David Valler
Biographic Data
| ID | 1488084 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Valler |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Valler |
| SIGNATURE | VALLER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oxford Brookes University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8255-8734 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Planning competencies and transformative pedagogy for sustainable development
Understood as “a means by which society decides collectively what urban [and rural] change should be like and tries to achieve that vision by a mix of means.”, there is broad consensus that planning should fully incorporate the notion of sustainable development. Planners have a critical role in envisioning and driving local transitions to sustainable development. This requires transforming what planners learn and how they learn in higher educatio…
An early reading of English planning reform under Starmer’s Labour government
This paper provides a tentative reading of proposed English planning reform under the Labour government elected in July 2024. Key aspects of the agenda are reviewed, together with the proposed extension of an ongoing devolution and decentralisation programme. Labour’s reforms are characterised as the leading-edge of a generally cautious ‘new state capitalism’. Though there are similarities with previous ‘roll-out neoliberal’ arrangements under th…
England’s dreaming? Corridor strategic spatial planning imaginaries, 1965–present
We consider three failed cases of urban corridor strategic spatial planning in Southern England. These cases remind us that there was a future in England’s dreaming given incremental coalescence of settlements. They pose questions of theories of state rescaling given the historic poverty of strategic spatial planning imagination in England. Planners of all descriptions have failed to appreciate the institutional contexts into which ideas have bee…
Strategy and dynamics in sub-regional governance and planning: Lessons from Eastern England 2010 to 2020
This article extends analysis of sub-regional governance dynamics, focusing on local institutions in Eastern England in the period from 2010 to 2020. Building on Third Phase Institutionalism and the growing interest in the impact of agency, the paper shows how the narratives, practices and rules of governance institutions both shape and are shaped by the varied strategic ambitions of local actors. Thus when particular objectives of ‘recognition’,…
‘What planners don’t do is plan’: Recovering the English strategic spatial planning imagination
Strategic spatial planning imagination is fundamentally distributed across private, public and third sectors within national planning systems. Drawing on stakeholder interviews, we review the practice of imagination in English strategic spatial planning post-2010, arguing that it is critically exposed in terms of both breadth and depth. We therefore make suggestions for further mobilizing dispersed imagination in England and underline the need fo…
‘Dealing’ with Governance and Planning? The Limits of Urban Intrapreneurialism
This paper examines ‘deal-based’ policy responses to local and sub-regional governance dilemmas, drawing on issues around strategic planning policy in Oxfordshire, UK. Deal-based policy is conceptualised as a form of urban intrapreneurialism, explicitly designed to cultivate change within local state operations and to promote associated organisational innovation, institutional proactivity, and policy reorientation. A general evaluative frame for …
The sinking of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc: Strategic planning in England at a nadir
There is a clear consensus amongst both academic commentators and the professional community that current arrangements for strategic planning in England are inadequate. The withdrawal of central government from leadership of the proposed ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ in early 2022 marks a particular nadir, not least given the ambitions for the planning of the area set out only a year earlier. This article offers a conjunctural reading of the failure of …
Evaluating regional spatial imaginaries: The Oxford–Cambridge Arc
The process of imagination is central to region formation, underpinning the spatial definition and territorial bounding of areas, the development of spatial identity and institutional capacity, and the cultivation of social relations and networks. While recent academic contributions have crystallized certain theoretical dimensions, attempts to evaluate the nature and efficacy of regional spatial imaginaries remain ad hoc. In this paper we derive …
Science Spaces as ‘Ethnoscapes’: Identity, Perception and the Production of Locality
Science and technology spaces around the world are, simultaneously, major physical, technological and symbolic forms, key elements of economic strategy, and sites of international labour movements and knowledge transfer. They are thus the product of multiple imaginations, with multiple, potentially divergent, objectives. In this paper, we compare three international science spaces as ‘ethnoscapes’, emphasising the distinctive perceptions, culture…
Singapore as Science ’Scape and Ethnoscape
As a state project to locate the nation within the global knowledge economy, Singapore’s Technology Corridor has acted as a testbed for experimenting with different models of an international scientific community. Its landscape, from garden-style science parks modelled after Silicon Valley to monuments for multidisciplinary research such as One North, reflects the dynamic interaction among various political and ideological aspirations—ideoscapes—…
Urban development and the politics of dissonance
