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The 'Cambridge Phenomenon' has achieved global recognition as an exemplar of economic success. After decades of post-war planning restraint, a major shift in the strategic planning framework saw the city region enthusiastically backing future growth. Faced, subsequently, with abolition of formal strategic planning at a national level and when many local councils took the opportunity to scale back development proposals, Cambridge reasserted its commitment to growth. The new 'localism' and the 2012 National Planning Policy Framework, however, leaves this strategy - and the Cambridge Phenomenon itself - potentially vulnerable. This article explains the continuing momentum behind growth in the face of radical planning reform and looks at the potential tensions between this and the new localism. It provides an updated account of this iconic, high-tech cluster. It also aims to contribute to our conceptual understanding of strategies for growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles of local institutions in economic development at the local level. Drawing upon comparative analysis of the 39 local enterprise partnerships emergent in England since 2010, it demonstrates: how local economic development institutions work within multi-agent and multi-scalar institutional settings; the ways institutional genealogy shapes processes of layering and recombining as well as dismantling and improvising in episodes of institutional change and the analytical themes able to explore the roles and functions of institutions in local economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The everyday challenges faced by workers 'struggling to juggle' competing commitments of paid work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Reinforcing these problems, many employers regard work-life balance ( WLB) provision as too costly. In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB provision in knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a WLB 'mutual gains' research agenda. These synergies are explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high-tech regional economies - Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK - prior to (2006-8) and subsequent to (2010) the economic downturn. The results suggest that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements identified by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered work-life conflicts, employers can also enhance the learning and innovation processes within and between firms, which are widely recognized as fundamental for firms' long-term sustainable competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of fundamental concerns have been raised over the recent abolition of regional economic and planning institutions processes and associated plans and strategies in England. In particular, questions have arisen over the strength and democratic accountability of the new arrangements emerging at a sub-regional scale--namely local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) that as yet have neither legal powers nor any formal planning role. Consequently, this article critically assesses the role, provenance and value of the abolished regional institutions together with the parallel criticisms. It also examines the potential for LEPs as their replacement and to develop into democratically accountable, locally self-determined strategic planning bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the regionalist era and introduction of localism has set a number of emerging issues for economic development at the local level. Amongst the spatial, organisational and functional challenges facing local government a prevalent one is re-engineering a local development trajectory to represent this new environment. The dissolution of the regional governance hierarchy alongside a fundamental shift in aspirations for economic shape and structure has forced localities to reconsider approaches to both economic development and spatial economy. Using an action-based case study of the Borough of Poole, a coastal conurbation in Southern England, this article looks at the local response in revising the economic development strategy through a contextual benchmarking approach. It proposes an alternative method to adopt in developing local strategy contributing toward questions on defining spatial economy, integrating local context and actors, and adapting to a wider set of structural and fiscal issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief characterization of the cultural economy of landscape is provided, with special reference to the English Lake District. The early growth of tourism in the Lake District in relation to its natural, literary and artistic assets is described. I examine the cultural economy of landscape in relation to three critical social groups, namely, local producers of goods and services, residents and visitors/tourists. I then offer a detailed account of the main elements of the Lake District's cultural economy and the tourist experience today. Attention is devoted to (a) the natural environment and its attractions, (b) the historical-artistic patrimony of the region and (c) the growing importance of food production, cuisine and crafts within the regional economy. I show how these elements of the cultural economy combine with a complex institutional milieu to generate a path-dependent trajectory of development. In the conclusion, I present a few remarks on the concept of creative regions and the senses in which peripheral areas like the Lake District might and might not be analysed in terms of this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A seeming paradox of globalization is that while innovation and the industries and institutions that support it transcend local and national boundaries, high-tech innovative activity continues to agglomerate in a select number of high-capacity regions. Research, however, suggests that innovative regions must—through collaborative activity and related networks—both economize regional capacities while remaining open to global knowledge and finance. Collaboration and network formation are viewed as critical in this regard, as the competitive pressures of globalization are forcing firms to adopt collaborative