisation of Diversity Planning in a Global City: Lessons from London

This paper explores the politics of diversity plan ning in one of Europe’s most socially and economically divided and globally-oriented cities, London. The analysis draws on Latour’s writings on modes of politicisation to examine the processes an d practices that shape contemporary urban governance. It uses the example of diversity planni ng to examine the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of urban politics. It shows that on the one hand diversity i s represented in pragmatic, consensual, and celebratory terms. Under prevailing conditions of c ontemporary global capitalism, the ‘what’ of diversity has been politicised into an agenda for l abour market-building and the attraction of ‘talented’ individuals and foreign investment. Howe ver, at the same time this celebratory rhetoric represents part of a wider effort to deflect politi cal attention away from the socially and economically divisive impacts of global models of e conomic growth and physical development. There is little discussion of the ways in which pla nning frameworks, the ‘how’ of diversity policy, ar e helping to generate new separations in and beyond t he city. Moreover, despite claiming that policy is pragmatic and non-ideological, the paper shows h ow diversity narratives have become an integral part of broader political projects to orientate the city’s economy towards the needs of a relatively small cluster of powerful economic sectors. The pap er concludes with reflections on the recent impacts of the vote for Brexit and the election of an openly Muslim London Mayor. It also assesses the broader relevance of a Latourian framework for the analysis of contemporary urban politics

Relational Regulation and Chinese Real Estate Investment in London: Moving Beyond the Territorial Trap

National governments, urban authorities and supra-national bodies increasingly see the provision of new housing as a core priority. There has been a strong emphasis on reforming the regulatory environments that exist within geographical territories and making them more welcoming to inward investment. However, such outlooks we claim often fall into a territorial trap and give too much prominence to the regulations and policy environments found in recipient destinations. The paper argues instead for a more recursive focus on the ways in which decisions taken in ‘source’ and ‘host’ locations need to be understood as part of a mutually constitutive system of governance. Using the example of Chinese residential investment into London, it argues that investment trends, processes and outcomes reflect a recursive combination of regulatory and political changes in both the city and within China, with the latter becoming increasingly influential. As we show, the Chinese Communist Party has been exerting greater control over the activities of Chinese real estate enterprises and what products are ‘permitted’ for investment and how this should be done. The paper reflects on the implications for recent academic and policy writings on urban territorial competition