Urban development and the politics of dissonance. Territory, Politics, Governance. A major reason for the peripheral treatment of political conflict in established theories of urban development derives from the tendency to underplay questions of territory and spatial governance. In this paper, we examine the implications of territorial discrepancy amongst governance arrangements and introduce the notion of ‘urban political dissonance’ in order to…
New Labour's Spaces of Competitiveness
New Labour's engagement with sub-national economic governance was a stuttering and uneven story marked by both significant achievements and jolting failures. While devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the introduction of Regional Development Agencies in England represented early successes, the bold rhetoric of New Labour's programme was not in reality matched by solid ideological foundations and a coherent policy approach. Rathe…
A Postsuburban World? An Outline of a Research Agenda
The emergence over the last 30-40 years of what is variously termed edge city, edgeless, and postsuburban development in North America and elsewhere raises a set of challenges for urban theory and existing ways of understanding the politics of urban growth and management. These challenges and their global import have been outlined in their broadest terms by members of a 'Los Angeles School'. In this paper we try to develop the detail of some of t…
Conceptualizing Local and Regional Economic Development in the USA
Valler D. and Wood A. Conceptualizing local and regional economic development in the USA, Regional Studies. Contemporary literature on local and regional economic development (LRED) in the USA is predominantly empirical and pragmatic, focusing on the conduct and efficacy of economic development policy. While this work is valuable in evaluating the detailed operation of local and regional economic development activity, the broader conceptual found…
Stealing the skills agenda? Devolution, business and post-16 education and training in Wales
English This article considers the role of business interests within the devolved political and governmental arrangements introduced by New Labour. We focus on the involvement of business in shaping post-16 education and training policy in Wales. Continuities apparent in the process of devolution across its administrative and political forms have produced a distinctive Welsh political economy involving public sector-dominated policy agendas perio…
Devolution and the political representation of business interests in the UK
Devolution and the Politics of Business Representation in Britain: A Strategic - Relational Approach
In this paper we seek to exploit some of the insights of a strategic - relational approach in examining the response of business interests to the newly devolved and regionalised governance context in Britain. In the analysis, the focus is directed particularly at the changing context within which business politics operates in the British regions and, importantly, on the perceptions of business actors and interests of their position in these chang…
The Politics of 'Integrated' Local Policy in England
From its inception in the early 1970s, local economic policy has shifted, albeit in complex and locally specific ways, through a variety of distinctive periods. One critical aspect of change has been the developing relation of 'economic' and 'social' policy spheres which are becoming less distinct, or even directly integrated. In this paper, we examine the emergence of ostensibly 'integrated' local economic and social strategies in two English me…
Turn Again? Rethinking Institutions and the Governance of Local and Regional Economies
Talking Business: An Actor-Centred Analysis of Business Agendas for Local Economic Development
Much of the recent literature about local governance of Britain's cities has examined the power of a newly evolving 'business elite'. However, in trying to understand changing governance forms, these analyses have generally lacked sensitivity to the role of actors (businesspeople) and their representative organizations. Analytical categories drawn from social movement theory (SMT) are introduced to develop a more actor-centred approach to the rol…
Local governance and local business interests: A critical review
Since 1980 the dominance of elected municipal government in Britain has given way to a broader local governance. While the precise configuration of this change has been debated in detail, approaches to the processes of restructuring and the operation and relative efficacy of new arrangements remain empirically limited and theoretically underdeveloped. We explore the usefulness of a range of contemporary theoretical accounts including regulationis…
Locality, local economic strategy and private sector involvement: Case studies in Norwich and Cardiff
Strategic' Enabling? Cardiff City Council and Local Economic Strategy
In this paper I examine the development of Cardiff City Council's local economic strategy. It is argued that the definition of local policy, of what the policy process means in particular instances, derives from the complex of economic, social, and political conditions found within and beyond a given locality. In Cardiff, the interaction of broad processes of restructuring with specific local forms has historically diluted Cardiff City Council's …
Strategy and Partnership in Local Economic Development: A Case Study in Local Economic Strategy Making
The development of a strategic response to local economic change has been of crucial importance to local authorities in the U.K. throughout the 1980s. This paper investigates the processes of strategy formulation and implementation in the city of Norwich. It raises a range of issues with regard to the potential effects of cooperation between the public and private sectors at the strategic level. The adoption of economic development as a strategic…
