Our cities are back and the government is backing them. But the question is how much? In fact there is good news: our cities have recovered greatly and the government has become much more aware of their importance to the national economic welfare in recent years.
But if the government’s heart and head are in the right place, is its’ hand deep enough in its pocket? Again there is some good news. Overall public expenditure on cities has been increasing during the past decade and has contributed greatly to their renaissance.
The Treasury, Gordon Brown’s most recent home before he took over as Prime Minister, has bought into the intellectual argument regarding the importance of our cities. Its recent report, the Sub-National Review, reveals that government plans to control cities and local government less, reduce the number of targets and provide more fi nancial powers. It wants local government to take a bigger part in shaping the economic development and the place quality of their cities. City regions are being encouraged to collaborate more on economic development. City development companies are being promoted as a way of driving further economic regeneration, which all makes sense.
But despite these positive signals and despite the very huge progress in city centres especially, there remain worries that English provincial cities do not make as great a contribution to the national economic welfare as comparable cities in continental Europe. Also some feel there are important ways of running cities that government could learn from the rest of Europe. I’ve recently completed a European project called COMPETE which looked at these issues and asked why does Europe lead and the UK lag behind?
In fact there is not a simple position where all continental European cities lead all UK cities. The picture is much more varied. Some continental cities are doing well economically, others less so. For example, probably the most and least successful continental cities are all in Germany – the former west and east. And many UK cities have had a renaissance in recent years.
More generally the UK leads the continent in two policy areas. First, it has more experience and success in addressing challenges of social exclusion in deprived neighbourhoods in a comprehensive, integrated way. Secondly, some UK cities have had greater success in engaging the private sector in decision making.
However, some of the big provincial cities do lag behind the most successful continental cities in terms of GDP, innovation, skill levels, connectivity, and population trends. For example, Figure 1 shows how different cities have been performing on one measure of economic performance GDP in relation to their national position in 2004.
German cities lead the list and clearly outperform their national economy, while UK cities perform variously. The non-English cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff are performing well, as are Nottingham, Bristol, Leeds and south Manchester. However, there are a number nearer the bottom than the top of the table.
All but one of the continental cities are doing better than their national economies. While three of the UK’s core cities perform below the national economy, even though the UK economy is stronger than some other European countries. This last feature refl ects the signifi cance of the London economy to national performance. The leading continental cities seem to be pulling their national economies up. By contrast, too many UK cities are performing less well than the national economy and are, in effect, holding it down.
Innovation and education Continental cities are typically more innovative than many of our core cities. Figure 2 shows performance on the EU Innovation Scoreboard, which measures public and private investment in research and development, human resources in science and technology, employment in medium-high and high-tech sectors, participation in lifelong learning, and patents. It shows that the regions which do well in terms of GDP also tend to do well in terms of innovation levels.
Cities with the highest GDP lie within regions with the highest innovation scores. And those performing well in GDP and innovation also perform well in terms of skills and qualifi cations. In our study Helsinki, Stockholm and Munich did brilliantly but many of the English cities were lower down.
