Actually existing managerialism: Planning, politics and property development in post-1945 Britain

This article engages a long-established paradigm within urban studies: that of the transition from managerialism to entrepreneurialism in late 20th-century urban governance and the associated process of neoliberalisation. It begins from a fundamental intellectual problem; although we are well served with studies of urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberalism, we know surprisingly little of the detailed workings of the ‘pre-neoliberal’, managerial era from the 1940s to the 1970s. In the absence of sustained investigation of this period, many chronologies and critiques of urban transformation rest upon a set of assumptions which – as this article shows – are not always accurate. The article focuses upon Britain, tracing the installation of a modern planning regime in the 1940s and surveying some key features of the UK urban redevelopment regime as it evolved over the ensuing decades. It shows that much of what is held to be paradigmatic of neoliberal urbanism (public–private partnerships, urban entrepreneurialism, financialisation) was already powerfully present within British urbanism in the earlier, managerial era. I highlight in particular the dramatic post-war rise of the UK property development industry, and the new urban forms and norms it generated, as a key product of the era of urban managerialism in Britain. I relate these surprising findings to Britain’s distinctive history and political economy but I also advance arguments that are of wider relevance; around the nature and aims of governance from the 1940s to the 1970s, and how we should best conceptualise and explain processes of neoliberalisation.