ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the tensions associated with coming to know the city. Of particular interest in this chapter are understandings of the city that are deployed in policy frames which enjoy dominant or hegemonic status in particular cities. It concentrates on one aspect of university relations within urban governance: namely the way that the privileged capacity of the university to produce knowledge with a certain status offers opportunities for the insertion of the university within governance arrangements. The chapter suggests that urban entrepreneurialism remains an accurate characterisation of the dominant approach to governance in many cities, especially those where social tensions associated with economic restructuring are salient. It explains the task of exploring how the university's insertion in governance arrangements may generate tensions in knowledge production. The chapter considers ways in which a university's being part of the institutional relations of local governance may have an impact on the nature of the knowledge produced.
