Capital Shocks and the Great Urban Divide

On Surprises, Strategy, the Economy and What Comes Next for Scottish Independence

“…24 McCann and colleagues' most recent work, analysing private sector property investment in the UK economy, has demonstrated that the lasting impact of the 2008 financial crisis was to refocus development in London to the extent that 'other UK regions shifted rapidly into junk bond territory'. 25 Thus, in 2023 the UK is faced with an increasingly negative economic outlook for the country as a whole, with productivity growth worse than any time since the eighteenth century, incomes stagnant for more than a decade, an acute cost of living crisis and a macro-outlook so bad that it will be overtaken by a succession of central European countries in terms of GVA per capita within a couple of decades. 26 At the same time, economic inequality between regions is growing rather than shrinking, which means that some regions are most likely already poorer than former Eastern Bloc countries.…”