What Makes a Successful City Region?

Understanding the dynamics of a successful city region emerged as a key theme at an ESPON UK Network meeting in London on 17 September. The focus of the workshop was on identifying the research needs of UK regional policy-making that could be met through the ESPON programme. A series of intensive small group discussions highlighted the importance of an evidence base for strategic planning as part of the new system of regional strategies in England.

Rupert Greenhalgh, from Manchester Enterprises*, the economic development agency for Greater Manchester, explained the economic geography of his conurbation and the dilemmas it posed for policy makers. He highlighted some key labour market issues. Manchester is now a major centre for higher education. It needs to hang on to its graduates when they qualify; be able to retain them when they reach a senior post and their next promotion will take them to London; and also draw graduates back in mid-career who may have started work in other regions.

Despite its economic success over the last decade, the Manchester city region remains a classic “doughnut” in terms of social class. Rupert showed a number of maps that clearly demonstrated the concentration of poverty and disadvantage in the inner parts of Manchester and Salford, surrounded by a ring of affluence particularly to the south of the city in Cheshire. This prompted some discussion about the factors that create and reproduce polarities within regions, and the significance of different facets of territorial cohesion. Do all polarities matter equally? What specific economic problems do territorial disparities cause? How can policy makers respond? Should the urban exodus of more affluent households seeking living space in surrounding villages be seen as a problem – or a means of sustaining services and viability in the countryside?

With the referendum on congestion charging pending in the Manchester city-region, and massive funding for public transport investment hanging on the result, Rupert pointed to issues about the role of transport in contributing to competitiveness and cohesion in a city region. He also warned against that high-tech’ clusters are not a universal panacea for a regional economy. Regions have to understand their own specialist strengths and play to them.

Manchester’s Independent Economic Review will be a key input to a new ESPON project. Manchester Enterprises have had their proposal for a study of agglomeration economies accepted by ESPON and the work is currently being tendered (for details see www.espon.eu/mmp/online/website/content/programme/1455/1496/1870/2025/index_EN.html) The research will focus on the city regions of Manchester, Barcelona, Dublin and Lyons. There will be a database enabling joint comparisons amongst the four agglomerations. The research will seek to unpick in some detail the economic forces that drive agglomeration growth.

Cliff Hague, for the UK ESPON Contact Point, drew attention to the latest proposals for ESPON projects. He pointed out that was well as the study involving Manchester, there is another new project being tendered that will carry out targeted research to meet the needs of UK stakeholders. The project on Potential of Rural Regions can be accessed at the same web address as the Manchester one. It will focus on North Yorkshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Wales, along with the rural regions around Cesis in Latvia and Notodden in Norway. In addition UK researchers from the UHI Millennium Institute and the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne are leading research on another pan-European ESPON project on the diversity of rural areas in Europe. “These two studies should provide rich and timely inputs into the debate about planning and economic development in rural areas, following the recent publication of the Taylor Report”, he said.

Cliff also sketched out the draft list that ESPON is considering for their next round of projects that will be tendered in 2009. These include studies of the attractiveness of European regions and cities for people and visitors; patterns of land use across Europe; territorial co-operation transnationally and across internal and external borders; accessibility; secondary growth poles; European dimension of types of territory (e.g. mountain areas, sparsely populated areas etc); the territorial dimensions of innovation and the knowledge economy; and continental structures and flows.

The workshop developed a range of ideas about how these might be made useful for regional policy makers in the UK, and about other topics that ESPON might consider for future research. For example, as part of the Knowledge Economy project, it would be useful to know just what are Europe’s specialist clusters, and where are they? The impact of spatial planning systems on competitiveness and cohesion was suggested as a theme that might be addressed within the planned work on land use.

In addition questions were raised about the territorial consequences of consumer choice in a range of fields that are closely linked to territorial development patterns – e.g. housing, shopping, leisure.

There was strong interest in the proposed study of secondary growth poles. Questions that were suggested to be tackled included: What is a successful rural-urban relationship? How can you diversify a regional economy? What is the role of urban areas outside the city regions? What networks are they part of? What role do they play in service delivery, and how does this relate to demography and to economic development? How do we define the functionality of settlements?

New projects were suggested on methodologies for regional carbon accounting, data needs for maritime spatial planning in Europe, and on the territorial development policy communities that exist in Europe and how they use evidence as inputs to policy-making and implementation.

The workshop highlighted the strength of the potential synergies between regional research needs in the UK and the developing ESPON programme and will form the basis for further discussions and events to ensure ongoing dialogue and sharing of priorities. ESPON UK Network members are invited to post their comments on the workshop outputs on this web page.

* Note: Manchester Enterprises was incorporated by The Commission for Economic Development, Employment and Skills in October 2008.

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