Donner du sens à la Northern Powerhouse

Abstract

The Northern Powerhouse (NPh) is a UK government initiative for increasing the economic competiveness of the North of England launched by the former Chancellor, George Osborne in 2014. Informed by the new urban economics and the importance of agglomeration and urban scale and density in fostering competitiveness, the NPh sought to pool the strengths of the Northern core cites, principally Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield, as a kind of transformative urban counter-weight to London. This article aims to assess the nature and wider significance of the NPh, considering its evolution and impact since 2014. It argues that the NPh is a spatial economic narrative that has gained the support of a wide range of Northern interests, but that its coherence and implementation has been undermined by a lack of national government commitment and leadership since 2016.