New Challenges for Urban Governance

Why do we talk about ‘urban governance’ these days, much more than we discuss urban management? In his account of the cultural development of the English language, Ray-mondWilliams describes how the word ‘man-agement ’ was extended in the 16th century from its original Italian meaning of ‘to handle and train men ’ (or in its rst guise, horses) to ‘a general sense of taking control, taking charge, directing ’ (Williams, 1983, p. 190). It is this sense of the term management that has been lost in the urban context. In their institu-tionalist review of the contemporary urban challenge, Healey et al. state that urban management cannot be understood