The rise of the city-region as a geo-political concept

Kevin MorganSchool of Planning and Geography

Cardiff University

Geographical Association Conference

10-11 April 2015

University of Manchester

The country in the city (by design)

Bosco VerticaleMilan

The country in the city (by default)

Bangkok 2011

Framing the city-region

• City-regionalism can be framed in two ways• Broadly – it refers to the multiple ways in which cities

are trying to reconnect with their regional hinterlands to create more strategic planning spaces

• Narrowly – it refers to functional economic areas which are normally defined by travel-to-work areas

• The narrow lens sees city-regions as a vehicle to promote local economic growth (“collaborate locally to compete globally” is the mantra) and this is the dominant conception in the UK

New economic geography

• The New Economic Geography has fuelled the narrow version because it reifies agglomeration

• Productivity and innovation are strongly correlated with agglomeration of economic activity

• Economic growth is uneven, but NEG argues that development can be inclusive if connectivity is good

• The implication is that policy-makers should foster urban agglomerations not frustrate them

• NEG provides the rationale for a metro-centric philosophy, bordering on metromania

Metromania – the academics

Metromania – the policymakers

Cardiff Capital Region

South East Wales: 10 municipalities, 1.5 million population2 main cities : Cardiff/Newport3 zones: the coastal area; heads of the valleys; lower valleysCardiff Capital Region created in 2013 Cardiff’s twin city, Stuttgart, created its city-region in 1994 with 179 municipalities and 2.6 million population

Commuting flows into Cardiff

Metro Map

Integrating the city-region

Sustainable city-regions: the broader/ecological frame

Bristol Good Food Plan

City-region narratives

• Two very different city-region narratives have emerged in the UK over the past decade

• The competitive city-region narrative is framed around economic growth and it is a top-down elite-driven affair led by the Core Cities and Central Government

• The sustainable city-region narrative is framed in ecological terms and it tends to be a bottom-up civic affair led by social movements and municipalities

• The fate of these narratives will be decided by politics not economics – not least by the rapidly changing geo-politics of the UK

References

• Harrison, J. (2014) Rethinking city-regionalism, Urban Studies 51/11

• Morgan, K. (2007) The polycentric state: new spaces of empowerment and engagement? Regional Studies 41/9

• Morgan, K. (2014) The Rise of Metropolitics: urban governance in the age of the city-region, in N. Bradford and A. Bramwell (eds) Governing Urban Economies, UTP, Toronto

• OECD (2014) The Metropolitan Century, Paris• OECD (2015) Governing the City, Paris• www.corecities.com