The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) has just produced a brilliant 2-part paper on future options for central and local government. Here’s my review/summary published on the Medium platform.
There’s a moment on any epic journey – a brief moment, maybe of self-doubt – when you pause (mid-sentence, perhaps) to wonder exactly where you’re headed.
This week’s pause, this check, comes just as we approach the midpoint of the KYP series – four done, five to go. Time, then, to check the plan, time to summon energy, time to pull together and push on. Time, maybe, for a small course correction?
KYP – ‘Knowing Your Place’ – was always an unlikely blog series but from the outset it had great structural underpinning. Most of the episodes had been well rehearsed – albeit with different headlines – and needed only an injection of current relevance for a new audience.
With just one exception the planned topics were neatly summarised three years previously in the concluding chapter of Brain Gain – a book that captured more than a decade of learning through the Intelligent Community Forum.
The single exception is a key indicator that has since crept far more clearly onto the community agenda – largely, it should be said, through the work of the Rockefeller Foundation and their 100 Resilient Cities network. It might once have been argued that Resilience was but a subset of a longer-standing ICF Key Indicator – Sustainability. However, headline tones get burdened by baggage – a peaceful green is not on the same wavelength as urgently-flashing red and blue lights of public safety.
When the Intelligent Community Forum gathers in London next June, their 2018 root theme, Humanising Data, will no doubt be coloured by recently raised awareness of data privacy issues and the impacts/consequences of ‘artificial intelligence/ignorance’ – but in our KYP series the blog-prep for Sir Nigel Shadbolt’s input is still two weeks away.
For readers remaining mystified, links to the series so far are listed below. At the outset, the central question, the question that is bringing so many brilliant speakers and community leaders together next June, was deceptively simple: Why do some places thrive whilst others decline?
I’ve checked the waypoints. We seem to be on course, but the next five weeks is a long journey. Still to come in this series are thoughts on local Advocacy (Who do we think are?), Open Data (AI in city infrastructures), Innovation Capacity (Pacemakers for Place-makers), Sustainability Engagement and finally Resilience. Fortunately, ICF is inherently collaborative and, with inputs from summit speakers, the driving can be shared.
By the end of May, homework complete, all delegates – whether from the UK or the other side of world – will be fully prepped and prompted to probe the great gathering of expert speakers and community leaders at the ICF Global Forum.
_______________________
Notes:
Brain Gain, Bell, Jung and Zacharilla, Intelligent Community Forum, ISBN: 1499228023
Part 2 of our series posted on the Medium Platform reflected on the theme of Connectivity.
As we approached the deadline for publication of ‘Connected With Success‘ the editing pace quickened. An earlier draft drew great suggestions from the Steering Group for the 2018 Intelligent Community Forum’s Global Summit in June.
Fiber optics
First up our friends in the Northwest shouted for inclusion of the Health and Education impacts of future-proofed networks – particularly for remote rural areas. Then we had late confirmation from Sweden that VXFiber’s Mikael Sandberg would also be speaking at the Summit.
But the FINAL final cut was hugely informed by Bruce Katz – co-author of The New Localism. Bruce gave an inspiring address this last week in the Centre for Cities ‘City Horizons’ programme – so the final cut gave voice to a wider view of networking.
Those of us with a background in telecoms are well at ease with the physical (holes, poles and cables) but pay less attention to the connectivity of ideas – the creative fusion when local leaders us their ‘convening power’ to bring talented minds from all quarters to focus on specific local issues.
Regular readers may recall that we reviewed Bruce’s work last October in ‘The NEW New Localism’ but now, six-months on, the willingness of folk to hear and understand his messages about the innovative power of communities is far more firmly established.
And so, in the nick of time, the final cut for Part 2 of this 9-part series balanced technical takeaways with the creative intellectual impacts. In large part that is why the ICF Summit is so very useful – the components are fascinating but it is in their networking that they become hugely valuable.
Next week we are writing about how communities build and maintain a Knowledge Workforce – Part 3 – ‘Where Have All our Flowers Gone?‘ will appear on April 19th – assuming we survive the edit process!
Local Fabrics [part 1 of a nine-part weekly series]
Why do some places thrive whilst others decline?
How can we shape the future of our communities — the places we call home, the places where we work, the places where we relax?
This nine-part guide to knowing (really understanding) the fabric of communities will explore those questions.
Questions of local prosperity and wellbeing are now far more prominent for many reasons — not least because so much more is known about the huge diversity of local economies and the very different needs and priorities of people who spend time in them. Awareness of these complex local fabrics — each one woven differently — prompts questions over the adequacies and limitations of centrally-driven top down policies.
The flood of new local insights stems from better data and deeper analysis. The realisation (or rather acceptance) that national pictures do not adequately describe the UK economy is a challenge for Whitehall. Tabloids may decry post-code lotteries. Funding formulae handed down from Whitehall are bitterly contested. Local leaders campaign for greater empowerment — some even arguing for ‘city sovereignty’. And, in the Brexit context, questions of national, regional and local identity and belonging are under the spotlight.
International relationships and high policy arenas may seem way out of reach and, for many people, it’s the stuff closest to hand that is important in any quest to ‘take back control’. In this series, therefore, the focus is entirely on local communities and what can make them healthier — prosperous, engaged and sustainable — in a world where the free flow of data demands careful application.
