Writings on urban development and planning in Europe have been dominated by a combination of technical studies of the real estate sector and more structural political economy approaches on land expropriation and financialisation. In this paper we draw on the example of the London Landed Estates, to critically assess how land-owning real estate companies, that we call city-owners, perform their roles and what models and knowledge sources they draw upon in managing and carefully curating urban spaces and places. Data sources include interviews with estate managers, others involved in, or affected by, their management, and other corporate public information. Our theoretical framing draws on performativity theory that we see as a valuable addition to existing research approaches. We describe and analyse the ways these agencies construct narratives and practices of socially responsible and historically established forms of performance, that they label place stewardship, and the specific mechanisms they use to bring places into existence. Collectively, the discussion calls for an increased focus on how models abstracted from local context and politics can be ‘localised’, in the study of the governance of the built environment. Greater attention also needs to be paid to the work that place does in influencing the strategies, tactics and activities of property owners.

关于欧洲城市发展和规划的著作主要是对房地产行业的技术研究与对土地征收和金融化的更结构化的政治经济学方法的结合。在本文中，我们以伦敦有地房地产公司为例，严格评估土地拥有房地产公司（我们称为城市所有者）的方式，发挥自己的作用，以及在管理和精心策划城市空间和场所时会借鉴哪些模型和知识资源。数据来源包括对房地产经理，参与其管理或受其管理影响的其他人的采访，以及其他公司公共信息。我们的理论框架借鉴了性能理论，我们认为这是对现有研究方法的宝贵补充。我们描述和分析这些机构构建对社会负责和历史悠久的绩效形式的叙事和实践的方式，它们将其标记为场所管理，以及它们用来使场所存在的特定机制。总体而言，讨论要求在研究建筑环境的治理过程中，更加关注如何从本地上下文和政治中抽象出的模型可以被“本地化”。还需要更加注意该场所在影响业主策略，策略和活动方面所做的工作。