Economic development strategy formulation: The case of Norwich city council
A Postsuburban World? An Outline of a Research Agenda
The emergence over the last 30-40 years of what is variously termed edge city, edgeless, and postsuburban development in North America and elsewhere raises a set of challenges for urban theory and existing ways of understanding the politics of urban growth and management. These challenges and their global import have been outlined in their broadest terms by members of a 'Los Angeles School'. In this paper we try to develop the detail of some of t…
Turn Again? Rethinking Institutions and the Governance of Local and Regional Economies
Stealing the skills agenda? Devolution, business and post-16 education and training in Wales
English This article considers the role of business interests within the devolved political and governmental arrangements introduced by New Labour. We focus on the involvement of business in shaping post-16 education and training policy in Wales. Continuities apparent in the process of devolution across its administrative and political forms have produced a distinctive Welsh political economy involving public sector-dominated policy agendas perio…
Talking Business: An Actor-Centred Analysis of Business Agendas for Local Economic Development
Much of the recent literature about local governance of Britain's cities has examined the power of a newly evolving 'business elite'. However, in trying to understand changing governance forms, these analyses have generally lacked sensitivity to the role of actors (businesspeople) and their representative organizations. Analytical categories drawn from social movement theory (SMT) are introduced to develop a more actor-centred approach to the rol…
Locality, local economic strategy and private sector involvement: Case studies in Norwich and Cardiff
Devolution and the Politics of Business Representation in Britain: A Strategic - Relational Approach
In this paper we seek to exploit some of the insights of a strategic - relational approach in examining the response of business interests to the newly devolved and regionalised governance context in Britain. In the analysis, the focus is directed particularly at the changing context within which business politics operates in the British regions and, importantly, on the perceptions of business actors and interests of their position in these chang…
The Politics of 'Integrated' Local Policy in England
From its inception in the early 1970s, local economic policy has shifted, albeit in complex and locally specific ways, through a variety of distinctive periods. One critical aspect of change has been the developing relation of 'economic' and 'social' policy spheres which are becoming less distinct, or even directly integrated. In this paper, we examine the emergence of ostensibly 'integrated' local economic and social strategies in two English me…
Evaluating regional spatial imaginaries: The Oxford–Cambridge Arc
The process of imagination is central to region formation, underpinning the spatial definition and territorial bounding of areas, the development of spatial identity and institutional capacity, and the cultivation of social relations and networks. While recent academic contributions have crystallized certain theoretical dimensions, attempts to evaluate the nature and efficacy of regional spatial imaginaries remain ad hoc. In this paper we derive …
Urban development and the politics of dissonance
Urban development and the politics of dissonance. Territory, Politics, Governance. A major reason for the peripheral treatment of political conflict in established theories of urban development derives from the tendency to underplay questions of territory and spatial governance. In this paper, we examine the implications of territorial discrepancy amongst governance arrangements and introduce the notion of ‘urban political dissonance’ in order to…
Devolution and the political representation of business interests in the UK
New Labour's Spaces of Competitiveness
New Labour's engagement with sub-national economic governance was a stuttering and uneven story marked by both significant achievements and jolting failures. While devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the introduction of Regional Development Agencies in England represented early successes, the bold rhetoric of New Labour's programme was not in reality matched by solid ideological foundations and a coherent policy approach. Rathe…
Conceptualizing Local and Regional Economic Development in the USA
Valler D. and Wood A. Conceptualizing local and regional economic development in the USA, Regional Studies. Contemporary literature on local and regional economic development (LRED) in the USA is predominantly empirical and pragmatic, focusing on the conduct and efficacy of economic development policy. While this work is valuable in evaluating the detailed operation of local and regional economic development activity, the broader conceptual found…
Strategy and Partnership in Local Economic Development: A Case Study in Local Economic Strategy Making
The development of a strategic response to local economic change has been of crucial importance to local authorities in the U.K. throughout the 1980s. This paper investigates the processes of strategy formulation and implementation in the city of Norwich. It raises a range of issues with regard to the potential effects of cooperation between the public and private sectors at the strategic level. The adoption of economic development as a strategic…
Economic development strategy formulation: The case of Norwich city council