and open innovation practices: forging relationships with external partners. Two important sources of knowledge and finance are regionally concentrated venture capital firms and large corporations, often globe-straddling multinational enterprises. While collaboration occurs between these two actors, an understanding of the processes and implications has only begun to emerge. Focusing on collaborative venture capital activity in London and the South East, this exploratory paper presents a preliminary understanding as to the role that this particular collaborative activity plays in the pursuit of complementary, extra-regional knowledge and expertise, and the extent to which this collaboration is recharacterizing the shape of regionally based venture capital networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade much has been written about the centrality of city-regions to accounts of economic success. But despite a rich and varied literature highlighting the importance of city-centric capitalism, the concept of the city-region remains ambiguous. Defined in economic terms, all too often what is missing from these accounts is how city-regions are constructed politically, and the processes by which they are rendered visible spaces. While recent interventions have done much to advance debates on the former, this paper explores the struggle to define, delimit and designate city-regions through recent endeavours to construct a spatial map of city-regions in England. The aim is to demonstrate how the processes by which city-regions are constructed politically are the mediated outcome of trans-regional economic flows and political claims to territory. The paper concludes by relating these findings to ongoing debates around state, space and scalar geographies, and speculates what they might mean for the future of city-regional debate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This research, carried out for the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), aims to understand the number and nature of estates in the region and the contribution that they make to the economy, environment and social fabric. It shows that estates are active as employers, providers of workspace, operators of visitor businesses, innovators, hosts of renewable energy, protectors and managers of the environment, providers of community infrastructure, providers of housing and contributors to local distinctiveness. The research concludes by recommending how the public sector and estates can work better together. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study quantifies the incidence and influence of rapid growth among firms in a high technology milieu. We draw on evidence from a longitudinal database of technology firms in Cambridge UK. Resource configurations and the entrepreneurial matching of resources to opportunities are addressed, using Penrosian growth theory. We examine how certain knowledge-resources of start-ups are related to firms' subsequent growth. We examine various firm growth modes to track how they are associated with firm and regional growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data provided by The Law Society of England and Wales, the paper attempts to evaluate the quantity and quality of legal services provided by private solicitors in Wales. Both are found wanting compared to England as a whole and to an appropriate comparator region (South West England). Moreover, the distribution of services within Wales is extremely uneven with remoter rural areas and areas of recent industrial decline showing the acutest difficulties. The results raise questions about whether Wales can confront the challenges posed by devolution and the emergence of a distinct jurisdiction and by the Welsh Assembly's strategy for economic regeneration. New technology and impending policy reforms give grounds for cautious optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in regional development has stressed the role of key economic actors in less favoured regions, particularly in high-technology sectors, in making those regions more attractive to outside investors. Of course, in less favoured regions (LFRs), there are rarely strong high-technology sectors able to reconfigure their local environment and provide the necessary local "buzz" to attract the attention of outside investors. In this paper, this issue is addressed by looking at how universities can play this role and have a broader systemic effect on the regional economic environment, by plugging gaps in the local regional innovation system. In this paper, a case study from Newcastle in the north-east of England is taken to consider recent developments which have begun to rebuild the regional innovation system. Focusing on the commercialization community around the university, it is looked at how this community of geographically proximate but initially organizationally and cognately remote actors built a common understanding to solve the problems involved in exploiting intellectual property in the impoverished regional innovation system (RIS) of the north-east of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although recognition of the significance of gender divisions continues to transform economic geography, the discipline nevertheless remains highly uneven in its degree of engagement with gender as a legitimate focus of analysis. In particular, although social institutions are now widely regarded as key determinants of economic success, the regional learning and innovation literature remains largely gender blind, simultaneously subordinating the female worker voice and making invisible distinctively gendered patterns of work in the face of an increasingly feminised labour force. Focusing on the industrial agglomeration of information and communication technology firms in Cambridge, England, we first outline the nature of the inequalities in patterns of work and social interaction among female versus male employees within Cambridge's high-tech regional economy. Second, we demonstrate how these inequalities in turn constrain female employees' abilities to contribute to key processes widely theorised to underpin firms' innovative capacities and economic competitiveness. Specifically, these self-identified constraints centre on female