IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v42y2010i8p1902-1924.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional Economic Policy ‘In-the-Making’: Imaginaries, Political Projects and Institutions for Auckland's Economic Transformation

Author

Listed:
  • Steffen Wetzstein

    (School of Earth and Environment, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia)

  • Richard Le Heron

    (School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand)

Abstract

This paper explores the utility of investigating regional economic policy (REP) as constituted through the interplay of imaginaries, political projects, and institutional arrangements. It frames REP in process terms—as continually ‘in-the-making’ and emerging out of the intersecting trajectories of ideas, policy, individuals, and other resources. The empirical focus is economic governance in Auckland, New Zealand, in the years following the widely publicised neoliberal reforms and profound economic restructuring of the 1980s and early 1990s. The analysis draws on the authors' particular positionality of being involved in knowledge production, both in academic and in policy arenas, and benefits from the development of a range of poststructural political economy methodologies by Auckland-based researchers. The concept of ‘political project’ is argued to be a useful analytical tool for linking circulating academic imaginaries, political initiatives, and particular policy rationales. By means of juxtaposing key aspects of particular economic imaginaries with political/policy initiatives and developments, it is shown that knowledge production for subnational economic governance is coconstitutive, contradictory, occurs on multiple geographical scales, and is mediated and remediated by place-specific and time-specific institutional actors. The methodological strategy of highlighting associations with the potential for interaction, rather than seeking causal processes, not only reveals the politicised nature of contextual facets of contemporary interventions, but promises to make a richer base for exploring possibilities for acting differently in urban and regional policy worlds.

Suggested Citation

  • Steffen Wetzstein & Richard Le Heron, 2010. "Regional Economic Policy ‘In-the-Making’: Imaginaries, Political Projects and Institutions for Auckland's Economic Transformation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(8), pages 1902-1924, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:42:y:2010:i:8:p:1902-1924
    DOI: 10.1068/a42248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a42248
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a42248?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wendy Larner, 2001. "Governing Globalisation: The New Zealand Call Centre Attraction Initiative," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(2), pages 297-312, February.
    2. Bob Jessop & Ngai-Ling Sum, 2000. "An Entrepreneurial City in Action: Hong Kong's Emerging Strategies in and for (Inter)Urban Competition," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 37(12), pages 2287-2313, November.
    3. Kenneth Carlaw & Les Oxley & Paul Walker & David Thorns & Michael Nuth, 2006. "Beyond The Hype: Intellectual Property And The Knowledge Society/Knowledge Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 633-690, September.
    4. Rhys Jones & Mark Goodwin & Martin Jones & Glenn Simpson, 2004. "Devolution, State Personnel, and the Production of New Territories of Governance in the United Kingdom," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(1), pages 89-109, January.
    5. Bob Jessop & Ngai-Ling Sum, 2006. "Beyond the Regulation Approach," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3606.
    6. D Conradson & E Pawson, 1997. "Reworking the Geography of the Long Boom; The Small Town Experience of Restructuring in Reefton, New Zealand," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(8), pages 1381-1397, August.
    7. Gordon MacLeod, 2001. "Beyond Soft Institutionalism: Accumulation, Regulation, and Their Geographical Fixes," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(7), pages 1145-1167, July.
    8. Andrew E. G. Jonas & David C. Gibbs, 2003. "Changing Local Modes of Economic and Environmental Governance in England: A Tale of Two Areas," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 84(4), pages 1018-1037, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steffen Wetzstein, 2008. "Relaunching Regional Economic-Development Policy and Planning for Auckland: Remaking the State and Contingent Governance under Neoliberalism," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 26(6), pages 1093-1112, December.
    2. Monios, Jason & Wilmsmeier, Gordon, 2013. "The role of intermodal transport in port regionalisation," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 161-172.
    3. Robin Wright & Keavy McFadden, 2023. "Social reproduction and public finance: A comparative study of TIF in California and Chicago," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 2108-2127, November.
    4. Kevin Ward & Andrew E G Jonas, 2004. "Competitive City-Regionalism as a Politics of Space: A Critical Reinterpretation of the New Regionalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(12), pages 2119-2139, December.
    5. Jim Glassman, 2018. "Geopolitical economies of development and democratization in East Asia: Themes, concepts, and geographies," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(2), pages 407-415, March.
    6. Andrew M. Wood, 2004. "Domesticating Urban Theory? US Concepts, British Cities and the Limits of Cross-national Applications," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(11), pages 2103-2118, October.
    7. Albert S. Fu & Martin J. Murray, 2014. "Glorified Fantasies and Masterpieces of Deception on Importing Las Vegas into the ‘New South Africa’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 843-863, May.
    8. Jacob Salder, 2020. "Spaces of regional governance: A periodisation approach," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(6), pages 1036-1054, September.
    9. Fabien Tarrit, 2009. "The explosion of the current world crisis: an illustration of the instability of capitalism. A Marxist view," Working Papers hal-02020890, HAL.
    10. Sjur Kasa & Anders Underthun, 2010. "Navigation in New Terrain with Familiar Maps: Masterminding Sociospatial Equality through Resource-Oriented Innovation Policy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(6), pages 1328-1345, June.
    11. Katharine S. E. Cresswell Riol & Sean Connelly, 2023. "Beyond a neoliberal critique of hunger: a genealogy of food charity in Aotearoa New Zealand," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 1221-1238, September.
    12. Jeon, Heesang, 2015. "Knowledge and Contemporary Capitalism in Light of Marx's Value Theory," Thesis Commons g5njk, Center for Open Science.
    13. Yeung, Henry Wai-chung & Liu, Weidong & Dicken, Peter, 2006. "Transnational corporations and network effects of a local manufacturing cluster in mobile telecommunications equipment in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 520-540, March.
    14. Jianfa Shen, 2010. "Cooperation and Competition Between Cities: Urban Development Strategies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen," Chapters, in: Peter Karl Kresl (ed.), Economic Strategies for Mature Industrial Economies, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Wróblewski Marek & Kwieciński Leszek, 2017. "Technology Parks in Poland As an Element of Public Proinnovation Policy—Selected Results from Empirical Research," Central and Eastern European Review, Sciendo, vol. 11(1), pages 1-26, December.
    16. Nurit Alfasi & Talia Margalit, 2014. "The challenge of regulating private planning initiatives," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Stefano Moroni (ed.), Cities and Private Planning, chapter 13, pages 269-294, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Monios, Jason & Lambert, Bruce, 2013. "The Heartland Intermodal Corridor: public private partnerships and the transformation of institutional settings," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 36-45.
    18. Stephanie Farmer & Chris D Poulos, 2019. "The financialising local growth machine in Chicago," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(7), pages 1404-1425, May.
    19. lain Deas & Alex Lord, 2006. "From a New Regionalism to an Unusual Regionalism? The Emergence of Non-standard Regional Spaces and Lessons for the Territorial Reorganisation of the State," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(10), pages 1847-1877, September.
    20. Eran Ben-Joseph, 2009. "Commentary: Designing Codes: Trends in Cities, Planning and Development," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(12), pages 2691-2702, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:42:y:2010:i:8:p:1902-1924. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.