Professor Dave Valler

This paper provides a tentative reading of proposed English planning reform under the Labour government elected in July 2024. Key aspects of the agenda are reviewed, together with the proposed extension of an ongoing devolution and decentralisation programme. Labour’s reforms are characterised as the leading-edge of a generally cautious ‘new state capitalism’. Though there are similarities with previous ‘roll-out neoliberal’ arrangements under the New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010, the altered political-economic context will likely reinforce some distinctiveness in terms of the meaning and implementation of reform.

Strategic spatial planning imagination is fundamentally distributed across private, public and third sectors within national planning systems. Drawing on stakeholder interviews, we review the practice of imagination in English strategic spatial planning post-2010, arguing that it is critically exposed in terms of both breadth and depth. We therefore make suggestions for further mobilizing dispersed imagination in England and underline the need for associated development in the education and training of planners.

This article extends analysis of sub-regional governance dynamics, focusing on local institutions in Eastern England in the period from 2010 to 2020. Building on Third Wave Institutionalism and the growing interest in the impact of agency, the paper shows how the narratives, practices and rules of governance institutions both shape and are shaped by the varied strategic ambitions of local actors. Thus when particular objectives of ‘recognition’, ‘investment’ and ‘control’ were pursued by local actors there was a reinforcing relationship with positive narratives, collaborative practices and stable rules. Alternatively, though, institutional constraints may emphasise other strategic objectives such as preserving or advancing the power of preferred institutional structures, together with an associated limiting of narratives and practices.

This paper examines ‘deal-based’ policy responses to local and sub-regional governance dilemmas, drawing on issues around strategic planning policy in Oxfordshire, UK. Deal-based policy is conceptualised as a form of urban intrapreneurialism, explicitly designed to cultivate change within local state operations and to promote associated organisational innovation, institutional proactivity, and policy reorientation. A general evaluative frame for urban intrapreneurialism is derived and then deployed for the Oxfordshire case, assessing the extent to which deal-based policy is able to respond to the distinctive and challenging set of governance dilemmas which pertain. Finally, broader conceptual and policy implications are discussed.

There is a clear consensus amongst both academic commentators and the professional community that current arrangements for strategic planning in England are inadequate. The withdrawal of central government from leadership of the proposed ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ in early 2022 marks a particular nadir, not least given the ambitions for the planning of the area set out only a year earlier. This paper offers a conjunctural reading of the failure of the proposed Arc Spatial Framework, emphasising that not only was the process of planning the Arc itself problematical, but it also faced wider governmental and political headwinds which fuelled public opposition to the scheme, reduced central government commitment, and redirected political priorities elsewhere. In this context the prospects for the future of strategic planning in England appear rather bleak.

Oxford-Oxfordshire, UK, and the Verband Region Stuttgart or the Metro Region in Germany are two of Europe’s high-tech powerhouses, facing similar challenges concerning housing and infrastructure provision and accommodating regional as well as local economic growth. Based on desktop studies and semi-structured expert interviews, this paper examines the respective institutional, political and cultural contexts for strategic planning in the two distinct settings, aiming to identify the evolving balance of socio-spatial dimensions influencing each case. While the interplay of territory, place, scale and network is different across the two cases, both face ongoing dilemmas. In the Stuttgart region, an established and smoothly running economic and spatial growth-machine has stuttered as growth has reached capacity and localities have asserted their constitutional controls on urban expansion. In Oxford (and the wider county of Oxfordshire), there has been a contrasting dislocation between an emerging growth agenda and a fractured governance context that is historically less oriented towards growth. Additionally, Oxfordshire has operated since 2010 against the background of localism in English planning and an increasing reliance on city and housing/growth ‘deals’ negotiated with central government to access planning flexibilities and infrastructure funding. Conclusions are drawn with the aim of mutual learning from the different international experiences and of informing approaches to strategic and inter-municipal planning.

The process of imagination is central to region-formation, underpinning the spatial definition and territorial bounding of areas, the development of spatial identity and institutional capacity, and the cultivation of social relations and networks. While recent academic contributions have crystallised certain theoretical dimensions, attempts to evaluate the nature and efficacy of regional spatial imaginaries remain ad hoc. In this paper we derive a general evaluative frame and six associated criteria against which particular regional spatial imaginaries can be appraised. This is then deployed to evaluate two major episodes in the construction of the putative ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ in southern England.

Science and technology spaces around the world are, simultaneously, major physical, technological and symbolic forms, key elements of economic strategy, and sites of international labour movements and knowledge transfer. They are thus the product of multiple imaginations, with multiple, potentially divergent, objectives. In this paper, we compare three international science spaces as ‘ethnoscapes’, emphasising the distinctive perceptions, cultures and identities amongst international science and technology migrants and visitors at these sites. This, we contend, sharpens a sense of the ‘international-ness’ of science spaces in various dimensions, given the particular experiences of scientific migrants and visitors moving into different nations, locations and facilities, their roles in constructing international communities, and their navigation of alternative spaces. It also offers insight into the production of contextual (rather than spatial or physical) localities, as international scientists and technologists experience and constitute larger formations, building on their perceptions of varied and interacting science ’scapes.

