Entrepreneurial urbanism, austerity and economic governance

Abstract

Many austerity accounts focus on the shrinkage of city governments, with less emphasis on state-building responses. Utilising the Cultural Political Economy approach, this paper examines the ‘selection’ of pro-growth ‘economic imaginaries’ that seek to mediate austerity. These issues are examined by way of a case study analysis of the city government of Coventry, England. The paper finds that a pro-growth/market imaginary dominates through sedimentation and discursive and governmental depoliticisation, resulting in the marginalisation of social regeneration priorities. Critical to this is the role of historically constituted discourses and nation state ‘selectivity’ that legitimises this particular economic imaginary.