This research uses the context of Derry city to conduct a sociological examination of the transition from conventional, managerial approaches to urban governance, towards approaches increasingly characterised by entrepreneurialism. Specifically, it interrogates the reconfigurations of governance structures and priorities along entrepreneurial lines and the implications of innovative, speculative entrepreneurial governance strategies for city and citizen. The primary empirical component of this research is a critical engagement with Derry's entrepreneurial utilization of the inaugural UK City of Culture title as the principal vehicle being used to drive the wider urban regeneration process within the erstwhile chronically underdeveloped city. In particular, this technique involves increasing the city's quotients of collective symbolic capital through the narrowly authored selection, prioritisation and upgrade of specific aspects and sections of the city for projection to an external audience, with the aim of transforming negative imagined geographies of place - thus rendering the city more symbolically competitive. The emerging outcome of this process, however, appears to be the increased and increasing socio-spatial polarization of the city, characterised by the spatial dilemma between prioritised, recapitalised centre and un-prioritised, impoverished periphery. Regeneration in this context is in fact gentrification by any other name - with all that this implies. Moreover, Northern Ireland's obsessive ethno-political culture, concerned almost exclusively with zero-sum evaluations of the regeneration process, provides no critique of this model, and thus serves to empower and further legitimise the entrepreneurial project - to the detriment of the citizenry. This research concludes by suggesting that entrepreneurial approaches to urban governance are likely to become increasingly enshrined in Northern Ireland, not least given the premature proclamations of success accompanying Derry's UK City of Culture year.

This thesis examines the relationship between peacebuilding and urban regeneration in three post-conflict cities: Belfast, Sarajevo, and Beirut. In doing so, the research aims to answer the following questions: what is peacebuilding, how does it relate to a peace agreement, and how are these implemented in the post-conflict context, especially on the urban scale? How does urban regeneration relate to notions of the legitimacy of the state, and in the post conflict context, to the stability of peace? What is urban regeneration and how is it manifest in the post-conflict city? What are the implications of these issues in regards to the role of consumption, capital, identity and legitimacy as defining forces in the post-conflict context city and general peacebuilding context? In the first section, exploring the literature on peace and cities and linking them through the Habermasian concept of legitimation provides the theoretical basis. The next stage involves examining the theories in practice— peace as peacebuilding and cities through urban regeneration—thus establishing a framework for analysing the case studies. In a discussion of methods, ethnography and the use of case-study analysis are presented as best-suited for the aims of the research. Following this is the second section. First, the historic and socio-cultural contexts of each city and conflict are explored with a particular emphasis on the urban experience throughout. This is followed by a critical examination of the peace negotiation processes and an in-depth analysis of the treaty documents, paying particular attention to the degree to which urban/built environment issues are addressed. Subsequent to this is an exploration of the implementation of the treaties and the events/issues that surrounded them, in addition to looking at the major regeneration and building projects that took place in each city following the peace agreement implementation to the present. This is followed by a presentation of the ethnographic data, including observations and analysis of visual evidence, and the drawing out of common themes. In the third section, the data of the previous section (contextual analysis, peace agreement analysis, and ethnographic data) are analyzed further. The result of this is a discussion of consumption, capital, identity, and legitimacy as interrelated processes that are part of the evolving form of peacebuilding in post-conflict cities. This is concluded by an examination of research implications and potential avenues for further exploration.

