Urban regeneration, governance and the state: exploring notions of distance and proximity

Recent debates over how to characterise the governance of urban regeneration are developed in this paper using a detailed case study of Attwood Green in Birmingham, UK. Specifically, the relationship between actors within governance networks and the state is critically reappraised. The case study suggests that actors tend to display highly reflexive understandings of government as multifaceted and multidimensional, simultaneously trying to establish distance and proximity from different aspects of state power. The relationship between those agents regenerating Attwood Green and local and central government is highly strategic, manipulating transfers of financial, political and legal power through new organisational configurations.