Strategy and Partnership in Local Economic Development: A Case Study in Local Economic Strategy Making
The development of a strategic response to local economic change has been of crucial importance to local authorities in the U.K. throughout the 1980s. This paper investigates the processes of strategy formulation and implementation in the city of Norwich. It raises a range of issues with regard to the potential effects of cooperation between the public and private sectors at the strategic level. The adoption of economic development as a strategic…
Locality, local economic strategy and private sector involvement: Case studies in Norwich and Cardiff
Strategic' Enabling? Cardiff City Council and Local Economic Strategy
In this paper I examine the development of Cardiff City Council's local economic strategy. It is argued that the definition of local policy, of what the policy process means in particular instances, derives from the complex of economic, social, and political conditions found within and beyond a given locality. In Cardiff, the interaction of broad processes of restructuring with specific local forms has historically diluted Cardiff City Council's …
Local governance and local business interests: A critical review
Since 1980 the dominance of elected municipal government in Britain has given way to a broader local governance. While the precise configuration of this change has been debated in detail, approaches to the processes of restructuring and the operation and relative efficacy of new arrangements remain empirically limited and theoretically underdeveloped. We explore the usefulness of a range of contemporary theoretical accounts including regulationis…
The Politics of 'Integrated' Local Policy in England
From its inception in the early 1970s, local economic policy has shifted, albeit in complex and locally specific ways, through a variety of distinctive periods. One critical aspect of change has been the developing relation of 'economic' and 'social' policy spheres which are becoming less distinct, or even directly integrated. In this paper, we examine the emergence of ostensibly 'integrated' local economic and social strategies in two English me…
Turn Again? Rethinking Institutions and the Governance of Local and Regional Economies
Talking Business: An Actor-Centred Analysis of Business Agendas for Local Economic Development
Much of the recent literature about local governance of Britain's cities has examined the power of a newly evolving 'business elite'. However, in trying to understand changing governance forms, these analyses have generally lacked sensitivity to the role of actors (businesspeople) and their representative organizations. Analytical categories drawn from social movement theory (SMT) are introduced to develop a more actor-centred approach to the rol…
Devolution and the Politics of Business Representation in Britain: A Strategic - Relational Approach
In this paper we seek to exploit some of the insights of a strategic - relational approach in examining the response of business interests to the newly devolved and regionalised governance context in Britain. In the analysis, the focus is directed particularly at the changing context within which business politics operates in the British regions and, importantly, on the perceptions of business actors and interests of their position in these chang…
Stealing the skills agenda? Devolution, business and post-16 education and training in Wales
English This article considers the role of business interests within the devolved political and governmental arrangements introduced by New Labour. We focus on the involvement of business in shaping post-16 education and training policy in Wales. Continuities apparent in the process of devolution across its administrative and political forms have produced a distinctive Welsh political economy involving public sector-dominated policy agendas perio…
Devolution and the political representation of business interests in the UK
Conceptualizing Local and Regional Economic Development in the USA
Valler D. and Wood A. Conceptualizing local and regional economic development in the USA, Regional Studies. Contemporary literature on local and regional economic development (LRED) in the USA is predominantly empirical and pragmatic, focusing on the conduct and efficacy of economic development policy. While this work is valuable in evaluating the detailed operation of local and regional economic development activity, the broader conceptual found…
New Labour's Spaces of Competitiveness
New Labour's engagement with sub-national economic governance was a stuttering and uneven story marked by both significant achievements and jolting failures. While devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the introduction of Regional Development Agencies in England represented early successes, the bold rhetoric of New Labour's programme was not in reality matched by solid ideological foundations and a coherent policy approach. Rathe…
A Postsuburban World? An Outline of a Research Agenda
The emergence over the last 30-40 years of what is variously termed edge city, edgeless, and postsuburban development in North America and elsewhere raises a set of challenges for urban theory and existing ways of understanding the politics of urban growth and management. These challenges and their global import have been outlined in their broadest terms by members of a 'Los Angeles School'. In this paper we try to develop the detail of some of t…
Urban development and the politics of dissonance
Urban development and the politics of dissonance. Territory, Politics, Governance. A major reason for the peripheral treatment of political conflict in established theories of urban development derives from the tendency to underplay questions of territory and spatial governance. In this paper, we examine the implications of territorial discrepancy amongst governance arrangements and introduce the notion of ‘urban political dissonance’ in order to…
