Urban Revival and Knowledge-Intensive Services: The Case of the English 'Core Cities'

Abstract

Business, technological and creative knowledge intensive functions, whether available locally or from outside, are the basis for successful regional, and especially urban, adaptability to changing economic conditions. The economic revival of the English core cities thus depends on such functions to support new suites of competitive, tradable activities around which key actors, institutions and relationships may focus. In comparison with similar European cities, however, they face particular problems because of the historic and growing national dominance of the knowledge-intensive service nexus based in and around London. Economic policies since the 1980s have reinforced this by supporting a deregulated private, and centralized public national knowledge economy. In spite of the recent growth of knowledge-intensive functions in the core cities, detailed employment evidence for critical financial, business, architectural, engineering, and computer services suggests that there has been little weakening of London’s hold over more internationally-oriented functions, even during the recent recession. In some cases, opportunities appear to be being lost to exploit the core cities’ inheritance of technical and commercial expertise. Instead, their service employment growth depends increasingly on the debt-based dynamism of UK consumer markets, and their attractions as locations for more cost-sensitive, routine functions. In this context, the core cities will require especially effective strategies to promote the coherent development of tradable knowledge-based assets, in both the commercial and public sectors, if they are to develop as nodes in the networked, knowledge-based international economy.