Cities are back. After decades of decline and urban deprivation the metropolis (so the rhetoric goes) is the powerhouse of the 21st century post-industrial economy. In England the "core cities" - Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle - have been working together to promote urban renaissance.
A plethora of reports promoted cities and regional governance. Their thread has been devolving power from the centre to local government; a key idea is the city region, in which (with or without structural reorganisation and boundary changes) the regional development agencies, councils and private bodies work together, conurbation-wide.
But if ministers have talked of giving cities their heads on the ground there's scepticism: things are not moving, despite the recent publication of an implementation plan for last summer's subnational review. It wants to formalise multi-area agreements within regions and requires regional development agencies to devolve funds to local authorities.
And despite the talk, the core cities are still lagging. In the UK, London is still seen as the only real global city player; the rest fall behind their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. A report in 2006 identified only two cities outside London (Bristol and Leeds) in the top 61 performing European cities.
Despite the success of the London model, few cities have actually opted for a directly elected mayor; there are only 13 across the country and none in the core cities.
Dermot Finch, director of the Centre for Cities thinktank, identifies a "power gap" between London and other cities as a result. "This is definitely something the government should be responding to. The more the mayor of London accumulates power, the further away London's system of government gets from other big cities. The power gap will start to disadvantage lots of really quite large cities."
But he adds that the government has gone from "lukewarm to silent" on the issue of mayors despite a manifesto pledge to consult on a new generation of city mayors.
The local government minister, Hazel Blears, has made noises encouraging cities to go for mayors based on existing local authority boundaries and a recent paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research calls for a mayor for every English town and city. But the Centre for Cities favours regional mayors based on the London model with strategic powers to push through big infrastructure developments and override local planning concerns.
Finch, however, points out: "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas - you can't look to existing bodies to suggest a mayoral model." It should be incentivised, he says, with promises of greater powers from central government on transport, strategic responsibilities and skills funding.
Leadership
Business groups have been campaigning in some areas such as Birmingham for a mayor to attract inward investment and in other cities such as Liverpool and Nottingham it has been mooted by factions dissatisfied with existing leadership but has got no further. Those against changing the system say a mayor is not necessarily a panacea.
Congestion charging provides a case in point of the difficulties of pushing through controversial developments requiring the buy-in of local councils, business and agencies. Despite the real traffic problems afflicting cities and estimated to cost the British economy £20bn a year, London is the only city to have any kind of road pricing. Three years ago, Edinburgh residents rejected plans for a congestion charge in a referendum and in many other cities the idea hasn't got past the first post. City leaders and regional agencies in Birmingham recently rejected road pricing plans, fearing it would harm the local economy.
The government has gone cold on national road pricing, instead encouraging local schemes to tackle congestion and reduce car use, offering matching funds through the Transport Innovation Fund. But Manchester is so far the only region where authorities and transport bodies managed to get their act together and present a bid in the first round of the scheme, which aims to invest £3bn in public transport with £1.2bn raised from road pricing.
City region brand
Manchester is seen as furthest down the line in terms of establishing a city region brand, with good partnership arrangements in place between the 10 Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. It is also the only authority that looks set to seek statutory status for its multi-area agreement. In other cities such as Birmingham it has proved more difficult, particularly as nearby Coventry sees itself as a big hitter in its own right and is unwilling to be subsumed into the idea of a greater Birmingham (see page 35). The city has also abandoned plans for the time being for a formal multi-area agreement.
Transport links are vital to make commuting possible and join up urban hubs - many resurgent cities are in the south-east, with good links to London, including Southampton and Reading. More needs to be done to make use of those links in the north, the Centre for Cities has urged. But it's not as simple as a north-south divide. York and Warrington are successful, prosperous cities in the north.
New research by Ivan Turok, professor of urban studies at the University of Glasgow, found British cities having outdone many of their European neighbours in terms of economic improvement over the last 10 years. London, Southampton-Portsmouth, Sheffield, Liverpool, Coventry and Newcastle were in the top 20 European cities in terms of urban employment revival. But UK cities do less well on productivity - the revival has been led by the service industry and financial services, with lower-level jobs created, compared to the outstanding European performers, Dublin, Helsinki and Stockholm, he said.
Retail boom
At a city regional level, Turok points out cities' economic performance is affected by their outlying areas. He says that while the core of Glasgow has benefited from the consumer and retail boom, its overall performance has been brought down by weaker outlying areas.
This is why you have to have interactions within regions, he says. Much of Glasgow's recovery could be put down to it capturing the spend that should have gone to its surrounding areas. "There is a danger that cities see the best route forward as competing against neighbours to build shopping centres, supermarkets and competing for talent, whereas they should be taking a strategic view to attract investment to the whole region."
