ABSTRACT
This chapter reviewes the established metropolitan framework for planning and governance put in place in the late 1980s and which has provided the framework for resolving metropolitan development issues in the 1990s. A decline in the prestige of the metropolitan model in Britain was politically driven rather than being based on administrative rationality or social justice. The debate about metropolitan problems and the appropriate form of governance required has preoccupied politicians for most of nineteenth century, either in terms of the institutional framework required by the fast growing London conurbatio or by the restructuring needs of industrial city regions such as Manchester. The most comprehensive review of urban policies covering this period argued that the decade of initiatives had positive but limited benefits, most notably in halting physical decline and refurbishing infrastructure. However socio-economic inequalities had not diminished and regeneration had facilitated increased local polarisation.
