MULTISCALED INTERPRETATIONS OF URBAN CHANGE - THE FEDERAL, THE STATE,AND THE LOCAL IN THE WESTERN AREA STRATEGY OF ADELAIDE

My aim is to question the concept of an indisputable hierarchy of scal es-global, national, regional, and local-in which processes, outcomes, and responses can be categorised as originating at distinct and discr ete levels. Such a concept has allowed regional and local influence to be presented as the context in which the operation of global processe s is fine-tuned, rather than as being a formative part of those proces ses. I aim to apply nonhierarchical modes of thinking about scale to a n empirical example by examining a federally funded urban development programme in Adelaide: the Western Area Strategy, a federal initiative , administered in a local setting by a state administration. The relat ions between processes, institutions, sociocultural, economic, and pol itical conditions at a variety of scales are shown to operate simultan eously and multidirectionally in defining the local outcomes of the pr ogramme. These relations are constitutive of scale itself. The 'local' outcomes of policy are shown to be formulated at a variety of scales and to be mutually constitutive of outcomes at other,'higher', scales. Accepting the notion that scales are mutually constitutive and questi oning the production of scale and interscale relations opens new paths of explanation for the spectrum of economic, sociocultural, and polit ical processes determining the nature of contemporary society and dete rmining their concrete expression in political and social interactions within nation-states and localities.