workers' abilities to: (a) act as agents of information and knowledge diffusion between firms; and (b) use new information and knowledge once they enter the firm. Overall, our results suggest that gender issues of social equity at the level of the individual worker need to be explicitly integrated with issues of economic competitiveness at the levels of the firm and the region. This is a case not simply of female employees being socially excluded at work, but of their simultaneous exclusion from key elements of firms' productive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uptake of clusters as a model with which to develop regional economies has been variable since the UK government first issued advice to regional development agencies in the late 1990s. The West Midlands made clusters one of its key strategies for economic growth and nominated the audio-visual sector as an embryonic cluster in order to help support its development. This article examines the development of this cluster from its inception and identifies issues in the way it was conceived and the roles played by the regional development agency, industry and higher education. The author draws on government and regional policies, cluster strategies and other internal documentation produced for the cluster, as well his own experience as an innovation manager for the cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional planning bodies throughout England are now in the early stages of preparing Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs), which will succeed Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) as the frameworks guiding local development planning. This transition from RPG to RSSs is one outcome of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Another outcome is the abolition of the Structure Planning function of English county councils, potentially resulting in a strategic vacuum in sub-regional planning. The Regional Assemblies (together with Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices) will need to address the subregional agenda, providing strategic leadership in what are often diverse and complex regional settings. The authors report on research undertaken on behalf of the South East England Regional Assembly and its partners. They examine both the changing policy context in this region, and the means by which a hitherto regional—and top-down—policy agenda is being ‘spatialised’ to address subregional diversity. In doing so, they also look at the move away from historic subregional boundaries, the redefining of ‘subregional’, and the shifting institutional ownership of the planning process at this particular tier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on qualitative empirical evidence from studies of regeneration in North-East England, and seeks to link housing market renewal to wider regeneration issues at regional and neighbourhood levels. It suggests that the discourse on, and justification of, housing market renewal has shifted from a specific concern with low housing demand and abandonment to a more generalised modernisation agenda seeking the restructuring of low-income neighbourhoods in terms not only of housing quality but also of tenure and population. This modernisation discourse is strongly linked to a regional economic regeneration agenda. It is argued that despite claims for the holistic nature of market renewal policies, it seems unlikely that these will improve the economic circumstances of existing residents as opposed to serving regional economic development objectives. Moreover, the more sweeping change implied by the modernisation agenda may reinforce the tension at neighbourhood level between community-led neighbourhood renewal and the restructuring of tenure and population through market renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic 'legacy', setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting 'gift' and 'commodity' Olympics - setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socio-economic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Cost-benefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Sheffield's attempts, during the early 1980s, at promoting economic regeneration through popular cultural production were unconsciously suggestive of later creative industries strategies. Post-work economic policies, which became significant to the Blair government a decade later, were evident in urban centres such as Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield in nascent form. The specificity of Sheffield's socio-economic configuration gave context, not merely to its industrial narrative but also to the city's auditory culture, which was to frame well intended though subsequently flawed strategies for regeneration. Unlike other cities, most notably Manchester, the city's mono-cultural characteristics failed to provide an effective entrepreneurial infrastructure on which to build immediate economic response to economic rationalisation and regional decline. Top-down municipal policies, which embraced the city's popular music, gave centrality to cultural production in response to a deflated regional economy unable, at the time, to sustain rejuvenation through cultural consumption. Such embryonic strategies would subsequently become formalised though creative industry policies developing relationships with local economies as opposed to urban engineering through regional government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often suggested that an agricultural revolution, currently defined as a rise in the output of arable workers, was a necessary precursor to industrialization and improved living standards. This article provides the first direct measurement of arable workers' average labor productivity for pre-industrial England. Rates are assessed for those production conditions that it is thought resulted in the lowest agrarian labor productivity rates in the pre-industrial period: c.1300-1348. The rates for English workers before the Black Death either surpassed or met the literature's best estimates for English workers until 1800, well after industrialization was underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Current academic discussions on economic development make a case for 'regional governance' in city-regions