ABSTRACT
Shaping city futures is a process that necessarily involves simultaneous engagement at the local, metropolitan, national and global scales. City futures require national strategies for responding to and where appropriate helping to guide urbanisation and urban growth trajectories. Getting the best from cities and city-regions requires institutionalising mechanisms of effective coordination, planning, accountability and learning across a diverse range of actors and stakeholders. The metropolitan or city-regional challenge is often compounded by national policy frameworks that do not provide an enabling environment for effective, inclusive urban governance. Too many national development policies have been insufficiently attentive to the spatial dynamics of development, assuming that structural transformation, innovation or the pursuit of market-driven growth bring with them their own coherent spatial organisation. In sum, after several decades in which attention has mostly been devoted to governance-as-management and the creation of space for market-based innovation, politics and planning need to reclaim centre stage in shaping city futures.
