Partnership in Urban Regeneration in the UK: The Sheffield Central Area Study

During the later 1980s, support for public-private sector partnerships came to the fore in British urban policy. This paper explores one particular manifestation of partnership in an English provincial city, the Sheffield Central Area Study, within the context of growth coalition and regime theories. Analysis of agendas adopted by partners and questions of power, suggests that existing theories do not satisfactorily account for experience within partnerships. In particular, in the British context, conceptualisations of partnership need to embrace questions such as the relatively strong position of local government and its professionalised bureaucracy, and the commensurately weaker status of the business community in general and landowners in particular.