The City Region – Its Context and History

The city regions movement grew out of the joint work on city competitiveness between the Government and Core Cities, which began in 2002. This joint work arose from Core Cities’ concern about the poor competitiveness of English cities compared with their Western European counterparts. A key part of Core Cities’ argument was that much of the competitiveness agenda needed to be planned and delivered at the level of the functional economic area – the city region.

As part of this joint work, in 2003 the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, invited each of the Core Cities to produce a ‘prospectus’ to take forward their own competitiveness agenda.

All eight Core Cities prospectuses took a city region perspective, but the other seven were prepared primarily by the Core City itself. In the West Midlands, an initial City Region partnership was formed to produce the "Birmingham" prospectus collectively. This City Region prospectus included a Foreword by the Deputy Prime Minister, and was launched by him at the 2003 Core Cities Summit in Newcastle.

As a further strand of the joint work between Core Cities and Government, the then ODPM commissioned Professor Michael Parkinson to assess how the English Core Cities compared to their European counterparts in terms of their economic competitiveness. His study entitled Competitive European Cities: Where do the Core Cities Stand was published in 2004. The study confirmed the relatively weak competitiveness of English cities, and indicated that one factor was the English cities’ lack of control over their own destiny compared with some European cities.

Parkinson also identified the characteristics of a competitive city – in effect establishing a generic competitiveness policy agenda for cities. He also endorsed the value of delivering much of this agenda at city region level.

Parkinson, together with other studies, identified the competitiveness of city regions as being dependent upon factors such as:

  1. Strategic decision-making capacity
  2. First class international, national and internal connectivity
  3. Existence of a Core City Centre with a critical mass of high level business and leisure services, and a range of other thriving centres
  4. Major national and international facilities
  5. Innovation - one or more world class research universities
  6. Innovation – an effective “triple helix” system of collaboration between the private, public and university sectors
  7. Economic diversity
  8. Skilled workforce – covering both graduate and medium level skills
  9. Quality of life – high quality residential areas and balanced communities
  10. Quality of life – a world class cultural, leisure and sporting infrastructure

Most of these competitiveness factors are reflected in the findings of the City Region Strategic Economic Assessment, particularly in the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats section.

Following the launch of the eight Core Cities prospectuses in 2003, city region partnerships were established in all the Core City Regions. The dialogue with Government has also continued. For Core Cities, this dialogue has been more or less continuous; but city regions have also been involved - for example, through the eight Miliband "City Summits" (the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government), which were conceived as a Summit with each Core City, but which in fact became eight city region summits.

The most recent outcome of this later dialogue has been the Sub National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration (SNR). The devolution arrangements set out in the SNR largely follow the proposals in a joint submission from Core Cities and the RDAs.

The city region’s dialogue with Government over the last six years has created the conditions for delivering a step change in urban competitiveness based upon major investment in economic infrastructure:

  • A recognition by Government that cities are economic engines rather than just problems;
  • Identification, through the Parkinson and other work, of the critical success factors for making cities globally competitive;
  • A recognition that, for many aspects of this competitiveness agenda, the city region, rather than the city or region, is the right spatial level;
  • The prospect, through the SNR, of giving cities/city regions greater control over their own destiny, and therefore the ability to compete on equal terms with their counterparts abroad;