ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years, governance has become both a 'fashionable and challenging concept'. It has given rise to an interdisciplinary field of study, informed by a range of different theoretical perspectives, united by a common concern to understand the changing role of the state. The 'urban' has been a key locale of governing shifts. Cities and regions are key engines of economic growth, and the sites where the contradictions of 'actually existing neoliberalism' are most visible, as manifest in patterns of uneven development and social-spatial inequalities. A long-standing and strong thread within urban governance has been that of urban entrepreneurialism and competitive cities. Developing an understanding of situated agency and resistance to governing practices requires a conceptual approach that goes beyond theories of the state and the market. Governance scholars in this field have typically drawn on constructionist and post-structuralist theory situated within a range of different disciplines.
