Local and regional government in the UK

The new UK Government has published its program today and there are several references to the future of local and regional government. Under the heading 'Business' it is said that Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) will be replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships. Further down, under 'Communities and Local Government' the new powers of local government and communities are established.

It is to a great extent what the Conservative party had been announing it would do all along, so there aren't really a lot of surprises. One of the big questions however was what was going to happen to the RDAs in places such as the North East. I don't think this document really clarifies much, although it does mention that the Partnerships "may take the form of the existing RDAs in areas where they are popular." We'll have to wait for more details.

The Atlantic

The magazine The Atlantic has a section devoted entirely to the future of cities. I find this particularly interesting: it's a collection of stories about cities that were published in the magazine over the last 150 years. Take for example a story published in 1906 wondering if New York would ever compare to Paris!

Ranking of European cities

In New Geography among many interesting articles I found this unscientific and completely subjective ranking of European cities. It is nevertheless a fun read. It's just a pitty (for personal reasons obviously) that Lisbon wasn't included...

Florida debunked

I often link in this blog to articles by Richard Florida, even though I disagree with his style of pop economic geography, and his simplistic assumptions about economic development. So as a counter argument I would suggest two articles published in mainstream outlets (i.e. not scientific journals) that debunk Florida's work. The first is a few month's old but very interesting. It was published in the American Prospect in January, although I ounly found it today, and it reflects on how the cities that took his advice are still waiting for a turning point. You can read it here. There is one paragraph that I find particularly funny, as a former manager of Richard Florida talks about his 'rock star' tours after publishing The Rise of the Creative Class:

"There was a tremendous money-generating aspect to Richard's work," Frantz says. "We did it in a grand way. We traveled in style. We stayed in boutique hotels in most of the places we were working." But it is wrong, he says, to see any conflict in Florida's dire pronouncements on the places that bankrolled this success, because he hadn't promised prosperity in the first place. "He wasn't really making prescriptions," Frantz says. "This wasn't Jesus Christ throwing the money men out of the temple; this was an academic. He was a fucking college professor, and you're hoping to resurrect Canton, Ohio? Yeah, good luck with that."

The second was published in a magazine called Fast Company. It's a review of his most recent book The Great Reset. Equally very well written, by someone that is clearly familiar with some of the academic debates. It's available here.