The aim of the thesis is to describe and evaluate the transformation of urban form in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), China, with a particular focus on the relations between social processes and spatial forms in the context of the regeneration of urban-villages in Guangzhou. Referring to in-depth interviews with key practitioners and actors in the regeneration process, this thesis explores three specific relationships and/or processes. -- First, it examines the discursive and structural conditions surrounding the ’’production" of governmental regeneration programmes relating to the urban-villages, within a restructured and increasingly neoliberalized system. I develop the argument that it is through this production that the concept of urban-village is defined and deployed by government to label and problematise places which may not be problematic in the ways defined. Second, this thesis discusses the development and implementation of institutional reform policies that are at the heart of government-led regeneration projects in Guangzhou. As I argue, in seeking to develop a more coordinated approach to urban-village regeneration, local government officials, and other power-brokers, have created new subjects/objects of intervention that are structurally, discursively and deliberately excluded from the dominate discourse of what urban regeneration is or ought to be. Third, I examine local people’s reactions to urban-village regeneration, and I develop the argument that they are not as powerless as has often been suggested by the dominant society. Instead, in exerting control over their lives and actively shaping their relationship to the so-called "dominant society", they are engaging in a variety of strategies and deploying various tactics to resist and/or alter a range of policy decisions.

While the private sector has long been in the vanguard of shaping and managing urban environs, under the New Labour government business actors were also heralded as key agents in the delivery of sustainable places. Policy interventions, such as Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), saw business-led local partnerships positioned as key drivers in the production of economically, socially and environmentally sustainable urban communities. This research considers how one business-led body, South Bank Employer’s Group (SBEG), has inserted itself into, and influenced, local (re)development trajectories. Interview, observational and archival data are used to explore how, in a neighbourhood noted for its turbulent and conflictual development past, SBEG has led on a series of regeneration programmes that it asserts will create a "better South Bank for all". -- A belief in consensual solutions underscored New Labour’s urban agenda and cast regeneration as a politically neutral process in which different stakeholders can reach mutually beneficial solutions (Southern, 2001). For authors such as Mouffe (2005), the search for consensus represents a move towards a ’post-political’ approach to governing in which the (necessarily) antagonistic nature of the political is denied. The research utilises writings on the ’post-political’ condition to frame an empirical exploration of regeneration at the neighbourhood level. It shows how SBEG has brokered a consensual vision of regeneration with the aim of overriding past disagreements about local development. While this may be seen as an attempt to enact what Honig (1993: 3) calls the ’erasure of resistance from political orderings’ by assuming control of regeneration agendas (see also Baeten, 2009), the research shows that ’resistances’ to SBEG’s activities continue to be expressed in a series of ways.

The main research question that the thesis addresses is 'what is the relevance of complexity theory for planning'. Having set out to examine a theoretical question, the thesis is guided by the nature of theory development. The realm of generalised discourse, theory contextualisation and empirical examination are thus addressed. The argument starts from an understanding of the nature of complexity theory as it emerges from within the natural sciences. The philosophical grounds of the theory and the way in which complexity theory might relate to the social realm are then discussed. Planning is conceptualised in specific ways and the relevance for second order planning is advanced. The use of complexity theory in the non-quantitative stream within planning is discussed leading to the formulation of a methodology for theory transfer derived from the theory of metaphors. Two concepts for theory transfer and contextualisation are chosen on methodological grounds ---fractals and autopoiesis. The chapter on fractals uses the methodology derived and advances a causal claim for use in the second level of planning defined and argued for earlier empirically demonstrated by re-conceptualising a case-study--- the People's Planning Campaign of Kerala, India. The chapters on autopoiesis focus on the use of concepts from autopoiesis to raise separate sets of questions for planning illustrated by discussing secondary case studies. Instances of ways in which answers might be found to these questions in actual planning practice is then discussed through re-interpreting the case study. In summary, the thesis advances an argument for the relevance of complexity theory for planning and sees this relevance as a contribution to methodological issues that arise from a systemic conception for planning in the second level, foregrounding society such that planning as an activity is undertaken by society leading to an ordering emerging out of local specificity and detail.

