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Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within ‘pride in place’

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  • Michael Howcroft
  • Nicky Marsh
  • Joseph Owen

Abstract

The ‘pride in place’ mission of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda has foregrounded the importance of feelings in local and national development strategies. While pride in place gestures to the emotional symptoms of geographical inequality and the so-called left behind, it does not address their structural causes. This article explores how the lens of pride, and the affective governance it demands, has been used to reimagine place in UK policy. We argue that governance has taken a therapeutic and palliative turn, and that the pride in place mission obscures ideological inconsistencies in policymaking. The article explains how the government’s narrow conception of pride as a mechanism of affective governance illustrates tensions in places at different scales: between national and local issues; between public and private spheres; and between individual and collective identities. It claims that a more meaningful understanding of pride must be predicated on people’s collective capacity for felt and emotional responses. Crucially, any metrics for pride must capture that complexity to help restore social infrastructure in places.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Howcroft & Nicky Marsh & Joseph Owen, 2025. "Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within ‘pride in place’," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 43(2), pages 387-405, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:43:y:2025:i:2:p:387-405
    DOI: 10.1177/23996544241268342
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    1. Enrico Tommarchi & Franco Bianchini, 2022. "A heritage-inspired cultural mega-event in a stigmatized city: Hull UK City of Culture 2017," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 478-498, March.
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    3. John Tomaney & Maeve Blackman & Lucy Natarajan & Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros & Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite & Myfanwy Taylor, 2024. "Social infrastructure and ‘left-behind places’," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(6), pages 1237-1250, June.
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