ABSTRACT
We had three primary aims in preparing this volume and inviting colleagues to join us. Firstly, we wanted to examine the perception that there was a ‘global brand’ of urban regeneration management and practice. In part, this has become a popular view shaped by what appears to be the mono-cultural experience of contemporary urban cites reinforced by the uniformity of shopping malls, airports and hotels. As we try to explore in what follows, this perception is far from being a ‘mono-cultural’ one. It is shaped, developed and promoted by Western advanced industrial notions of what the comfortable urban experience is about, and in its conformity of appearance, it also reinforces a particular set of ideas of urban regeneration.
