Think-tank reopens old wounds in the north-south economic debate

Planning, 29 August 2008

Summer is a season of diversions. For people in the policy trade, the best come in the form of reports from the Policy Exchange think- tank. In a period when we have had the Olympic Games, human rights issues in Tibet and war in Georgia to preoccupy us, the newspapers have nevertheless been full of outrage about the exchange's proposals for the wholesale transfer of millions of UK citizens from northern cities in need of regeneration to the economically burgeoning south.

The Cities Unlimited report by Tim Leunig and James Swaffield presents a superficially engaging set of arguments, supporting the proposition that the devotion of additional regeneration millions to failing northern cities is throwing good money after bad. We should instead relocate millions of people into new knowledge-based agglomerations around London, Oxford and Cambridge, it suggests.

The outrage has been palpable. The report's launch was timed to coincide with David Cameron's visit to Carlisle and the Conservative leader is quoted as saying: "This report is rubbish from start to finish. I think that the author himself said it might be a bit barmy. It is barmy." Cameron ably surfed a wave of popular affront, extending from those who live in and know the northern cities cited in the report to those who have devoted their lives to delivering the plans and actions to regenerate them.

Leunig and Swaffield seem to have made broad arguments that, while founded in economic theory, ignore the realities of social, economic and environmental geography. Their arguments neglect significant drivers for change that could deliver a very different future indeed from the one that they outline.

Examining geography first, the authors have not turned their mind to some critically important issues. The north is still a resource-rich environment. The prolific rainfall that powered the first mills of the industrial revolution and much of the coal that fuelled its second wave are still there. At least there is drinking water for everyone - which is more than could be said of the south if the extra millions they envisage were to decamp there.

Many northern cities are surrounded by fertile agricultural vales, providing an abundance of food and beautiful uplands. Not so lucky the southerners whose softer equivalents in the Cotswolds, Chilterns and South Downs, together with much agricultural land, would probably need to be urbanised to respond to Leunig and Swaffield's vision.

Existing cities and communities also represent a vast investment in buildings, infrastructure and embodied carbon. At a time when we are trying to reduce humanity's ecological footprint, we must place a higher value than ever on the efficient reuse of this built form. Abandoning it wholesale and consuming yet more resources replacing it somewhere else will be costly in both economic and carbon terms.

The value to society and community in shaping long-term attractive and dynamic places also seems to have been overlooked in the report. The simple prospect of relocating millions from the north suggests the creation of a new southern suburban folk outside their social context, without the full support of family, community and shared culture. Regenerated cities based on strong culture appear more likely to be enjoyable and economically prosperous than footloose communities of economic migrants.

Finally, however, my greatest concern is that the authors appear to have rooted themselves in the economics of the present and hence the past. They urge us to move millions of people to support economic activity in the south at a time when information and communication technology enable many of us to become as economically active from a Yorkshire miner's cottage as we could be in a Cambridge terrace.

If people's economic choices are broadened by technology in future, they are more likely to work from home and live where they want to live. With wise investment in planning and regeneration, remediating the legacies of historic economic decline and enhancing the qualities of places and spaces, choice and market forces are likely to lead many to the north.

Rynd Smith is RTPI director of policy.