This paper considers the influence of established local planning cultures and legacies on the trajectory of contemporary local development policies. Local and sub-regional planning cultures are interpreted as overall 'developmental frames' which set the context for local planning approaches both through more concrete territorial, developmental and policy forms and through cognitive structures, assumptions and values. These frames then exert significant influence on how planning policy is conceived and enacted, with potentially major implications for local development outcomes. Three illustrative case studies are presented from sub-regional growth areas in the South East of England.

The UK Coalition Government’s commitment to ‘localism’ in Planning is in marked contrast to the emphasis on cross-boundary strategic planning initiatives under the previous Labour Government. Against this background the paper examines the implications of evolving economic governance arrangements in three sub-regional ‘soft-spaces’ in England’s South-East region. A distinctive evaluative frame derives a set of criteria for ‘good economic governance’ as perceived by the stakeholders concerned, and a judgement regarding the ‘quality’ of economic governance in each case is presented. The conclusion triangulates these results against economic growth outcomes across the respective sub-regions.

The emergence over the last 30 - 40 years of what is variously termed edge city, edgeless, and postsuburban development in North America and elsewhere raises a set of challenges for urban theory and existing ways of understanding the politics of urban growth and management. These challenges and their global import have been outlined in their broadest terms by members of a"Los Angeles School" . In this paper we try to develop the detail of some of these challenges in ways that might allow for comparative analysis. We begin by considering three analytical dimensions along which distinctively postsuburban settlements might be identified. These dimensions are not without their limitations but we regard them as a heuristic device around which to centre ongoing comparative research. We then go on to highlight three political contradictions attending postsuburban growth which appear to flow from some of these defining dimensions. To the extent that such postsuburban growth and politics are distinctive, they pose important challenges to established theories of urban politics. We briefly consider these challenges in the conclusion of the paper.

Conceptualizing local and regional economic development in the USA, Regional Studies. Contemporary literature on local and regional economic development (LRED) in the USA is predominantly empirical and pragmatic, focusing on the conduct and efficacy of economic development policy. While this work is valuable in evaluating the detailed operation of local and regional economic development activity, the broader conceptual foundations that underlay economic development practice have been underplayed. The paper reflects on research and writing around local and regional economic development in the USA and it addresses some key conceptual and theoretical limitations. The paper calls for a stronger focus on contextualization and sets out a theoretical approach grounded in regulationist insights which offers significant advances in theorizing US local and regional economic development.

New Labour's engagement with sub-national economic governance was a stuttering and uneven story marked by both significant achievements and jolting failures. While devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the introduction of Regional Development Agencies in England represented early successes, the bold rhetoric of New Labour's programme was not in reality matched by solid ideological foundations and a coherent policy approach. Rather, the decentralisation project was constructed around a distinctive"rationality" based around the role of place in driving competitiveness in the face of a global, knowledge-based economy. This had significant implications for the level and clarity of political commitments in this sphere, and the durability of new forms. After the comprehensive"no" vote in the referendum for the North East Elected Regional Assembly in 2004 and the subsequent collapse of the English regional agenda, a period of hiatus gave way to an emerging sub-regional agenda, where developments were influenced at least in part by bottom-up pressures and allowed for some degree of local autonomy and flexibility in the construction of new governance forms. Yet the continuing absence of a clear ideological drive emphasised the ad-hoc nature of these changes and accentuated the lack of an over-arching political resolution. In this context Labour's proposals for sub-national economic governance were muddied, raising questions over the sustainability of new arrangements. The paper concludes with a brief commentary on the experience of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government following the general election on 6 May 2010.

Within the overall context of devolution government policy has continued to emphasize partnership forms of governance. Accordingly, the political representation of business interests has a particular salience in the new arrangements. This paper reports on findings from a study designed to examine the relationship between devolution and changes in the political representation of business interests in the territories and regions of the UK. It highlights a number of changes in the nature and extent of business representation. While some of these are significant the evidence suggests that they fail to mark a fundamental shift in the institutional foundation for sub-national business interest representation in the UK. Indeed the political geography of business representation remains dominated by an overarching centralism that is likely to provide a significant check on the further devolution of political power and democratic authority.

examining the response of business interests to the newly devolved and regionalised governance

context in Britain. In the analysis, the focus is directed particularly at the changing context within which business politics operates in the British regions and, importantly, on the perceptions of business actors and interests of their position in these changing contexts. In this way, we seek to move beyond established structuralist and agency-oriented approaches to business interest representation, which have tended to underplay the influence and complexity of business perceptions in exploring the changing form of business representation. Subsequently, we present some further brief comments on the respective capacities of groups and organisations representing business, and the strategic processes that underlie business responses to the new governance arrangements, which will be important to the further development of analysis founded in the strategic ^ relational approach. In broad terms, we argue that business perceptions of the devolutionary context have underscored a limited restructuring of business interest representation in Britain, as business groups register the ongoing centralism that characterises the British polity. In addition, the organisation of business interest representation displays a strong path dependency, reflecting a degree of institutional stasis and the strength of perceived structures in this sphere. However, a series of relatively modest changes are underway as a variety of business interests adopt particular kinds of strategies given their specific aims and capacities.