Designs on the urban: New Labour's urban renaissance and the spaces of citizenship

The contours of the so-called 'urban renaissance' in British cities have been the subject of increasing amounts of critical attention from urban scholars. In particular, many have noted the exclusionary consequences of the renaissance for urban public spaces in revalorized city centres. In this paper, the authors ask whether New Labour's urban policy might also be opening up new political opportunities for progressive interventions in contests over the meaning of the urban. After considering the influence of New Labour's social liberalism in the recently released Urban White Paper, the authors identify key tensions within British urban policy and show how both the re-scaling of urban governance and the urban design process have emerged as key strategies to overcome these tensions. The emphasis on urban design, it is argued, is opening up a new public sphere through which visions of the 'good city' might be contested. The political possibilities of this emergent public require further empirical investigation. Because it is relatively deterritorialized, it could offer an alternative space of urban citizenship to the over-privileged 'local community'.