ABSTRACT
The 1980s witnessed dramatic changes in urban and regional policies in the UK in general and Wales in particular. In the urban field, there was a significant decline in the relative autonomy of local government to manage the urban development process, as central government sought to curtail costs, partly by curbing powers. Thus, as urban policy-analyst Lawless (1991) noted, there was a move to both liberalize and deregulate urban policy. Liberalization included opening up the policymaking and, particularly, the policy implementation phases to the private sector (Stockbridge Village, near Liverpool, and Birmingham Heartlands are instances at different urban scales of both policy formation and implementation beyond direct local government purview). Deregulation has been even more farreaching and has involved reducing or removing land-use control powers from local government planning authorities through Enterprise Zones, Simplified Planning Zones and in the areas covered by the Urban Development Corporations.
