Front Rentiers to Rantiers: 'Active Entrepreneurs', 'Structural Speculators' and the Politics of Marketing the City

Abstract

This paper explores the formation and practices of Marketing Manchester in the context of the rise of the partnership model of urban management and the apparent emergence of what some have referred to as growth coalitions. The combination of the growth in local unelected agencies and a shift in the national urban policy paradigm has demanded from cities a particular set of political responses and economic strategies. This paper uses Manchester to explore the transformation in the `business' of regeneration and seeks to tease out some of its theoretical implications. Drawing on a study of the city's political and economic elite, it is argued that the formation of Marketing Manchester and the disputes over its attempt to 'brand' Manchester feed into wider debates on the governance of cities, the politics around partnership formation and efforts to market cities.