Comparative Urban Politics and the Question of Scale ANDREW WOOD [Paper first received, February 2005; in final form, October 2005] Abstract. Critics of US theories of urban politics have drawn attention to the ‘localist’ nature of growth coalition and urban regime frameworks, arguing that they focus parochially on the urban scale and thereby neglect economic and political forces and processes of wider extent. Explicit attention to ques- tions of scale raises the prospect of a more robust urban theory, capable of adapting to a range of different national contexts. However, these more recent arguments remain susceptible to a ‘scalar trap’ in which discussion pivots on the relative significance of different scales or ‘levels’ in determining the nature and form of urban politics. In their place, the paper argues for an alterna- tive approach that encompasses a networked concept of scale. 1. Introduction The ‘politics of scale’ has become an important theme in recent work in political geography (see Flint, 2003, for a review). Building on what has now become a well-established geographical truism—that space is socially produced—political geographers have argued that ‘scale’ can be conceptualised in similar ways (Brenner, 2001, p. 599). From initial work in the late 1980s and early 1990s— most notably that of Neil Smith—the argument that ‘scale matters’ has become a familiar one (Smith and Dennis, 1987; Smith, 1993; Herod, 1991; Jonas, 1994; Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Marston, 2000). Indeed Herod’s (1991, p. 82) claim that “scale is, arguably, geography’s core concept” was remarkably prescient given the way in which work on scale and its politics has developed over the subsequent period. This interest in scale and the politics of scale has, accordingly, generated a sig- nificant literature (recent edited collections include Herod and Wright, 2002 and Sheppard and McMaster, 2004). In addition to carving out new substantive research areas, much of this work has also sought to reflect critically upon existing themes not least in political geography. In this paper, I focus specifically on studies of the politics of urban and regional development. This is an area in which ideas about scale and rescaling have had considerable impact. I argue that the work on rescaling provides an effective critique of the urban regime and growth coalition Andrew Wood is in the Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd Street, SEC 684, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA. E-mail: amwood@ou.edu. The author would like to thank Kevin Cox and three anonymous referees for comments on this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. Space and Polity, Vol. 9, No. 3, 201–215, December 2005 1356-2576 Print=1470-1235 Online=05=030201-15 # 2005 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080=13562570500509869