Levelling Up Left Behind Places: The Scale and Nature of the Economic and Policy Challenge

Description

This book aims to understand the predicaments of ‘left behind places’ and the scale of the policy challenge of ‘levelling up’ their economic prosperity. Drawing out lessons of wider international significance, it examines how places (cities, towns and localities) have grown apart over recent decades amidst deindustrialisation, post-industrial transition and the disruptive shocks of the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Using the UK case to illustrate its arguments, the analysis identifies the different types of ‘left behind places’ and their distinctive economic experiences. The key features of urban and regional institutions and policies are reviewed to understand more about why, despite some successes, geographical inequalities remain an entrenched feature of the UK, blighting the life chances and quality of life of its citizens, and national economic progress as a whole. The weaknesses of past policies are highlighted, and the case is made for a new, mission-oriented policy model, because only a radical shift in economic thinking, governance and management is likely to achieve the ‘levelling up’ that is now a prominent refrain in the political lexicon. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Foreword About the authors Acknowledgements Preamble Executive summary and key recommendations Chapter 1: Introduction: The new discourse of “left behind places” 1.1: The Re-emergence and (Re)discovery of “left behind places” 1.2: “Left Behind places” as sites of discontent 1.3: What are “left behind places”? 1.4: “Levelling up”: Moving beyond slogans Chapter 2: Becoming “left behind”: How places have grown apart 2.1: Situating the “left behind” problem 2.2: The “great turnaround”: From convergence to divergence 2.3: Growing apart: macro-geographies of “falling behind” 2.4: From broad regions to local places: The complexity of the “left behind” landscape 2.5: The productivity puzzle and “left behind places” 2.6: Conclusions: The scale and geographies of the “left behind” problem Chapter 3: Why places have fallen behind: The geographically uneven effects of economic transformation 3.1: Evolving geographies of economic transformation 3.2: Post-industrial spaces of growth and decline 3.3: The changing location of employment 3.4: The rise of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) 3.5: A public sector counter-weight? 3.6: A combined urban and regional problem 3.7: Cumulative processes and vicious circles 3.8: Conclusions: Understanding how places have become “left behind” Chapter 4: Economic shocks and the differential resilience of places 4.1: Local economic development as a shock-prone process 4.2: The notion of local economic resilience 4.3: Economic resilience across UK localities 4.4: The emerging implications of brexit and the pandemic shocks 4.5: Conclusions: Resilience and recovery Chapter 5: Learning from past policies for “levelling up” and “left behind places” in the UK 5.1: Learning from the past 5.2: Distinguishing spatial policies 5.3: Nine decades of the UK spatial policy 5.4: The limitations and weaknesses of past policies 5.5: Conclusions: Lessons from the past Chapter 6: Institutions and policies for “levelling up” and “left behind places” 6.1: Key findings and their policy implications 6.2: Grasping the transformative moment for local, regional and urban development policy 6.3: Establishing a clear and binding national mission for “levelling up” 6.4: Realizing the potential of place in policymaking 6.5: Decentralizing towards a multilevel federal polity in the UK 6.6: Strengthening subnational funding and financing 6.7: Embedding geography in the national state and policy machinery 6.8: Improving subnational strategic research, intelligence, monitoring and evaluation capacity 6.9: Conclusions