City-regions: reconciling
competitiveness and cohesion?
Presentation to COST Action A26 meeting
Dortmund, 18.6.05
Prof. Alan Harding
This presentation
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Context: theory, UK policy environment
The value of city-regions
Policy and city-regions
Governance and city-regions
Context (1)
Theory
• Brenner: the collapse of spatial
Keynesianism and the rise of urban
locational policy
• The state and (globally competitive) cityregions: post-welfarism, new urban policy,
sub-national institutional restructuring
• Neo-liberal imperatives
Context (2): Brenner +s and -s
• Strengths
• Ties together fragmented city-regional soc. sci. work, links it
effectively to the nation state rescaling debate for the 1st time
• Good on breadth of ‘urban’ policy, inter-relatedness of scales, links
between sub-national policy change and urban-regional institutional
restructuring
• Weaknesses
• Lost in transition? KWNS-RCSR: the perils of transition models and
Golden Ageism
• Where’s the economy in the political economy of scale?
• What’s driving the change? Neoliberalism and beyond
• Relation between meso level theory and empirical analysis
Context (3)
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English (UK) urban policy transitions - from:
‘Need’ to ‘potential’?
‘Cohesion’ to ‘competitiveness’?
Neighbourhood to city-region?
Experimental to embedded policy?
Short-term fix to long-term investment?
Centralisation to inter-governmentalism?
Market-led to market-shaping?
Context (4)
The broader UK policy context
• Devolution and decentralisation
• The collapse of English regionalism
• City-regions and the English space
economy
The value of city-regions
Propositions:
• City-regions are key drivers (beneficiaries?) of the
emerging global knowledge economy
• Hence city-regions increasingly drive regional, and by
implication national, economic performance
• City-regions are the most appropriate ‘unit’ for managing
the relationship between economic competitiveness, social
inclusion and environmental sustainability
• Current administrative geographies make no economic
sense
Policy and city-regions
Propositions:
• Public expenditure choices are key demand side influences
upon city-regional development trajectories
• ‘Place blind’ and/or reactive policies shape markets
differentially, with v. different implications for individual
city-regions
• In England, the effect runs counter to the implicit spatial
economic geography contained in the REP PSA
• We need to decide whether we have ONE city-region or
several
Lessons from Europe?
• Based on ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ analysis of
France/Lyon, NL/Amsterdam, Germany/Frankfurt
• CR concept doesn’t travel well
• No simple, transferable ‘model’
• Differences: constitutional, political-administrative,
degrees of (de)centralisation, inter-governmental relations,
sub-national autonomy
3 broad types of ‘city-regionalism’/urban ‘upscaling’
• Formal city-regional government
• ‘Networked’/co-operative city-regions
• Imagined city-regions
What’s worked/what hasn’t in
European ‘city-regionalism’
• Formal city-regional government
• Difficult to realise/sell. Polarise interests that might otherwise cooperate. Often fail to happen or deliver.
• Networked/co-operative city-regions
• Work best when effectively led, locally, incentivised, nationally, and
based on ‘coalitions of the willing’
• Imagined city-regions
• Essential to success of formal & informal arrangements; puts premium
on understanding, shared intelligence, open & inclusive debate, longterm vision, shared purpose, talismanic projects
Governance and city-regions
(Alternative) propositions
• Local autonomy is critical to effective cityregional strategy
• A metropolitan government tier is crucial to
making hard city-regional choices
• Vertical policy-alignment is more important than
institutional change
• Informed debate over city-regional futures is more
important than any of the above
Find out more?
About SURF:
www.surf.salford.ac.uk
About the ODPM report:
www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_science/
documents/downloadable/odpm_science_032253.pdf