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AbstractCity‐region theory — fuzzy as the boundaries of such a theory may be — centres on the claim that the territorial basis and organizational architecture of the global economy is now a mosaic of globally connected city‐regions rather than nations. Despite some intuitive appeal, there is a growing body of critique which targets specific frailties arising from the theoretical reliance in such arguments on a global capitalist‐logic and, relatedly, the focus on global exchange relations. In exploring the limits of these theoretical tendencies, this paper provides a critical account of the processual and practical formation of Sydney (NSW, Australia) as a city‐regional space of governance. It pays particular attention to the contingent emergence of Sydney's metropolitan policy regionalism through political mediations of the particular and complex politics elicited by the spatial distributional consequences of city‐region development. Its concluding argument is that city‐region formation must be understood as an ongoing and multiscalar process without autonomy from the national political economy or from its territory.

As cities confront increasingly complex governance problems, conceptions of urban governance are becoming progressively more receptive to grasping its dynamic and multiplex nature, its connection to multiple lines of authority and forms of power, and the socio-material assemblages through which it works. Yet, despite conceptual advances around the dynamism and heterogeneity of urban governing assemblages and their durability, much remains to be understood about the processes and devices that compose and cohere their constituent elements to generate governance capacity. We explore this limitation by deploying Foucault's concept of 'dispositif' to analytically characterize how urban governance capacity is achieved around complex urban problems via processes and devices of composition and cohering. We do so by examining an emergent urban energy governance dispositif focused around top-tier commercial office space in Sydney, Australia: a key site around which multiple elements have been composed in a complex, entangled dispositif to produce effective urban governance capacity and accomplish substantive gains in office building energy performance. We characterise the socio-material elements involved and, more particularly, identify and analyse the processes and devices that compose the dispositif and cohere its governance capacity and we draw out the diverse forms of power that are immanent in these processes. These are, we argue, key steps in refining systematic understandings of the contemporary functioning and politics of the distributed urban governance of complex urban challenges. We conclude with key observations suggested by our analysis for urban governance scholarship.

As literature on the 'shadow state' shows, the voluntary sector has long served as a necessary conduit through which states orchestrate the governance of various populations. However, relatively little is known about the active role that voluntary organisations play in shaping and mobilising the capacities of the state to advance their own projects and interests. We draw out aspects of post-structural theories of the state, and particularly assemblage thinking, that provide the conceptual and analytical tools with which to explore how voluntary organisations may exceed their common positioning as co-opted by, and subservient to, the state. Through empirical research on homelessness policy development in Australia, we show how locally embedded voluntary organisations in Australia and the United States acted strategically and engaged transnationally – through material practices and multi-sited labours – to create opportunities to shape formal state agenda at national and sub-national levels. The activities and influence of these voluntary organisations are illustrative of the assembled nature of state capacity.

This article analyses the role of sport in the projection of city image (especially in non-metropolitan areas) and its significance as an urban and regional marker of civic progress and triumph over adversity. It presents a case study of the extraordinary community and media response to the 1997 grand final victory of the Newcastle Knights in the Australian Rugby League's inaugural Optus Cup competition. In discussing the case-study material and current debates on commerce, culture and place-marketing, the article canvasses the importance of sport in generating significant economic activity and urban redevelopment; reflecting and projecting, especially in deindustrializing cities, the growth of the service sector of the economy; promoting the image or `brand identity' of the city by identifying the success and interests of the team with that of the city; and functioning as a locus of community affect and identity which reproduces the concept of spatially constructed unity. The article cautions against an undue reliance on sports teams as indices of civic health, and on the use of sport to obscure cultural differences, structural social inequalities and the deep impact of deindustrialization.