According to Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak (Brookings Institute) “Power is shifting in the world: downward from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities; horizontally from the public sector to networks of public, private and civic actors; and globally along circuits of capital, trade, and innovation.”
It’s not surprising that much of their evidence for this stems from the USA. More recently they have written (p22, Prospect, October 2017) “The emergence of ‘New Localism’ is partly due to the abdication of higher levels of government“.
Search on Google, however, for ‘New Localism’ and the top hit (Wikipedia) roots the term in the early part of the UK’s Blair government and the realisation of an ‘increasing understanding of the limitations of centrally-driven policy implementation’.
Cautious devolution and local empowerment has since featured Gordon Brown’s ‘Sub-National Economic Growth’ plans, Regional Development Agencies replaced by Lord Heseltine’s Local Enterprise Partnerships, George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse, the RSA’s City Growth Commission, a variety of City Deals, half dozen new Metro Mayors and a new national industrial strategy that has space for Place-Making.
And yet, the UK remains one of the most centralised of all developed nations.
Even now, with a hint that Local Governments might once again be allowed to retain revenues from business property taxation (‘Business Rates’), there’s debate over the potential for relative inequities of city honey-pots and their less well-endowed commuter hinterlands – not to mention the latent heat of ‘post-code lottery’ outrage if any place dares to fare better than any another.
But we know that there is no national economy – only the aggregation of many local economies each with different demographics, different cultures, different business interests, different leaderships and different needs calling out for different priorities. More significantly, as the UK tumbles towards Brexit, cities and their communities have diverse cultural and commercial international linkages that impact on future prosperity here at home. Should we need to ask why some local economies and their communities prosper whilst others seem to wither? How can we have more prospering and less withering?
Central policy makers may desire national economic growth but that can only happen with the success of diverse local economies. So it’s not surprising that the Department for Business (BEIS) has strategically enshrined Place-Making, but as yet there’s very little flesh on those bones.
With the benefit of an 18-year world-wide study of what makes communities prosper, there are, it seems, some fundamental indicators but even these are evolving as we adapt to a more digitally-enabled era. Just as in business, enterprises that have not adapted find themselves in treacherous trading waters: communities, their citizens, employers and local leaders need to adapt. Sometimes it takes a crisis to spur action. Perhaps a more-mature approach lies in planning futures than reach beyond short-term electoral cycles.
To find the new New Localism – to flesh out the bones of Place Making and local economic/community development – Leaders, civic and commercial, should study the outcomes of on-going research.
In late October, the world’s Top 21 in the 2017/18 research cycle led by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) will be announced. By early next year those 21 communities will have been whittled down to just the Top 7. Then it will take a few more months of patient investigation and assessment to declare a worthy successor to Melbourne – the current holder of the title ‘Intelligent Community of the Year’. That announcement will take place next June in London in the company of mayors, CIOs, enterprise and civic leaders from communities around the world.
Between now and next June all the participating cities/communities will learn much about themselves and be readied to share their successes, to network their ideas, to inspire others, to find new opportunities, but also to learn how they might further adapt in this fast-moving world.
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See also http://www.gs-sg18.co.uk/about/www.gs-sg18.co.uk/about/smart-smarter-smartest and associated links.
Groupe Intellex 