As the first installment of a two-part article exploring contemporary transformations in metropolitan governance in the wake of the entrepreneurial turns of the 1980s and subsequent waves of neoliberalisation and financialisation, a case is outlined here for a ‘conjunctural’ approach to urban analysis. This can be considered to be complementary to, but at the same time distinct from, some of the concurrent approaches to comparative urbanism, in that it explicitly problematises the relative positioning of cities in the context of uneven development and multiscalar relations, as well as the dialogic connections between case studies, midlevel concepts and revisable theory claims. Taking as its point of departure the current financial and political crisis in Atlantic City, the New Jersey casino capital, the article historicises the concept of the entrepreneurial city, placing this in the context, successively, of the evolving ‘commonsense’ of neoliberal governance, the emergence of austerity urbanism and the intensification of financialised restructuring. In tracing an arc from more abstract theory claims through to the specific circumstances of contemporary urban restructuring in the United States, the article sets the stage for the more granular and concrete analysis of ‘late-entrepreneurial’ Atlantic City to follow in Part 2. To the extent that it is necessary to construct some of this staging, this first part of the article reflects on some of the methodological implications of a conjunctural approach to urban studies.