Urban Studies, Vol. 33, No. 8, 1441±1461, 1996 Urban Design and City Regeneration: Social Representations of Entrepreneurial Landscapes Phil Hubbard [Paper received in ®nal form, January 1996] Summary. Recent accounts of urban political change have been seemingly preoccupied with demonstrating the existence of a transition from managerial to entrepreneurial forms of gover- nance, typi®ed by the speculative deployment of resources to attract investment. Within such processes, the construction of spectacular urban landscapes has become a requisite strategy for making the city attractive as a site for investment, yet, with a few notable exceptions, the meanings projected by these landscapes have been given little attention. This paper sets out to rectify this omission by developing ideas from European social psychology, particularly that of the social representation, to explore the process by which the meaning and symbolism of these new urban landscapes is imposed by dominant interests in such a way as to make them appear legitimate. Using Birmingham as a case study, interviews with local residents are drawn on to demonstrate that even when opposition to the city’s entrepreneurial policies was articulated, it relied on the existence of a shared representation of its entrepreneurial landscapes, one which acknowledged their spectacular and post-modern appearance. The paper thus concludes by suggesting that such urban landscapes can potentially play a crucial role in forging a new cultural politics of place conducive to the legitimation of entrepreneurial policies. 1. Introduction A wholly predominant trend in urban studies over the last two decades has been an ac- knowledgement that cities are being gov- erned in different ways as they adapt to changing economic, social and political con- texts. According to many commentators, this shift in urban governance has been character- ised by the diminishing importance of the local provision of welfare and services by city governments in favour of a more out- ward orientated stance designed to foster lo- cal development and economic growth (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Lovering, 1995). As such, the focus of much urban govern- mental activity is no longer the provision of services for city residents, but a concern with the prosperity of the city and its ability to attract jobs and investment. These profound changes in the way that cities operate have witnessed the public sector taking over char- acteristics once distinctive to the private sec- torÐrisk-taking, inventiveness, promotion and pro®t motivation, leading such modes of governance to be described as entrepreneu- rial (Harvey, 1989; Roberts and Schein, 1993). In North American cities, where the notion of entrepreneurialism has been most widely acknowledged, such changes are as- sociated with the emergence of growth coali- tions, partnerships between local state and Phil Hubbard is in the Department of Geography, School of Natural and Environmental Science, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK. 0042-0980/96/081441-21 $6.00 Ó 1996 The Editors of Urban Studies