Whatever happened to urban governance?

Abstract

Phelps and Miao are rightly reappraising the idea ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ at a time when calls for city leaders to be outgoing abound. In a brief response to their proposition as to better qualify the varieties of entrepreneurialism at work in cities, I argue that we need to attend more explicitly to the politics underpinning these varieties, not to forget the urban governance that underscores urban entrepreneurship. Only by taking into account the interdisciplinary encounter of geography and politics, as in the case of more aptly qualifying urban (or city) diplomacy, can we grasp the fundamental reconfigurations of urban governance these varieties are prompting.