UK City Regions - How Competitive in a Global Economy: What Do the Secondary Data Tell Us?

This study will encourage a more informed debate about the territorial shape of the UK economy and the contribution of city regions to national economic competitiveness. There is growing research and policy interest in the economic contribution that different kinds of cities make to national and international economic competitiveness. The project would contribute to this research and policy debate by analysing a series of databases created by Eurostat, the OECD, and DG Regio. The project would capitalise upon some of our earlier research studies, which all made a policy impact. In recent months, datasets have become available from Eurostat and the OECD which provide more up to date data, on agreed boundaries, for a wider set of European and international city regions and a wider set of indicators and allow us to update our findings.

The project would be rooted in the analytic framework we have developed in recent years on the roots of place competitiveness and would focus on the drivers of urban economic growth and competitiveness: innovation, infrastructure, sectoral mix and economic diversity, skilled and adaptable workforce, connectivity, place quality and strategic governance capacity. We will focus on key performance measures such as GDP, labour market and demographic trends and on indicators of the key drivers of competitiveness - innovation, skills, economic diversity and connectivity. We will use data from three sources: (i) Eurostat's regions and cities database; (ii) the OECD's city region database; and (iii) the Urban Audit's 'Larger Urban Zone' data collection. Our focus is principally on the 2000-10 decade, allowing us to explore developments before and during the current economic crisis.

The data analysis will build upon the methodology developed by OECD for the analysis of regional economic performance but will be applied at a different spatial level - city regions. It will have two separate but related elements: benchmarking, which will concentrate upon patterns of economic performance; and regression analysis, which will concentrate upon the relationships between performance and key drivers of competitiveness.

Benchmarking will involve comparisons of city region groupings based on both levels of GDP per capita at the start of the period and growth rates over the period as a whole. The performance of these city region groupings will then be assessed in relation to the drivers of competitiveness. The aim of this element of the analysis will be to compare performance by starting point and growth rates - benchmarking faster and slower growing city regions at each level of development against one another in relation to our drivers. The regression analysis will correlate city region growth rates with initial baseline GDP per capita levels and the drivers of competitiveness with city region growth levels and rates. The aim would be to identify patterns of convergence or divergence by both levels of GDP per capita and growth and to single out the role of individual drivers across the groupings.

The data analysis as a whole will enable us to:
- Benchmark the performance of UK city-regions against European and international counterparts.
- Compare city region performance with national and regional economic performance.
- Compare city region performance before and during the crisis.
- Correlate city region growth with levels of development.
- Correlate drivers of competitiveness with economic performance.

We will also develop the OECD methodology by introducing a wider geographical and governance context. For example, we will examine patterns of city regional performance across broad European geographies - North, South, East and West. We will also examine the performance of city regions in different kinds of national governance arrangements, building upon our existing analysis of federal, regionalised, Nordic, unitary and unitary centralised systems.

The Institute is committed to engaging the policy community in and maximising the impact of all its research. We would draw up a programme of activities with potential users to increase understanding of the issues and involve them in shaping, implementing and communicating our research programme and results.

Who - key stakeholders
The project results would interest a wide range of partners and actors involved in the economic competiveness of UK cities. All would benefit from understanding more about the relative performance of UK cities, their standing in the European and wider global marketplace, the relative impact of the recession and the critical urban success factors underpinning city region performance that the project would identify. The stakeholders would include:

At European and wider global level:
- European Commission (DG Regio) and OECD;
- EUROCITIES, Committee of the Regions, INTA, CEMR.

At UK level:
- the Minster for Cities and officials in the Cabinet Office, Departments of Communities and Local Government, Transport, Work and Pensions, Education, Business Innovation and Skills and the Treasury;
- individual local authorities and representative organisations like the Local Government Association, the Core Cities and Local Enterprise Partnerships;
- professional bodies like British Property Federation, the CBI, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, Housebuilders Federation;
- voluntary and community sector representative bodies like NCVO and ACEVO;
- research organisations and think tanks like the Centre for Cities.

How - website, newsletters, media releases, conference papers journal publications, workshops

We will set up an interactive website. We will produce a series of pamphlets and newsletters at key stages of the project. We will promote the results widely in a range of outlets, including academic journals. We will attract extensive media coverage since we have good contacts with them and the topic is central to the current political debate about rebalancing the UK economy. We will publicise our results at national and international conferences. We will make a series of presentations to senior policy makers in central and local government. We would hold three workshops in London with them during the project: (i) to seek their support at the outset, (ii) to present emerging findings and (iii) to publicise the final evidence, analysis and policy messages. We would use our contacts with the Core Cities, the Centre for Cities, OECD, European Commission and EUROCITIES to disseminate our research within the policy community throughout the life of the project.