Suchergebnisse

Second-order cities are generally seen as disadvantaged places in the literature on globalisation, but in recent years they have staged a revival in several countries. This article uses two data sources to examine the employment change recorded by Britain's Core Cities between 2012 and 2017, breaking it down by type of worker, occupation and industry. It aims, firstly, to identify which elements of their growth are distinctive compared to the country as a whole and, secondly, to see how far their growth has been emulated by the areas around them that contain the majority of Britain's 'left-behind' places. The article demonstrates the great strides made by the nine provincial cities combined, substantially exceeding the national rate of increase for male, female, full-time, part-time, employee and self-employed work, notably in the three highest status occupational groups and in all industrial sectors apart from manufacturing and transport, especially business services. It is also found that their growth outstripped that of their local, regional and EU comparators, underlining the importance of direct policy intervention for 'left-behind' places rather than relying on 'trickle-down' processes, especially given uncertainties about the sustainability of Core City growth in the wake of COVID-19 and Brexit.

Although it is now accepted that the 2008–09 recession accentuated regional differences in Britain, it is more difficult to identify the role of major cities—especially over a longer time scale. With the aid of previously established methods focused on employment, this paper assesses the records of nine second-order city regions in the 2008–09 recession and contrasts them with the previous two recessions. The 2008–09 recession is found to have impacted these city regions less than the other two in absolute terms, but not in relative terms compared with the London city region or the rest of Britain. Over the whole period from 1978, the second-order city regions are found to be fairly tightly in the grip of national cyclical and structural trends, but all but two of them showed negative deviation from the growth rate predicted on this basis. In comparison, London showed appreciably more cyclical behaviour between 1989 and 2002 than at other times, with a particularly strong recovery from recession in this period. The public sector helped the performance of second-order city regions over the study period including 2007–10, but employment reductions in this sector will dominate their prospects for several years to come.

PurposeThis paper aims to study a major aspect of the recent Treasury‐led Review of Sub‐national Economic Development and Regeneration in attempting to integrate work currently performed under the separate economic and spatial strategies through the preparation of single regional strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses several aspects of the existing work of regional development agencies (RDAs) to illustrate where they could be better informed to undertake their anticipated role in regional spatial planning.FindingsThe Labour Government has been forced to change its approach to reforms at the sub‐national level. In November, 2008 it performed a late compromise in response to the consultation on the Review, in giving equal status to the work of local authorities and RDAs in writing single regional strategies. This is welcomed, as is a strengthening of the scope of sub‐regional governance. Nonetheless the reforms do little to address the socio‐economic disparities between regions.Practical implicationsThe paper informs approaches to the preparation of single regional strategies and highlights the need to give greater attention to the links between policy making and delivery at national, regional and local scales.Originality/valueThe paper draws on the perspectives of a senior academic who has also worked both as a civil service research officer in regional economic planning and as a member of local, district and county committees in local governance. This experience suggests that the Government's approach to reform was informed by an agenda that was too biased towards economic and too little to environmental and social priorities.

In the UK the formal land-use planning system is once more at a crossroads with the unprecedented levels of public comment on the recent Governmental Green Paper on Planning. A recent international report on the planning process in Westernised countries highlighted a dearth of public participation in the UK planning system this is despite an obvious undercurrent of concern on environmental issues and the like. The paper sets out to gauge the extent of public interest in the Planning system, in the light of current proposals to revise it. The paper concentrates on the nature of public participation in Planning and to consider whether the public are more satisfied with process, seeing it as fair and robust, if they are more actively involved in the process of consultation. Other aspects to consider are the need to seek consultation from the wider public, not just individuals and special interest groups. There are several forgotten frontiers of the past effort to promote public participation. Theory dating from the 1970s exposed differences between sociological approaches in Planning and solutions tended to be lost in complexity of Local Development Plans. Subsequent theory (Healey 1997) has argued for the need to reconcile plural interests across localities. What is neglected in the research is the fuller appreciation of the actual public interest by those in the Planning system. A recent international report by Heriott-Watt University, Edinburgh and DePaul University, Chicago called for the notion of 'public participation' to be turned on its head and instead encourage the practice of 'participatory planning'- the use of third parties to pre-mediate conflicts between stakeholders before and during the process of an open consultation as opposed to seeking public opinions after the plans have been drawn. This paper aims to review the modernising agenda and set out the case for shifting public participation to participatory planning within the context of the UK. Particularly pertinent due to recent recommendations to increase sustainability communities. It uses several qualitative case studies drawn from urban planning authorities and rural districts from the UK, which reveal Local Planning Authorities may be as yet unprepared to fully grasp the concepts underpinning the notion of participatory planning.