ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of the public interest and the way in which it has been used by urban policy elites to legitimise programmes of change that have actually served the interests of the powerful. It examines how policy elites are increasingly conscripting social science to the task of providing an objective understanding of the public interest in order to justify programmes of urban change. The chapter explores how urban policy elites dealt with alternative interpretations of the public interest in order to establish their own interpretation as the legitimate one. Urban policy elites in Liverpool denigrated process interpretations of the public interest that residents groups produced through a process of open dialogue rather than by using research methods. The chapter provides a material insight into how this abuse of the public interest occurs and the role of social science in its occurrence with reference to a case study of transformational regeneration in Liverpool.
