Abstract
AbstractThis article develops a framework for analysing region‐building processes as spatiotemporal constructs, involving competing spatial imaginaries and attempts at consolidating these through institution building. Central here is the performative role of what we refer to as ‘soft space imaginaries’ in the ‘phased’ building of regions for planning and economic development over time. We demonstrate how this understanding can be used to examine the phased enactment of successive waves of region‐building by tracing the evolution of multiple soft spatial imaginaries in north‐west England. The analysis exposes the variable logics, alliances of actors, and tactics used to build momentum and secure legitimacy around preferred imaginaries which advocates often promoted on the grounds that they somehow reflected ‘real geographies’ or ‘real economies’. In this context, soft space imaginaries are seen to play an integral role in intellectual case making about the contemporaneous form and purpose of subnational governance. Yet our analysis also exposes the durability of past soft space imaginaries and their continued impact on efforts to build new soft spaces. What emerges is an understanding of soft space imaginaries as more than just superficial representations. They can help determine where government investment is channelled and into what kinds of policies.
Highlights
The impulse to create and promote new regional identities based on new regional geographies remains strong in many parts of the world
In tracing the evolution of multiple spatial imaginaries, we explore from a broad perspective how variable logics came to underpin each imaginary, and how different actors employed diverse tactics to build momentum and secure legitimacy around their chosen imaginary at the expense of alternatives
Each imaginary was framed by distinctive mixes of logics and tactics, constructing these in ways that favoured certain areas and certain alliances of political and economic interests over others as they sought to steer state strategies in particular ways
Summary
The impulse to create and promote new regional identities based on new regional geographies remains strong in many parts of the world. The reason for choosing Manchester as the focus is primarily because it has been a fertile testing ground for new ideas about how to create new urban-regions for the past 50 years or so, involving a succession of initiatives These focused on addressing the legacy issues of urban industrial decline in the 1970s, but more recently Manchester has emerged at the heart of the government’s plans to build the so-called Northern Powerhouse: an initiative without a strong institutional base and a soft space with indeterminate boundaries (Lee, 2016). In this latest phase of region-building, the leaders of the Manchester city-region have been seen as setting the agenda for the devolution of powers and resources to new city-regional government arrangements across northern England, drawing on economic imaginaries constructed around a reading of agglomeration economics that privileges the role of large cities (Haughton et al, 2016; Kenealy, 2016)
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