and stress the importance of varying institutional and policy-making frameworks for country-specific interpretations of 'regionalization'. This article will look at the evolution of forms and structures of regional governance in two of the main urban regions in western Europe, London and Berlin. They have been chosen for their underlying structural-geographic comparability, including their international outlook and awareness of competitiveness, while at the same time representing quite different constitutional and institutional arrangements for territorial governance in general, and that for city regions in particular. Nevertheless, as shown in this article, there appears to be the common challenge of an institutional lag in the adjustment of city-regional government to the imperatives of regional economic competition. This may even go as far as institutional arrangements not only being ineffective but obstructive to the development of city-regional governance through in-built support of localist or institutionalist ambitions. Drawing new boundaries between territories of institutional responsibilities, establishing institutional 'performance targets' or fiscally rewarding inter-local competition, are just some of the obstacles to building effective city regional governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the origin of the recently founded Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in England should be theorized in terms of the class relations and tensions of economic regulation in Britain and the use of scale and rescaling to manage those tensions. The paper considers the class logic of neo-liberalism, which has been particularly strongly developed in Britain due to its long-standing liberal settlement, and the problems of socialization of production which neo-liberalism has produced. The class tensions and problems of socialization which first created, and then led to the decline of, centrallyredistributive regional policy are discussed. Analogous processes at the EU level are examined. A key precursor of the RDAs, local economic initiatives, is examined, and the spatial-class relations underlying them discussed. These arguments are then the basis for understanding the partial rescaling of regulation in England downwards from the national state and upwards from the local level, and also the shift from centrally to locally controlled regional policy. This analysis of origins of the RDAs then suggests a number of tensions in the project which will shape its future trajectory; due to these tensions the class relations of the new regional economic governance remain open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Outlines the argument for elected regional government that is being made by the North East Constitutional Convention (NECC). Description of the proposed model of an elected regional assembly in England; Role of the NECC; Importance of an assembly; Possible impact of an elected regional assembly on the region.

The author develops an analytical framework for making cross-national comparisons, referred to as modes of governance, that centers on the study of how governing coalitions are built and maintained. He lays out the theoretical framework for modes of governance, which draws upon regime theory but goes beyond its conception of power structures. A primary concern is understanding the underlying causes of urban governing realignments and their impact on local strategic decision making. To illustrate the approach, the author compares politics of development in Boston, Massachusetts, and Bristol, England. Finally, the author considers the theoretical implications of the Boston/Bristol comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the agrarian development and regional ecology in England and France. Since both countries are composed of several regions with distinct agricultural practices, examining agricultural changes on a regional basis can reveal patterns that are commonly overlooked in national-level analysis. The author argues that the diverse agrarian regimes in England and France were caused by the differences in regional ecology and agricultural opportunities. He compared the agrarian development in each region based on differences in ecology, responses to changing market conditions and variation in social organization and husbandry approaches.

The article presents a study which aims to make a preliminary contribution for progress and problems in local planning. A survey carried out by the author of progress achieved towards the preparation and adoption of statutory local plans by tile local planning authorities in England. Issues arising out of this study concerning the nature and relevance of the current local plan making process are discussed. In this context, the authors aim to suggest the lines along which further investigation and research might be usefully undertaken.

Examines some methods of using national input-out tables at a regional level--specifically in the West Midlands region of England. Regional input-output models using national data; Structure of the West Midlands economy.

The article examines regional differences in rates in terms of local taxes between England and Wales. In these regions, the gross annual rent is used as a basis of the calculation of assessable value. It was discovered that the relative position of a town in a list of towns of a region did not change. Also, the dispersion of the rates of towns was quite small. Moreover, the clustering of the averages in the prosperous regions was the result of a fall in the level of rates of all the averages.

This article focuses on issues pertaining to the successful passage of the Regional Assemblies Act in 2003 which paved the way for referendums on the creation of English regional government to be held before the end of the present parliament. Regional assemblies will develop the work of the Regional Development Agencies and the Regional Coordination Unit in the Office of the deputy Prime Minister in undertaking strategic planning to promote even economic growth throughout England. It is probable that the proposals for regional government will be approved by the referendums because they connect with people's sense of regional identity and general antipathy to central government.