The Enabling Local State and Urban Development: Resources, Rhetoric and Planning in East London

Current literature on the new urban governance highlights the changes in patterns of relationships between actors at the local level, but also emphasises the continuing or even increasing importance of central government; in urban policy in particular there has been notable centralisation. Using a case study of urban regeneration within the Thames Gateway area of London, the paper examines the locus of power in the relationships between central and local government and the key economic interests; this allows a reappraisal of the claims of the local authority to be enabling development. The paper then turns to the language of enabling as found in policy and academic literature and argues both that changes in the language of policy have been distinctive and that this is actively contributing to the new urban governance. This analysis is grounded in a framework for considering the relationship of language to the policy process, proposing a rhetorical methodology of policy discourse analysis.