ABSTRACT
The previous two cases were of large cities with long histories as major urban centres in Europe. The story of the emergence of the ‘Cambridge Sub-Region’ shifts the focus to places beyond such centres. Yet Cambridge too has a long history as a significant city in the European imagination and especially in the consciousness of the British elite. Over the past half-century, the area has been drawn into the nexus of an expanding London metropolis, with the centre of London only 50 miles (80 km) away. More than this, however, Cambridge has become a major growth node in London’s outer metropolitan area, in which, by the turn of the century, English government capacity at all levels was being tested in a struggle to achieve a ‘balanced’ and ‘sustainable’ approach to managing growth.
