Foreclosing Futures: A Case Study in Urban Regeneration in Central Salford

This thesis provides an exploration of urban regeneration in the City of Salford, Greater Manchester. It is a detailed empirical case study drawing on interviews with regeneration policy makers in Salford to provide an understanding of the decisions that were taken and the results that emerged. In particular this thesis highlights the entrepreneurial forms of governance enacted by Salford City Council to acquire private investment and development opportunities, and explores the Council’s method of reducing its statutory requirements and democratic controls and increasing its financial risk-taking in order to secure these opportunities. Drawing on the post-political literature, this thesis questions the ‘no alternative’ discourse that accompanies these measures.

This thesis also explores the wider changes to urban regeneration policy by the Coalition Government under conditions of economic austerity, considering the ways in which regeneration can be said to have moved from attempting to alleviate social problems via focused policies targeted at spaces of deprivation towards an urban policy based on delivering incentivised economic growth. It raises questions about the potential impact of this change for those places in Salford that continue to suffer from high levels of deprivation and are therefore less likely to secure financial investment under the new policy regime.

This thesis contributes to the urban studies literature through a discussion of the concept of foreclosure. Principally the thesis considers how the re-envisioning and reordering of the City forecloses it as a space of engagement for those residents who are ‘out of place’ within this newly designed space. It highlights how the designated vision for Salford’s future forecloses alternative ways of progressing, setting it on a singular linear trajectory. It also considers how the Council’s quest to regenerate means that it commits in the present to something which forecloses its ability to exercise change in the future.