ABSTRACT
Appropriating Aylesbury's 'iconic' architectural and social status, Blair's message was a broad New Labour one, within which specific reference to a new urban future was twined. The story of Labour's slow movement to this position through the 1980s has been repeatedly told with various commentators highlighting the election defeats of 1983 and 1987 as pivotal in the realignment of the Labour Party with a globalised Neoliberal economy and the Modes of Regulation that were seen to underpin it. The public exposition of New Labour's enmeshment with issues of architecture were complex and, for many, contradictory. Transposed to an urban context of regenerative infrastructural investment in communities and neighbourhoods, equality of opportunity became the 'opportunity' to participate and engage in redevelopment projects. In this framing of the post-politics of participatory governance, as with investment in education and training, responsibility shifts to the 'citizen' to realise the potential they are given the opportunity to access.
