ABSTRACT
The politics of fl agship development in London has been dominated by the experiences of the London Docklands in the 1980s and more recently by major projects such as the regeneration of the South Bank and the London 2012 Olympic Games. Much of the academic and policy focus has been on the ways in which government quangos, such as the LDDC and the ODA, and London-wide agencies, including the LDA and the mayor, have taken responsibility for such developments (see Brownill, 1999; Florio and Brownill, 2000). And yet, within these broader discussions, the role of sub-metropolitan local government has been rather overlooked. There has been a tendency to see London as a prime example of the broader shift from local government to local governance or a context in which the power of elected local authorities has been eroded and redistributed to a range of public and private sector actors (see Imrie and Raco, 1999; Rhodes, 2003; Taylor, 2007). This is particularly true in relation to fl agship regeneration projects in which it is commonly accepted that local authorities acting alone are unwilling and/or unable to take a lead in developing and implementing agendas. Indeed, as Gordon and Buck (2005) argue, one key aspect of the new conventional wisdoms that now dominate discourses of governance is the perception that local authorities lack the capability and imagination to act in an entrepreneurial and proactive manner.
