With the world economy in turmoil, how can communities come to terms with the rapid changes taking place? asks Michael Ward, in advance of a major conference next week
As I write this, I hear on the radio that vehicle manufacturing giant, Chrysler, has gone into administration. General Motors – and, therefore, Opel and Vauxhall – has been on the brink for months. A shudder is going through rustbelt America – and beyond.
The key question facing civic leaders, not just in Britain, but across the older industrialised countries, is this – how, as we move from a national to an international division of labour, will our citizens earn a living and prosper?
Communities whose position in a national economy was clear and understood now have to reinvent themselves as global players. Places which used to be textile towns, or car-making cities – or centres of financial – have to find new answers to the question of where the jobs will come from next.
For a generation, it has been a commonplace observation of economic geographers and business analysts that there is over capacity in the world car industry – and an equally-commonplace observation of environmentalists that we should not go on making cars on this scale. Now, suddenly, a generation of change is happening in a few short months.
But these changes affect real people in real places. Capital is internationally mobile. Companies are bought and sold. In a telling phrase, we read that if troubled LDV vehicles, based in Birmingham, goes down, the response of a purchaser may be a ‘lift and shift’ operation – moving plant and machines lock, stock and barrel to a new location.
But car-workers in Coventry or Sunderland or Detroit can no more relocate to make cars in India or China than they could suddenly metamorphose into investment bankers in Canary Wharf in the boom years. It is local communities, and their elected representatives, who are left to cope with the consequences of industrial change.
The Government’s eagerly-awaited National Regeneration Framework – a key output of the Sub-national review of economic development and regeneration – has the potential to give cities and towns the toolkits to respond to this period of profound change.
It is the product of a remarkable consensus – between local and central government, and between political parties. It gives effect to a major decentralisation of responsibility from central to local government for economic development and regeneration.
This goes with the grain of developments in local government.
There is a growing stress, in all political parties, on localism. Commentators have stressed the roles of local authorities as local leaders, and in community government.
This is not to say that the statutory functions of local government as innovative and cost-effective service providers are not important. But the role of local government in analysing future problems and threats, and advocating the interests of their citizens, and promoting imaginative and forward-looking solutions, is more important than ever in the present recession.
Sir Michael Lyons’ recent reports for the Government stressed the centrality of place-making and place-shaping for local government – and devolving these core economic development responsibilities fits well with that agenda.
Of course, the outlook for local communities is far more challenging than two years ago, when these policies began to be developed.
As the recent Budget makes clear, public expenditure is going to be restricted in the years ahead. Decentralisation may well not be accompanied by major new funding streams. Progress might not be as a rapid as local partners would hope.
But in the end, the Sub-national review of economic development and regeneration, if it is to achieve its potential, must be at least as much about changing the way in which public and private sectors, and central and local government, work together, as about increasing spending. The absence of new funding streams is not an argument against change.
In its earlier versions, the National Regeneration Framework has stressed the importance of bringing together social, economic, and physical regeneration, and has stressed the need to focus on areas of need and deprivation. In the present economic context, this is of critical importance. Regeneration is more than just real estate development.
Current circumstances also provide the opportunity to link regeneration firmly to employment policy.
In the Budget, the Government announced the ‘future jobs fund’, with a target of providing 150,000 new jobs, firmly targeted on disadvantaged communities and key sectors. Devolved as the delivery of this will be, it is essential that local government takes a lead role.
Michael Ward is chief executive of the British Urban Regeneration Association
The key question facing civic leaders, not just in Britain, but across the older industrialised countries, is this – how, as we move from a national to an international division of labour, will our citizens earn a living and prosper?
Communities whose position in a national economy was clear and understood now have to reinvent themselves as global players. Places which used to be textile towns, or car-making cities – or centres of financial – have to find new answers to the question of where the jobs will come from next.
For a generation, it has been a commonplace observation of economic geographers and business analysts that there is over capacity in the world car industry – and an equally-commonplace observation of environmentalists that we should not go on making cars on this scale. Now, suddenly, a generation of change is happening in a few short months.
But these changes affect real people in real places. Capital is internationally mobile. Companies are bought and sold. In a telling phrase, we read that if troubled LDV vehicles, based in Birmingham, goes down, the response of a purchaser may be a ‘lift and shift’ operation – moving plant and machines lock, stock and barrel to a new location.
But car-workers in Coventry or Sunderland or Detroit can no more relocate to make cars in India or China than they could suddenly metamorphose into investment bankers in Canary Wharf in the boom years. It is local communities, and their elected representatives, who are left to cope with the consequences of industrial change.
The Government’s eagerly-awaited National Regeneration Framework – a key output of the Sub-national review of economic development and regeneration – has the potential to give cities and towns the toolkits to respond to this period of profound change.
It is the product of a remarkable consensus – between local and central government, and between political parties. It gives effect to a major decentralisation of responsibility from central to local government for economic development and regeneration.
This goes with the grain of developments in local government.
There is a growing stress, in all political parties, on localism. Commentators have stressed the roles of local authorities as local leaders, and in community government.
This is not to say that the statutory functions of local government as innovative and cost-effective service providers are not important. But the role of local government in analysing future problems and threats, and advocating the interests of their citizens, and promoting imaginative and forward-looking solutions, is more important than ever in the present recession.
Sir Michael Lyons’ recent reports for the Government stressed the centrality of place-making and place-shaping for local government – and devolving these core economic development responsibilities fits well with that agenda.
Of course, the outlook for local communities is far more challenging than two years ago, when these policies began to be developed.
As the recent Budget makes clear, public expenditure is going to be restricted in the years ahead. Decentralisation may well not be accompanied by major new funding streams. Progress might not be as a rapid as local partners would hope.
But in the end, the Sub-national review of economic development and regeneration, if it is to achieve its potential, must be at least as much about changing the way in which public and private sectors, and central and local government, work together, as about increasing spending. The absence of new funding streams is not an argument against change.
In its earlier versions, the National Regeneration Framework has stressed the importance of bringing together social, economic, and physical regeneration, and has stressed the need to focus on areas of need and deprivation. In the present economic context, this is of critical importance. Regeneration is more than just real estate development.
Current circumstances also provide the opportunity to link regeneration firmly to employment policy.
In the Budget, the Government announced the ‘future jobs fund’, with a target of providing 150,000 new jobs, firmly targeted on disadvantaged communities and key sectors. Devolved as the delivery of this will be, it is essential that local government takes a lead role.
Michael Ward is chief executive of the British Urban Regeneration Association
