Renewed interest in urban policy and British cities has been a defining feature of New Labour's government since coming to power. As detailed in the book's introduction, this focus on the urban became strongly linked to several major policy strategies, notably the presentation of Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force report and the subsequent urban White Paper, Our towns and cities (ODPM, 2000). Getting to grips with the intellectual framework for this set of policies, in particular in relation to previous regeneration programmes, presents us with the key theme for the first section in this volume, and forms the backdrop for the first three chapters.

Various commentators have pointed to the visionary nature of the British urban renaissance while drawing similarities with North American new urbanist planning and development (Lees, 2003b; Talen, 2005). These visions of ‘reborn’ British cities are imbued with wider assumptions not only about the way these cities work and are constituted physically; they also contain implicit beliefs about city economies and its social relations. Many policy commentators have sought to uncover and prise apart these assumptions during the course of New Labour's administration. This, in turn, has meant a significant focus on the tenor and content of key policy debates as a key feature of academic engagements with New Labour's urban policy framework.

In the course of this engagement, the seeming pragmatism of ‘what works’ has become identified as one of the core techniques of pursuing a particular vision of state–social relationships. In particular there has been an emphasis on favouring quantifiable outcomes (such as the ‘floor targets’ of the New Deal for Communities Programme) and a need to ensure tangible indicators of ‘best value’. This ‘new public management’ has been central in shifting the nature of social and economic modes of regulation from one characterised by centralised government to one of multiple and far-reaching governance – no less coordinated centrally perhaps, even for all the talk of community engagement and devolved governance arrangements. Crawford's (1998) earlier work on the establishment of community safety partnerships serves as a useful pointer that highlights the way in which such arrangements have pushed towards the embedding of business practices in public service delivery, and indeed continued earlier Conservative attempts at introducing neoliberalism (Hughes & McLaughlin, 2002).