Great Britain's Second-Order City Regions in Recessions

Abstract

AcknowledgementsThe data derived from the Business Register Employment Survey (BRES) and its predecessors were extracted from the National On-line Manpower Information System (nomisweb.co.uk) under a Notice issued by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in September 2011, reference NTC/BRES10-S0122. AbstractWhile it is now accepted that the 2008-09 recession accentuated regional differences in Britain, it is more difficult to identify the role of major cities, especially over a longer time scale. Using previously established methods focussed on employment, this paper assesses the record of nine city regions in the 2008-09 recession, both in its own right and in comparison with the previous two recessions. The 2008-09 recession is found to have impacted the nine city regions less than the previous ones in absolute terms but not in relative terms compared with the London city region or the rest of Britain. Over the whole period from 1978, the paper has found the city regions to be fairly tightly in the grip of national cyclical trends of recession and recovery, but generally performing less resiliently than Britain as a whole. In comparison, London showed appreciably more cyclical behaviour between 1989 and 2002 than at other times, with the most remarkable recovery from recession in this period. The public sector helped the performance of second-order city regions from 1997 to 2010, including the peak of growth rates in city regions and their cores in 1998-2002, but its employment reductions will dominate the prospects for provincial cities for several years to come.

High growth firms, jobs and peripheral regions: the case of Scotland

“…Having performed worse during the recession than London (Champion and Townsend, 2013), second tier cities -many of which are in northern regions -are now lagging behind London in terms of job creation during the recovery (Townsend and Champion, 2013;Centre for Cities, 2014). …”

How Far Do England's Second-Order Cities Emulate London as Human-Capital 'Escalators’?

“…the tier of urban agglomerations immediately below the premier city (for reviews, see Parkinson et al, 2012;Champion and Townsend, 2013). This interest has been stimulated by the decline of manufacturing and the emergence of knowledge-based industries as the major production sector, because the latter are seen as being most vibrant where they can take advantage of the greatest agglomeration economies.…”

“…The Core Cities Group (2004) announced that 'Our cities are back', but Parkinson et al (2006) between Manchester and Leeds, could build up local critical mass and reduce the productivity gap with London. Subsequently, the Great Recession has exposed the fragility of the progress that had been achieved, impacting less severely on the capital than the second-order cities because part of the latter's previous growth was supported by increases in public expenditure that were then sharply reversed under recessionary conditions (ippr north, 2009;Clayton, 2011;Centre for Cities, 2012;Parkinson et al, 2012;Champion and Townsend, 2013). It would seem that the extra policy support since the 1990s has not been sufficient to redress the structural weaknesses of England's second-order city economies.…”

Mapping policies and programmes: the use of GIS to communicate spatial relationships in England

“…But perhaps more significantly, the analysis clearly captures a cross-section of impacts associated with uneven economic growth in England. It is a further illustration of the need for more creative thinking about rebalancing the spatial economy away from London and the South East towards second-tier cities which, on the whole, have latent capacity to accommodate growth (Champion and Townsend, 2013).…”