Urban Managerialism

Abstract

Urban managerialism developed as a research framework to examine the influence of so‐called gatekeepers or controllers of certain government and nongovernmental services at the urban scale. Emerging from the work of British urban sociologist Ray Pahl, this approach guided many specific investigations but it also engendered debates about the authority and autonomy of individuals in urban governance. While initially focused on the provision of housing, researchers applied variants of the framework to urban processes in a wide array of contexts in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries. Scholars using the lens of urban managerialism contributed to the evolution of theoretical and empirical explorations of urbanization in the period of transition to the forms of postindustrial or late capitalism that came to be dominated by neoliberal policies.