Singapore as Science ’Scape and Ethnoscape
As a state project to locate the nation within the global knowledge economy, Singapore’s Technology Corridor has acted as a testbed for experimenting with different models of an international scientific community. Its landscape, from garden-style science parks modelled after Silicon Valley to monuments for multidisciplinary research such as One North, reflects the dynamic interaction among various political and ideological aspirations—ideoscapes—…
Science Spaces as ‘Ethnoscapes’: Identity, Perception and the Production of Locality
Science and technology spaces around the world are, simultaneously, major physical, technological and symbolic forms, key elements of economic strategy, and sites of international labour movements and knowledge transfer. They are thus the product of multiple imaginations, with multiple, potentially divergent, objectives. In this paper, we compare three international science spaces as ‘ethnoscapes’, emphasising the distinctive perceptions, culture…
Evaluating regional spatial imaginaries: The Oxford–Cambridge Arc
The process of imagination is central to region formation, underpinning the spatial definition and territorial bounding of areas, the development of spatial identity and institutional capacity, and the cultivation of social relations and networks. While recent academic contributions have crystallized certain theoretical dimensions, attempts to evaluate the nature and efficacy of regional spatial imaginaries remain ad hoc. In this paper we derive …
‘Dealing’ with Governance and Planning? The Limits of Urban Intrapreneurialism
This paper examines ‘deal-based’ policy responses to local and sub-regional governance dilemmas, drawing on issues around strategic planning policy in Oxfordshire, UK. Deal-based policy is conceptualised as a form of urban intrapreneurialism, explicitly designed to cultivate change within local state operations and to promote associated organisational innovation, institutional proactivity, and policy reorientation. A general evaluative frame for …
The sinking of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc: Strategic planning in England at a nadir
There is a clear consensus amongst both academic commentators and the professional community that current arrangements for strategic planning in England are inadequate. The withdrawal of central government from leadership of the proposed ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ in early 2022 marks a particular nadir, not least given the ambitions for the planning of the area set out only a year earlier. This article offers a conjunctural reading of the failure of …
‘What planners don’t do is plan’: Recovering the English strategic spatial planning imagination
Strategic spatial planning imagination is fundamentally distributed across private, public and third sectors within national planning systems. Drawing on stakeholder interviews, we review the practice of imagination in English strategic spatial planning post-2010, arguing that it is critically exposed in terms of both breadth and depth. We therefore make suggestions for further mobilizing dispersed imagination in England and underline the need fo…
Planning competencies and transformative pedagogy for sustainable development
Understood as “a means by which society decides collectively what urban [and rural] change should be like and tries to achieve that vision by a mix of means.”, there is broad consensus that planning should fully incorporate the notion of sustainable development. Planners have a critical role in envisioning and driving local transitions to sustainable development. This requires transforming what planners learn and how they learn in higher educatio…
An early reading of English planning reform under Starmer’s Labour government
This paper provides a tentative reading of proposed English planning reform under the Labour government elected in July 2024. Key aspects of the agenda are reviewed, together with the proposed extension of an ongoing devolution and decentralisation programme. Labour’s reforms are characterised as the leading-edge of a generally cautious ‘new state capitalism’. Though there are similarities with previous ‘roll-out neoliberal’ arrangements under th…
England’s dreaming? Corridor strategic spatial planning imaginaries, 1965–present
We consider three failed cases of urban corridor strategic spatial planning in Southern England. These cases remind us that there was a future in England’s dreaming given incremental coalescence of settlements. They pose questions of theories of state rescaling given the historic poverty of strategic spatial planning imagination in England. Planners of all descriptions have failed to appreciate the institutional contexts into which ideas have bee…
Strategy and dynamics in sub-regional governance and planning: Lessons from Eastern England 2010 to 2020
This article extends analysis of sub-regional governance dynamics, focusing on local institutions in Eastern England in the period from 2010 to 2020. Building on Third Phase Institutionalism and the growing interest in the impact of agency, the paper shows how the narratives, practices and rules of governance institutions both shape and are shaped by the varied strategic ambitions of local actors. Thus when particular objectives of ‘recognition’,…
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Corporate governance (9 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (9 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (9 works) · Engineering (8 works)