Rethinking Centres and Peripheries

As urban and regional social scientists our aim is to stimulate academic rethinking around the uneven urban geography of England by holding three ESRC research seminars in the cities of London, York and Newcastle. Each city represents a particular and distinct urban-regional experience in terms of demography, labour market, socio-economic profile, cultural diversity, and regional, national and international integration. By combining a 'global core city' with a non-metropolitan ancient city and a post-industrial metropolitan city-region, the research programme aims to chart and analyse the impact of the financial crisis and the new austerity on three distinct but representative urban locations.
We see these research aims as connecting very closely with all three of the ESRC's strategic priorities concerning Economic Performance and Sustainable Growth, Influencing Behaviour and Informing Interventions and creating A Vibrant and Fair Society.
The seminar series' principal aims are as follows:
-To interrogate in more general and critical terms what it means to live and work in a 'core city' as opposed to a more 'peripheral' locale.
-To review and analyse the ways in which the 'core-periphery' model has been used traditionally by social scientists to describe Britain's uneven urban and regional geography.
-To question whether the terms of reference and the data sources used by policy makers in search of 'balance' are relevant and meaningful in the context of urban society in the 21st century.
-To research and assess the challenges that face governments seeking to rebalance wealth creation and consumption between different urban centres and regions in the context of an increasingly financialised and crisis-prone national and international economy.
- To investigate and understand the growing environmental pressures and the downstream economic impact that, for example, fuel scarcity is likely to have on more vulnerable urban groups.
-To reflect on how physical distance from the 'core' may exacerbate existing inequalities and what mitigating policies might be possible given the declared constraints of fiscal austerity.
-To think beyond the confines of the regional and the national in order to explore the ways in which urban populations situate themselves within meaningful and functional economic, social, cultural and political networks at a super-local level often even in so-called 'ordinary cities' and among 'indigenous' residents.
Seminar organisers and participants are very mindful of the importance of exchanging knowledge and insights from academia and the research community with policy makers and stakeholders with an interest in urban social cohesion, sustainable economic development, cultural and arts based regeneration, refugee and migrant communities and not for profit and voluntary sector organisations.
We also aim to share and disseminate the findings of the research seminar series via a dedicated web page which will contain links to participating institutions as part of the CURB website at the University of York. This will feature podcasts of seminar presentations and discussions together with written papers and presentations. More generally, we will issue press briefings and summaries of the key seminar findings (with links to the papers where possible) and we aim to target particular broadcast, print and web media with tailor made stories or interview opportunities.

We see a number of key audiences for the work that will be presented and discussed during the series, more specifically we have identified the following:

-Practitioners involved in regeneration, community building and participation
-Policing and other agencies involved in social order
-Citizens and related activist organisations engaged in growing debates about urban life and social inequality
-Economic development agencies and institutions working across urban and regional spaces

The seminar series will benefit these organisations in terms of direct participation in the series but also through a series of engagements that will go beyond the immediate life of the events themselves. In this respect we plan a number of further engagement activities to ensure that the full impact of the seminars is realised:

Web resources: As with previous CURB events we will collate all presenter slides and maintain a resource of podcasts from the various presentations which will be made publicly available (following the granting of consent from each speaker).

Publication: Two key strands of publication activity will surround the series. First, the co-organisers will be closely involved in writing a series of articles for online and news media to broadcast the themes of the meeting and to record major insights and empirical insights stemming from the presentations. Second, we will seek a special issue of a journal (likely to be the international and top-ranking journal Urban Studies or City). We are in negotiation with the managing editors of these journals at this time to obtain a slot for a special issue.

To further maximise the public benefit of the meetings we will construct a two page summary document for each event that draws on all of the presentations delivered and is written in a non-technical, plain language format that also utilises tables and other graphical presentations of data to ensure usability for a wide cross-section of interested parties. These resources will be placed on the same webpage as the podcasts and will be co-ordinated by the lead organiser of each seminar alongside both of the applicants to ensure consistency. All of the events will be press released effectively by the relevant lead organisation.

The main social and economic impacts of the seminars will be conceptual by conceiving a series of seminars designed to promote thinking around questions of inequality, concealed socio-economic problems and uneven development. The series will be used to spur policy and community conversations around these issues, thereby shaping the nature and tenor of policymaker actions. We are also keen to promote pathways to engage diverse local communities and groups who seek to lobby and work within the challenging policymaking environment that has emerged in recent years by providing data and clear conceptual scheme that can be introduced to public conversations around austerity, public investment, local economic development and social exclusion more broadly.

We envisage impact operating within three key stakeholder communities: policymakers (working around economic development, regional-urban strategy and management, planning, housing and regeneration more broadly) and public sector institutions, community organisations (including anti-poverty, community capacity building, youth diversion organisations) and industry partners in local economic development forums nationally and locally (for example chambers of commerce, CBI). The seminars are thereby conceived as a means of positively informing the delivery of economic development strategies, the conceptual frameworks utilised to understand the current urban crisis and its local social impacts and, finally, promoting socially progressive and more deeply engaged public programs and community insights into these systemic issues.