Understanding the role of the national exemplar in constructing 'strategic glurbanization'

This article focuses on the tensions between economic and environmental priorities through attempts to reconfigure urban governance arrangements in a world city. We examine these tensions through the development of the hydrogen energy economy in London and through attempts to cultivate new techniques of governance in realizing this vision. Through case study material, we develop two representations of the negotiation of new forms of governance. First, we outline the representation of 'London as world leader in progressive urban governance'. Second, we develop a characterization of 'the politics of the world city in CO2 reduction'. The article moves on to address the scalar making up of these representations, in relation to and through analysing multiple interpretations of London as a 'national exemplar'. The active positioning and representation of London as the exemplar by the national state and the specificities of London governance, we claim, enables the mayor to actively negotiate between the two sets of apparently conflicting logics of hydrogen development. London's energy strategy is therefore to a large extent 'nationalized' while at the same time national energy policy is also regionalized around London. Consequently, London is differentially and positively positioned in comparison to other city-regions of the UK. The need to develop a sustainability fix that can allow London, and the greater South East of England, to continue to grow economically and within the apparent constraints of environmental limits requires a specific governance fix around the national exemplar and new socio-technical energy networks, which we characterize as 'strategic glurbanization'.