23.01.12
Breaking the cycle
The Centre for Cities report this morning showing the gap is widening between our best and worst performing cities reiterates evidence coming from other quarters, including research by the Work Foundation, that shows how difficult it can be for some urban areas to encourage growth and prosperity.
It is disconcerting to see the top few cities pulling away while others sink further into economic gloom, but it makes perfect sense from a business point of view – without significant incentives to do so, they are of course going to invest in the cities that attract the best-qualified workers and are already hubs of innovation and either high-tech manufacturing, research or 'knowledge economy' type activities.
Good advice abounds on how civil leaders in some of our more depressed cities – many of them in northern England and south Wales – can help attract innovation and investment, but so much depends on changing perceptions alongside very difficult things like boosting education outcomes and attracting better retail propositions to improve the look and feel of economically depressed areas. Certainly not an easy task.
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