Cultural City-Regions
A functioning cultural City-region would require
close co-ordination of planning, both of cultural policy and facilities
However, the Core Cities agenda moves beyond the current
renewal of interest in cities and their cultures to a concept which
has had little consideration within Britain, but which is widely
understood on the continent and in the United States – the
City-region (see Appendix 1
for a definition of the English City-regions). In terms of the flows
of people – travelling to work or travelling to culture –
and in the way business is done and resources are recycled, the
City-region can often be a more meaningful unit than either the
local authority district or the standard English regions. Studies
of high technology clustering and innovative milieux also attest
that the City-region (greater Barcelona, Stuttgart or Los Angeles)
is the geographic level which matters most. In cultural terms, the
city-regions also have greater resonance as the basis of identity
and local pride.
Our model for a functioning cultural City-region would
require close co-ordination of planning, both of cultural policy
and facilities, but also land-use, transportation and other factors
which impact upon culture. It would be based upon a clear understanding
of the different roles and functions of the city centre vis-à-vis
the suburban and sub-regional centres, leading to a planned concentration
of key cultural assets in the city centre. This would be achieved
through a strategic targeting of investment, backed up by complementary
transportation and marketing strategies to ensure the inhabitants
of the whole City-region are able to take full advantage of the
city centre’s critical mass.
To test our model we ran a brief exercise to compare
the English City-regions with the city of Glasgow – in many
ways a very similar city but one which has operated within an increasingly
different policy environment in recent years. We found a marked
difference in cultural investment between Glasgow and its English
counterparts based, for example, on the distribution of National
Lottery resources. We looked at the per capita value of Lottery
awards for culture in Core Cities against those for the rest of
a City region. We found that with the exception of Liverpool and
Manchester the extent to which investment had been targeted towards
the centres of City-regions was negligible. However, on looking
at Glasgow, we found that the concentration of investment in the
city core was greater than investment in the rest of the region
by a factor of 32. So, whilst there has clearly been a policy to
grow Glasgow’s cultural offer at the heart of its City-region,
there seems to have been an ‘averaging out’ of cultural
investment across the English City-regions. We also compared Glasgow
and the Core Cities with regard to the growth of their cultural
economies, specifically employment in the creative industries. We
found that during the last half decade, employment in Glasgow City
increased by 36% as against an average of 14% for the Core Cities.
This may not seem too surprising given the figures for investment
above. However, we also looked at creative employment in the rest
of the City-region (excluding the Core City) and found it was increasing
in Glasgow by 31% against growth of only 15% in the English City-regions.
We should not wish to draw too many conclusions from
such a limited exercise, but it might be argued that Glasgow is
demonstrating the validity of a factor which is at the heart of
the Core Cities cultural case: that Core Cities act as cultural
multipliers and that when they are properly resourced they distribute
benefit throughout their wider region. We would certainly argue
that developing a greater understanding of the dynamics and potency
of City-regions should be part of the policy agenda of all major
cultural agencies.
Finally, we would wish to highlight the potential of
the Core Cities to the economic and cultural development of the
more widely-drawn English Regions. According to our enquiries, there
would appear to be a general coyness on the part of regional development
agencies and regional cultural consortia in acknowledging a role
for Core Cities in driving their wider strategies. We would argue
for a more explicit recognition of Core Cities by regional agencies
and highlight as an exemplar the initiative taken by North West
Development Agency and Culture North West to position Liverpool
and Manchester at the centre of their strategies, and to commission
specific studies, such as the Liverpool Manchester Vision to translate
this into action.
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“The
importance of the
cosmopolitan city to its region is significant. Such cities are
invariably the focus of migrants and the input of new ideas flowing
from this tends to make them more creative than their hinterlands.
In a region with a cosmopolitan city its effects as an economic
motor and centre of innovation will be profound – both in terms
of the generation of business and knowledge which can overspill
into surrounding towns, but also in its effect on the image of the
region and the ability of the wider region to attract and successfully
absorb mobile investment and skilled labour.
The cosmopolitan city,
then, attracts knowledge intensive activity, skilled labour, international
tourists and business elites, all of which in turn introduce new
ideas and creativity and generate a demand for quality and high
value added goods and services, which in turn creates a more attractive
environment capable of attracting more activity. Such a virtuous
cycle of growth creates conditions in which the local population
of a city and the wider region can benefit.”
Building
the Region’s Knowledge Economy
Centre for
Urban and Regional Development Studies, University of Newcastle,
May 2001
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