Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 454-459)
PROFESSOR NEIL
WARD
7 JUNE 2006
Q454 Chair: Thank you very much for joining
us, Professor Ward. You were in the previous evidence session,
were you?
Professor Ward: Yes.
Q455 Chair: Excellent. Can I start
by asking if you could say what you believe to be the risks to
peripheral areas from the establishment of city-regions? Could
you give some examples where peripheral areas have suffered from
the establishment of such entities?
Professor Ward: I think that the
risks to rural areas from an urban-centric approach to sub-national
economic development are about being seen as at the margins and
second order areas, the hinterland, the backcloth. In that sense
you do not really have to look for examples of where city-regions
have been established and, in fact, I question the idea of city-regions
being established anywhere. We have had quite a strong urban-centric
approach to economic development for about 20 years now, since
the time of Michael Heseltine, where we have had lots of investment
in urban regeneration, physical infrastructure of cities, inner
city centres, so we can see what some of the implications of that
over the last 20 years have been in England. At the same time,
I think over the last six or seven years the counterpoint to all
of the investment in urban renaissance, and particularly in the
pushing of rural affairs down to the regional level from a national
framework, has been a dismantling of rural affairs policy, a dismantling
of rural development. There is a lot of rhetoric about inclusive,
integrated regional development, that regions are about urban
and rural areas together. I am not sure that you were quoting
me quite correctly when you said earlier on that rural communities
are being ignored. I do not think they are being ignored, they
are talked about quite a lot, it is just that there is not much
material action or careful analysis of how the rural economies
can contribute to region or city-regions.
Q456 Chair: Apparently the people
in the public gallery are having some difficulty in hearing you,
so if you could try and speak up. Remember that you are not just
speaking to us but to the public gallery as well. I know you have
obviously done a great deal of work in relation to the North East,
maybe you can explain what evidence you have got that a more thriving
Newcastle city-region would be a threat, rather than a boost,
to the prospects of the rest of the region?
Professor Ward: I am not arguing
against the growth and development of cities. It is great for
cities to do well and thrive. With all of the public investment
that has gone into cities like Newcastle and their city centres,
and from the amount of public investment that has gone into something
like Newcastle Quayside or the Grainger Town initiative, one would
very much hope that there would be some rewards from that in terms
of rising productivity and GVA and the region should benefit from
that. Where the problem lies is when you have a city-region based
approach to regional development when cities are seen as principal
drivers of regional economies and then become heavily prioritised
within regions. That is what has happened in the North recently
and that is what seems to be being talked about in the South West
as well. In the North East our Regional Spatial Strategy and Regional
Economy Strategy both talk in terms of limiting development in
rural areas, so the proposals are for a sharp paring back of building
new houses in rural districts so that new housing can be concentrated
in the cities.
Q457 Chair: Is it not simply a fact
that the cities are the major sites of economic activity and not
the drivers?
Professor Ward: It is a fact that
the majority of the population live in cities. My question is,
is it something about the essence of a city that contributes to
urban growth, to national growth, or is just that cities are increasingly
effective at grabbing their share of national growth? It could
be the latter. I think the jury is out on that. I am completely
unconvinced by this large pile of evidence, which is called the
evidence base, which is used to argue that we need to concentrate
on the cities for national economic growth. I do not think there
is anything necessarily innate about urban economies, that means
that is a more worthwhile strategy than thinking about economic
development generally.
Q458 Mr Betts: You have been rather
critical of the concept of the Northern Way and the attempt to
see it as the growth points of the North being based on Newcastle,
Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. On the other hand,
do you not recognise in any shape or form that nationally we have
a very unbalanced situation where London is such a dominant powerhouse
of economic activity in the country compared with other countries
which have cities of more equal size? If we are going to have
a counterpoint elsewhere which can attract economic activity and
growth, not on the same scale but at least on a more equal scale,
you have to develop something like the Northern Way. Is the concept
not right in that sense?
Professor Ward: I am really pleased
with the idea of a Northern Way, which is about addressing the
productivity gap between the North and the South and thinking
about the North as a single entity as well, the three regions
together, and trying to get over that rather artificial carve-up
into three separate regions. In that sense I welcome the Northern
Way. The Northern Way very quickly translates into a strongly
prescriptive city-region approach. It was interesting coming down
this morning reading through all the evidence you have received
that both ODPM and Northern Way say in their evidence it is not
really clear and there is confusion about what the city-region
is and how it should be defined, but then they quickly move on
to argue that it is a good thing to have a city-region approach.
In the Northern Way the city-regions are almost a political mechanism.
On the one hand they are talked of as having fuzzy boundaries,
flexible geographies, different types of spatial entities for
different functions and, on the other hand, 90% of people live
in them. How can that be claimed without having a sense of a boundary
in them? The problem is it is a very slippery entity, the city-region.
It is like Trotsky's theory of substitutionism. Trotsky's quibble
with Lenin was that the party would substitute itself for the
people and the organisation of the party would substitute itself
for the party and central committee would substitute itself for
the party organisation and the chair of the central committee
would substitute himself for the central committee and in the
end the chair of the committee is the people and vice versa. That
is what you get with city-regions and regions. You end up with
the core of the city centre becoming the region, Newcastle Quayside,
becoming the North East.
Q459 Mr Betts: I am not sure the
Chair of the Regional Assembly would necessarily agree.
Professor Ward: These categories
are slippery and vague.
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