This thesis examines issues of cultural geography arising from a major flagship project of urban regeneration, the International Convention Centre Birmingham. The thesis is specifically concerned with the reorientation of various cultural systems of space around Birmingham as part of the media discourses associated with the Centre. This is examined through the three media most associated with urban regeneration, the local press, promotional materials and public art, and the agents and institutions associated with these media. The project is particularly concerned with the ways in which these media challenge the prevailing structures of expectation that have evolved as part of a cultural system of space deeply embedded within national culture. The evolution and reproduction of the geographical dimensions of British culture, the North - South divide and the urban - rural divide are examined. The extent to which Birmingham has been ascribed an identity based on notions of peripherality derived from this cultural system of space is assessed, as well as the degree to which it has sought to redefine itself as centre by challenging the prescriptions of these dimensions. The thesis concludes that challenging these prescriptions has been a vital part of the parallel promotion of the International Convention Centre and the re-imagination of the City of Birmingham. The thesis concludes further that reference to a number of other cultural dimensions, particularly wider European and international cultural systems of space have also been important.

Despite the current proliferation of research on slums, there remains an impasse in our ability to represent and understand informal residential settlements. This is largely due to the complexity and malleability of slums in the context of globalized flows of people, neoliberal economic and political restructuring, and processes of social marginalization and conflict. This thesis thus addresses the intellectual, representational, and political complexities associated with the global proliferation of slums so as to facilitate more just and egalitarian societies. As such, the aim of the study is to identify and examine emergent factors that contribute to social injustice and inequality in the context of ever transforming spatial, social, economic, and political processes. To do so, it examines the emergence, organization, and socio-spatial morphology of Ganesh Murthy Nagar, a squatter settlement in Mumbai, India. Conceptually, the framework guiding my study is based on Deleuzoguattarian thought and draws upon assemblage theory in relation to contemporary research in critical Urban Studies. My methodology is oriented towards thick empirical description and addresses historical, ethnographic, and developmental perspectives. This approach contributes to three specific objectives of the thesis: to identify the functional components of the settlement-assemblage and trace their emergence and evolution in time; to map the constitutive associations inherent in the ordering of these components in and beyond the settlement; and to determine the components’ constraining and enabling effects on other components in the assemblage. My findings suggest that State policies promoting participatory governance have triggered the emergence of social hierarchies and the centralization of power within the settlement. In collusion with other endogenous social networks and State actors, a defensible space of dominance has been established that continues to assemble power from diverse relationships with developmental partners. Rather than advancing the positive potential of interventions, weaknesses with slum policies and their implementation have contributed to a settlement with unequal and unjust relations, a fragmented populace, and pervasive feelings of fear.

Gentrification is the term applied to the process whereby middle-class people move into working class areas in the inner city, either residential areas, or old warehouses or sweatshops. This thesis seeks on the one hand to explain gentrification as the consequence of the development of domestic technologies, and on the other to understand it as a metaphor rooted in the characteristic experience of marginality in modern life. Debate over the causes of gentrification have polarized around two themes: that gentrification is the consequence of the rise of a new middle class heralding the onset of a post-industrial or post-modern society; or that gentrification is just another example of the contradictions underpinning capitalist development (in this case, the contradiction between the value of a building and the value of the land on which it sits - the rent gap hypothesis). This thesis argues that the falling cost of domestic technologies such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners has made it possible to bring the value of housing services which can be supplied by a Victorian house into line with the value of the housing services provided by the most modern house. Gentrification is then explained as a consequence of the middle classes taking advantage of the opportunity offered by these developments. In contrast to the explanations currently dominating the gentrification debate, this thesis therefore argues that gentrifiers gentrify because they can, and not because they have to. Consequently, the explanation of gentrification has nothing to do with questions of class, nor indeed of gender. Gentrification is a transient, not a cyclical phenomenon, and would have occurred whether the process was carried out entirely by women or entirely by men. The currently dominant explanations of gentrification argue that gentrifiers gentrify because they have to as they are subject to forces beyond their control: the rise of post- industrial society; or the reappearance of accumulation crises in capitalist urban development. These explanations are then left with the problem, not of explaining the existence of gentrification in those inner-city areas where it does occur, but in explaining its absence from all those other inner-city areas in which it does not occur, since they are couched in such general terms that they could apply to every member of the middle classes or to every inner city area, not just those associated with gentrification. These explanations of gentrification therefore over-estimate its quantitative significance, also. The fact that this over-estimation occurs is however of great interest. Using arguments derived from Robert Park and Raymond Williams, this thesis suggests that the reason for this is that gentrification touches on many characteristic insecurities of modern life. Gentrification therefore has resonances far wider than its quantitative significance would suggest. 'Gentrification' is a metaphorical expression, derived from 'gentry', the rural landowning classes. Gentrification can best be understood, therefore, in terms of attempts to realize an Arcadian (and class) vision of the 'country': a stable retreat in the very heart of the everchanging and often threatening 'city'. Insofar as gentrification represents a particular strategy for dealing with a universally experienced condition, the study of gentrification illuminates the way we live now.

