Title: Leading Urban Policy in Complex Times: a Critical Analysis of the Practice of Regeneration of Actors in Uk Regeneration Policy

UK Regeneration exists amidst a ‘burgeoning’ literature which states an ongoing desire to improve the outcomes of urban policy (Henderson, Bowlby and Raco 2007). But concerns about the symbolic nature of urban policyleave this aspiration somewhat wanting (Atkinson 2000, Wilks-Heeg 1997, Mossberger and Stoker 1997). Stone (2002) suggests that the gap which exists between intention and outcome creates a policy paradox which is rooted in an overly rational focus on policy goals. What emerges from this debate is the contradictory nature of urban policy which is subsequently re-produced in the form of ambiguity and ‘linguistic debates’ about the way that problems have been framed and leads to suggestions that the ‘real’ meaning should be ‘unpicked’ using narrative approaches (Lees 2003, Harris 2008, Atkinson 2008). However, the suggestion that policy now exists in post-modern era of governance (Richards and Smith 2003) leaves urban policy goals in a rather complex and woolly context. Indeed, Diamond & Liddle (2005) note how Urban Renaissance, with its transformation of urban governance through partnerships and joined up working, has left actors having to make sense of these new forms of governance. In response, this paper offers a critical analysis of the complexity of urban policy by exploring how actors involved in the design, delivery and management of UK regeneration policy manage to lead in such complex times. Here, using Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) notion of discursive absence or ‘lack’ it is suggested that the presence of three discourses associated with the pursuit of private enterprise, public enterprise and community enterprise, exist in the form of ‘Nodal Points’ corresponding to City Regions; Narrowing the Gap and Community Capacity. They are each ‘temporarily’ bound together through an array of ‘floating signifiers’ but they also exhibit lack in the form of inherent contradictions and tensions. Importantly, what a Laclavian analysis suggests is that the presence of lack across all 3 discourses is representative of the bureaucratic struggles which emerge as a result of a new right hegemony which commodifies all aspects of work and social life and which actors manage by emotionally investing in one discourse over another. This is in keeping with the suggestion by Raco (2005), that what currently exists is not a dominant ideology, but a more pluralist one, based on the presence of multiple discourses and calls for new ways of managing regeneration in the context of these increasingly complex times.