This chapter outlines lessons from east Manchester which are relevant to national and international policy-makers. First, the historical context is important and there is both change and continuity in regeneration. Temporal factors also influence evaluation. Evaluations are generally ‘static’ and thus miss the cyclical nature of phenomena from participation to unemployment and population stability. Second, agency matters. Although individual capacity is constrained by structures which are often national and global, this individual capacity matters. This was evident in Manchester City Council’s leadership and in the agency of residents. Third, the ebb and flow of regeneration initiatives mirrors ideological change and continuity. Politics still matters particularly for deprived residents in areas like east Manchester where the Coalition Government’s market approach is sorely tested especially in times of recession. Fourth, in proceeding from the practice of east Manchester to theory, the evidence questioned the usefulness of the concept of governance, challenged ideal theories of participatory democracy and shed light on ideological distinctions often hidden by the label of neo-liberalism. Finally, the chapter is optimistic in recognising gains in east Manchester but is realistic in acknowledging that these are micro-achievements owing to the limitations of national policy and the context of global capitalism.

This chapter introduces the case-study of east Manchester and lays out the themes and structures of the book. Attention is paid to structure and agency, the specificities of time and place and the political. Governance, ideology and participation are key political concepts which inform the analysis pursued in the book. The structure of the book is outlined: the first part describes and evaluates various aspects of the regeneration initiative. The second part uses practice in east Manchester to analyse a series of theoretical topics.

In 1999, when French farmer José Bové’s protested against the WTO, he became a symbol of the growing discontent with globalisation. There was a growing feeling that globalisation mainly benefited transnational corporations, not ordinary people.It was just one of many protests around the world, and led the political and business elites to re-think globalisation. The results were efforts to re-engineer the global architecture to give it a human face by instilling universal values or norms into markets, and to encourage transnational corporations to embrace corporate social responsibility.

A generation of internationalists occupied positions of power in the US, Great Britain and Europe during the Second World War. Most had supported President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations and had been disappointed when it failed. They were determined to complete Wilson’s dream, but this time around the postwar order would be constructed around robust institutional architecture, in which they were willing to sacrifice the purity of their internationalist vision against the realpolitik of the times.Two models of the international liberal order emerged. One was built around the principle that all nations were equal before international law, whether powerful or not. The architects of the Europe Union went further, and experimented with supranational authority, that constrained the sovereignty of member nations.

In 1971, in order to find a quick fix to America’s growing currency crisis, President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold removing a key feature of the Bretton Woods monetary system. Called the ‘Nixon Shock,’ it threatened the postwar international order.Into the breach stepped a new generation of global architects, mainly drawn from the business community and neoliberal think tanks. Together, they worked towards a new model of globalisation in which governments would step back from active management of the world’s economy. Instead, the rule of law would limit the ability of governments to interfere with the free movement of goods, services and capital around the world.

The stimulus packages since 2009 have not generated as much infrastructure investment as anticipated, despite convincing evidence that before 2008 there was a significant investment deficit. The same can be said for innovation for cities. What’s the problem? Reluctant to act, governments trusted markets to shape demand, assuming that supply would follow. Each sector looks after itself, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Innovation as an urban activity, and to improve cities, suffer from similar handicaps. In any case both innovation and infrastructure will call for changes to cities as they are, highlighting the need to make cities more easily adaptable. Yet governments, having downgraded strategic planning for years, seem unable to generate a vision of the future of cities which could generate innovation and the investment to incorporate innovations into everyday life.

Problems in housing markets trigged the crisis of 2007-08. Housing policies which treated housing in relation to macro-economic trends and finance failed in many countries. Housing has been used as a tool for labour mobility, to shift unemployed people to areas of labour demand, and to generate higher levels of home ownership to stabilize society. A reassessment of the assumptions embedded in these objectives is overdue. Needed are policies for housing which maintain and even increase the positive agglomeration effects of cities and metropolitan regions. Making the transition calls for a political strategy based on green growth, social change and ageing, and risk reduction.

At the same time as Keynes was celebrating success at Bretton Woods, neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek started to publicly campaign against the liberal economic order, in what he called the ‘war of ideas.’He fired the first shots in this war with the publication of The Road to Serfdom, and then established the Mont Pèlerin Society, where he hoped to rally fighters for his war. He turned out to be a poor field general and it looked like the war might be over before it started.Hayek, however, did inspire a young fighter pilot, Antony Fisher, who did have fire in his belly and was keen to face grapeshot in the war of ideas. In 1956, Fisher established the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). This think tank, together with others modelled on the IEA, helped spread pro-market ideas. The high point of their campaign came when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were elected, establishing neoliberalism as the new economic orthodoxy.In 1980, Hayek advised Fisher that he needed to seed the world with neoliberal think tanks. The result was the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which networks over 400 think tanks worldwide and they have helped spread the war of ideas.

Cities are the engines of the economy, but the are running low on two key inputs, infrastructure investment and innovation. The image of the engine calls attention to flawed assumptions made about how urban economies function, linked to the dominance of macro-economic and sectoral policies. There are problems related to data which make it difficult for policy makers to anticipate the dynamic effects of urban change; as a result they are not able to enhance the positive effects of density and specialization (agglomeration effects). Governments need policies for cities – forward looking, not remedial. The chapter highlights the costs of the 2008 crisis before ending with a series of 9 questions about the future of economic and political systems and of the role of cities in them.