http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1146-229X
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ABSTRACT
The concept of localism and spatial delineation of the ‘city region’ have seen a renaissance as the de facto spatial political units of governance for economic development. One articulation of this has seen the creation of Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) to potentially enhance Wales’s poor economic performance and secure democratic forms of social cohesion. City regions have been vaunted as the ‘spatial imaginary’ for engendering economic development, but there are considerable state spatial restructuring tensions. The paper discusses these by following the development of city-regionalism in Wales and specifically the unfolding of the ‘elite-led’ CCR City-Deal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
David Beel is Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at Future Economies in the Department of Economics, Policy & International Business (EPIB), Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a geographer with research interests in the processes of how city regions are built and contested.
Martin Jones is Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Staffordshire University. He is an interdisciplinary researcher, working in the broad area of society and space, specifically on the interface between state theory and neoliberalism.
Ian Rees Jones is Professor of Sociological Research and Director of the WISERD Institute based at Cardiff University. He is interested in theoretical and empirical work on social change and processes of social change.
ORCID
David Beel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1146-229X
Martin Jones http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4627-2293
Ian Rees Jones http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1682-9134
Notes
1. The empirical research for this paper took place between November 2015 and March 2017. This involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 27 key stakeholders in the CCR. This ranged from those involved with implementing the CCR itself to civil society members based within the city region. The data were openly coded, and from this, quotes were selected to show key points with regard to findings but also those that highlighted representative views.
2. Because devolution is to the Welsh Government, an important differentiation for Wales, compared to England, is that no devolution deal has been offered to the Cardiff Capital Region scale, only a Cardiff City-Deal.