Global changes in production and consumption, and the resulting competition between places for investment flows, have encouraged the emergence of the 'entrepreneurial state'. This case study of active entrepreneurialism, aimed at promoting Newcastle's interurban competiveness through material and symbolic recontructions, reveals the changes wrought by an entrepreneurial approach to the style and content of city government politics. The Huneysuckle Development Corporation operates at the juncture between federal, state, and local government engagement with capital in the attempt to address the local impacts of economic restructuring. It provides an important case study of the shifting parametres of the relationship between various tiers of the state, and between these tiers and the intersts of capital in contemporary urban redevelopment. It also addresses the problematic questions of sustainability, and equity in urban entrepreneurialism, while providing a long-overdue empirical study of Newcastle.