1. The End of Regions?
What new role for cities?:
the recent case of England
Kevin Richardson
kevin.richardson@newcastle.gov.uk
www.slideshare.net/30088

2. Regions?
Cities?

3. Its not new
Its not only happening here in England
Its not a party political thing

4. EU Context
• EU Parliament / Committee of Regions; but what real
power in TFEU compared to Member States?
• Only very few examples of significant regional
government (AU, DE, BE?); exceptions often based
on identity (Scotland, Cataluña etc) Cities generally
ignored.
• Few (if any) examples of genuine functioning
regional economies
• Institutional capacity within Brussels to ‘manage’
growing number and widening characteristics of
regions?

5. 271 NUT2 Regions

6. New ‘regions?’
Experiments with
‘macro’ and cross
border ‘regions’

7. Regions
in
England

8. Bonfire of the Regions
May 2010 (Con / Liberal)
• Regional Development Agencies
• Regional Spatial Strategies (inc. housing &
transport)
• Regional offices of Central Government
• Regional Business Link (enterprise agencies)
• Regional Funding Allocations
• Regional Tourism Boards
• Nationalisation of Employment Programmes and
Inward Investment
• Nationalisation of all funding for technology and
regeneration, including European Social Fund

9. History: Regional Government
in England
• ‘14 – administrative / ‘military’ regions
• ’79 – (CON) neo-liberalism, end of spatial strategies
• ’94 – (CON) Government Offices for the Regions (GOs)
• ’97 onwards – (LAB), formal regional government for
Scotland, N Ireland (& Wales?); and indirectly (unelected)
Regional Assemblies & many new regional strategies &
institutions (including RDAs) in England
• ’04 North East referendum farce (78% ‘No’; all 25 districts
reject proposal for formal regional government, including
Newcastle as a the Core City)

10. OECD Review of Newcastle
in the North East (2006)
• central government is the ‘dominant actor’ in regional
development / no national spatial strategy for either regions or
cities
• only a small number of central departments engaged in regional
development / funds for regional economic development tiny
when compared to other mainstream budgets
• sub national agencies with only very limited authority &
autonomy
• existing artificial boundaries of institutions increasingly not
reflective of functioning economic areas (at all levels of
geography)
• “governance arrangements at a metropolitan or functional
urban level make sense for issues such as housing,
transport, economic development, culture, organisation of
retail, environment, universities, and land use planning”
• (but) public identities rooted much more in parochialism

11. Post 2004 Confusion
•Core Cities
•City-Regions
•Sub Regions
Ref. CURDS, Newcastle University

15. What new role for Cities?

16. A (part-time)
Minister
for ‘cities’
‘This will start initially by
focusing on the Core Cities and
their surrounding areas, with a
view to expanding to a broader
group and identifying issues
relevant to a wide range of
cities’

17. Informal
partnerships?
What genuine
political interest in
hard administrative
/ boundary reform?
(at all levels)

18. Understanding
‘trade offs’
between
supporting
agglomeration
and high speed
rail (between
cities) and (for
now) local cost
air travel
Tomaney at el (2011)
Evidence to House of Commons Transport Select Committee

19. Cities
are
greener

20. • Understanding the
real relationship
between the urban
core and
surrounding places
(polycentricity)
• Why facilitate travel
to work by car?

21. Planning
to build
the
‘urban
core’

22. Risk based
investment
finance
favours
cities

23. SMART
strategies for
growth also
dependent on
cities (and their
universities)
McCann and Ortega-Argilés(2011)
Smart Specialisation, Regional Growth and Applications to EU Cohesion Policy

24. Migrants are
attracted to
cities (and
vice versa)

25. Does it Matter?
New Economic
Geography tells us
that growth and the
market drives and is
increasingly
dependent on cities
(see Krugman et al)

26. A false dichotomy
between national
and local levels
(towards shared
design,
management &
delivery)?
Or towards a
contractual
relationship based
on evidence / results
/ rewards
Barca (2009)