Seeing like a business: rethinking the role of business in regional development, planning and governance

Rather than accept the mainstream view that we need to bring the state back in to regional thinking, this paper argues that the state – and our analysis of it – is restricting understandings of urban and regional change and leading to a state-territorial trap. Analysing over forty years of literature on growth-oriented regionalism, the paper reveals important blind spots in our approaches to researching regions (and other forms of place making) and the role of business in regional development, planning and governance. Presenting a comparison of two spatial governance projects in the UK – The Peel Group’s Atlantic Gateway Strategy and UK Government’s Local Enterprise Partnerships – the paper reveals how business orchestrated regionalism is a new empirical reality, but one we are ill-equipped to understand. It argues that we need to move beyond the conceptual and methodological lock-in of business-as-usual approaches, to start ‘seeing like a business’ and revealing the practical politics and pragmatism by which actors – both state and business – are engaging to effect regional change and shape regional futures.