This thesis investigates the potential of inner-city MINCs to attract and retain families in private homes. MINCs are new housing developments with both social rented and market-rate homes, and are supported by current policy for higher density urban regeneration in Britain. The presence of better-off families in MINCs, not just childless households, is important: according to studies of 'area effects', better-off families can help improve schools and other services shared with low-income children. Further, most research in mixed tenure areas has found that social interaction across tenures is strongest among households with children. Inner-city MINCs may also offer an opportunity to stem the stream of non-poor families out of cities, if they can become good places to raise children. Families' choices to live in or leave inner-city MINCs are explored at three UK case studies areas, selected as among those most likely to attract families to the market-rate homes: Greenwich Millennium Village and Britannia Village, both in London, and the New Gorbals in Glasgow. Each case study involved a survey of 100 residents; semi-structured interviews with about 20 families in market-rate homes, 10 families in social rented homes, and 20 key actors; Census analysis, and a review of primary documents. There were more families in the private sector homes than developers and planners expected. Each area attracted different types of families, based on their socio-demographic characteristics, previous ties to the neighbourhood, and attitudes to city living. Families' decisions to live in and leave these neighbourhoods were influenced by the planning, design, and management of homes, schools, and open spaces, as well as by the social mix and community life. The research concludes that carefully managed MINCs may be able to retain non-poor families in the inner cities, but this will require more explicit policy support, as well as deeper understanding of the different types of families and their expectations and contributions. This new understanding contributes to knowledge about sustainable communities, 'child-friendly cities' and the broader urban renaissance agenda.

This thesis contours the dynamics of urban citizenship in a postcolonial city, against a cautionary note that such cities are undergoing a unique metamorphosis triggered by the national pursuit of neo-liberalisation policies. In an existing condition of sharply divided geographies, postcolonial cities, by becoming key portals to the flows of trans-nationalised capital, are being subject to a spatial reordering resulting in heightened forms of socio-economic inequality. Amidst a reduced terrain of common allegiances, neo-liberal citizenship rejects the ideal of commensurable citizens and is more conducive to a bourgeois ethic of right, which now defines the cityscape. In this regard, the research examines the construction of urban citizenship by Indian middle class homeowners in the southern metropolis of Chennai. Residents were interviewed on two main issues - their use of residents' associations as a means of collective action and their operation in the realm of civil society, and their adoption of a 'pristine' vocabulary in the re-imagination of the public spaces, mainly the beaches, in the city. Their responses are analysed against the state's pursuit of a new form of urban developmentalism to establish how they complement each other. This reveals that - oscillating between socio-political absenteeism and active citizenship - the political engagement of the Indian middle class is paradoxically through a process of 'depoliticisation'. While there is concern about the middle class's earlier practiced politics of indifference morphing into a politics of intolerance, this research finds that their bourgeois discourse of citizenship, hinging together the notion of propriety and property, comes across as weak and flawed, one that is exclusive but easily contested.