Towards Post-political Consensus in Urban Policy? Localism and the Emerging Agenda for Regeneration Under the Cameron Government

Abstract

The paper explores recent experience of urban policy in England and provides an assessment of its evolution and future prospects under the Cameron government. It explores the contention that urban policy has undergone a fundamental repositioning in which neo-liberal ideas, linked to the emerging localism agenda, have begun to exert a profound shift in the role of the state in formulating and delivering policy. The paper argues that neo-liberal thinking increasingly permeates contemporary policy, but that this exists alongside a residual (but diminishing) emphasis on socio-spatial dimensions of equity. This, the paper concludes, reflects the emergence of a degree of post-political consensus around the role for urban policy and the mechanisms for its delivery.