Abstract
Analysts of the location of public facilities have tended to ignore the decisionmaking processes whereby these facilities are located. Therefore a detailed consideration of the development of the acute hospital services of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1948–1969 is presented in this paper. In particular, the arguments both for and against a proposal to locate the city's third general hospital at Freeman Road, in northeast Newcastle, are focused upon. Attention is drawn to divisions and divergences of opinion and strategy both within and between various branches of the state, and it is argued that any interpretation of state practice must be sensitive to such divisions and to the specific local circumstances in which state policies are articulated. In a concluding section, the broader theoretical implications of this evidence are drawn out.
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