Abstract

This article revisits debates on the contribution of the social economy to urban economic development, specifically focusing on the scale of the city region. It presents a novel tripartite definition – empirical, essentialist, holistic – as a useful frame for future research into urban social economies. Findings from an in-depth case study of the scale, scope and value of the Liverpool City Region’s social economy are presented through this framing. This research suggests that the social economy has the potential to build a workable alternative to neoliberal economic development if given sufficient tailored institutional support and if seen as a holistic integrated city-regional system, with anchor institutions and community anchor organisations playing key roles.

Highlights

  • Over the last few decades the social economy has become the subject of growing political and academic interest, in urban studies (Amin et al, 2002; Moulaert and Ailenei, 2005; Murtagh, 2018)

  • While research on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise tends to focus on the individual-entrepreneur and organisational scale, urban scholars are drawn to institutional assemblages and how the social economy operates within, and transforms, urban economies as an alternative model for local economic development

  • This perspective, increasingly voiced across the city-region, suggests there is room to think more strategically about how anchor institution contracts can be procured more locally and socially to make positive placebased impacts on skills, health and economic development. If this had been done more systematically from the very early days of commissioning, when it was first introduced into local authorities from the NHS with the restructuring of Primary Care Trusts into Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), the Liverpool City Region might well look very different today. Another social economy practitioner suggests how the anchor institution model can be better integrated into the current structure of large specialist charitable or private organisations delivering public services for local authorities and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs): I think from a design point of view it’s probably a matrix

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Summary

Introduction

Over the last few decades the social economy has become the subject of growing political and academic interest, in urban studies (Amin et al, 2002; Moulaert and Ailenei, 2005; Murtagh, 2018). While research on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise tends to focus on the individual-entrepreneur and organisational scale, urban scholars are drawn to institutional assemblages and how the social economy operates within, and transforms, urban economies as an alternative model for local economic development.

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Conclusion

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