ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to contrast the broader governmental claims for regeneration in the UK with the more constrained opportunities that cities have to deliver. Area-based regeneration initiatives were certainly not new when the New Labour administration came to power in the UK but it employed them in a new more multi-faceted way under a broader rubric of sustainability; in particular this focused on a city-fix. This term is used to focus on the multiple win-win scenarios that New Labour sought through urban renaissance and urban regeneration – respectively representing a broader promotion of the city and focused intervention in particular city spaces. Within the broad logic of sustainability, urban renaissance/regeneration was to deliver a series of win-win benefits generated by the proximity – and, related to this – the density that the city could offer. In referencing Harvey’s spatial fix (Jessop 2006), the term city-fix recognizes that New Labour sought to build on existing shifts in production and investment that were already favoring the city. Drawing on the case of Manchester (reflecting a focus on England, as New Labour was active in devolving regeneration and planning powers to the constituent parts of the UK), this chapter argues that the claimed benefits of New Labour’s win-win city-fix synergies were not delivered, not because of a failure of local authorities to use tools such as the planning system to do so but because, following Harvey (1989), the authorities had to work within macro-economic constraints that delivered winners and losers rather than the win-win of New Labour’s rhetoric. The post-boom period (after 2008) in Manchester serves to emphasize the limited choices open to the city and so invites a return to a more openly political regeneration of the city where resources are more openly contested.