Great cities may be keen to adorn themselves with ‘smart’ technology to further hone their inner workings. Old mechanistic approaches to economies are, however, being supplanted by thematic models — exemplified by Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ and Marianna Mazzucato’s ‘Entrepreneurial State’. These describe, safe places for policy makers to intervene on socioeconomic issues without straying beyond ecological boundaries. The new economics are also delightfully cross-sector with themes cutting across the old silos that fuel so much of central policy and ‘industry’ regulation.
Conventional economic analysis and management is rooted in vertical sector silos, geospatial metrics and demographics. The more-qualitative themes that create local fabrics and bind communities together are the cross-cutting place-making threads shown in figure 1.
Each of the horizontal threads will be explored in the next eight weekly episodes of this place-based series.
Because all places are different these themes will have variable relevance for the community that you know best — the place that you call home. But the activities and priorities that create these threads are all indicators of community cohesion and future prosperity.
The UK economy is only the aggregate of local placed-based activities. Any sense of national cohesion depends on the strength and design of these local fabrics.
These indicators are not new — they are distilled from years of observation. They are at the root of ‘intelligent communities’ and derive from the long-term observations of a global think-tank that gathers annually to celebrate forward-thinking communities.
The episodes will be published weekly throughout April and May 2018 with the full set complete before the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) next gathers in London to ask again ‘Why do some places thrive whilst others decline?
IMS – the very British Institute for Management Services – seems to have been around forever. And the terribly British problem with productivity continues to puzzle, despite decades of effort, a long train of government ministers and grand policy initiatives.
The IMS appointment of a presidential successor to Dr. Beeching, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, Monty Finniston and more-recently a couple of Lords, might seem unlikely to make much difference. Except for one small thing – the least noticed and least understood strand of the UK government’s new Industrial Policy : Place-Making. Embedded in the latest policy iteration is acknowledgement that local economies are very diverse. Different places have different needs and priorities. They are not served well by ‘one size fits all’ policies based on national averages. Bristol is very different to Bolton.
With the legitimization of ‘Place-Making’ – entirely new channels are opened to the incoming productivity president. Recharged city leaderships are massively motivated energy sources rooted within local economies. Their ‘city sovereignty’ perspectives reflect a new determination to properly manage the shocks and stresses of fast-growing communities.
The energy of new city leaders is undeniable. They wear coats of many party colours. Who better to convene new programmes that could ramp up inward investment, attract talent, grow their local knowledge workforce and get to grips with the chronic mediocrity of digital infrastructure. In contrast, Whitehall has just celebrated the ‘achievement’ of 95% UK availability of connectivity that is not super, not fast and not broad – and wonder why more people don’t buy it?
Leastways, that’s the story so far. The UK’s productivity wake-up call could herald a new policy balance – more grass roots than top-down – but much will now depend on finding space in local leaders’ overcrowded place-making agendas and the resources to fuel their empowerment.
The London-based Centre for Cities does exactly what it says on the tin. They advocate for better recognition of the economic and societal strengths of the UK’s major conurbations.
‘Cities’ according the Centre for Cities, ‘do not follow the national economy – they ARE the national economy’ – and their diversity demands that each of them have different priorities to meet the needs of their citizen and business communities.
This diversity of needs and priorities stands in sharp contrast to Whitehall’s grasp of the economy. The UK is, measurably, the most centralised of all developed nations.
Even with limited sub-national devolutions beyond England and the cautious local empowerment of Metro Mayors and City Deals within, it is clear that in so many spheres of our regulated regime, we have a complex challenge – an inability to align centrally planned resources with local needs.
None of that is news. The debate, like some slow-brewing tropical storm, has been building over the last three decades – centrally evidenced by the RSA’s City Growth Commission and today (rather more locally) illustrated by the energy around Bristol’s brilliant ‘Festival of Ideas’. And this locally-driven rebalancing energy is also evident across many UK cities – at a pace, intensity, creativity and engagement that leaves Whitehall Departments in the shade.
This renaissance – the emergence of inspired local leadership and willing communities – is also a cultural expression that positions exponents at some distance from the tired dogmas of national political parties across the spectrum.
Critical impatience is, for example, articulated by Metro Mayors, regardless of Party affiliations. The Centre for Cities noted the marginalisation of these local champions at recent Party conferences and, this week, the C4C lead story is a repeat of a powerful post-election view of paralysis in parliament with a call for MP’s to support local initiatives.
I’m not a disinterested observer. I’ve written previously about Municipal Enterprise and the need to translate and apply the work of fresh economic thinkers like Kate Raworth and Mariana Mazzucato from national to more local perspectives. I’ve watched the brilliantly creative work of Knowle West Media Centre building community cohesion in part of Bristol and for several years I’ve contributed to the work of the US-based Intelligent Community Forum with its global network of around 160 cities.
Whilst our national politicians are looking elsewhere, the new localism is an unstoppable force. This is an energy that is likely be further bolstered by the Intelligent Community Forum’s 2018 Global Summit when civic leaders, CIOs and community developers from many of the world’s leading cities come to London next June to share their experiences. The current holder of the title ‘Intelligent Community of 2017’ is Melbourne, Australia. In recent years UK cities have rarely featured in the rankings but this year Knowle West was assessed as being amongst the Global Top 21 – a huge accolade for their imaginative creativity.
Let’s be clear (as politicians are fond of saying) communities are both economic and societal constructs – they embrace both the places where we work and where we live – and those of us who commute may belong to two or more.
In the gradual evolution of local empowerment, the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships was supposed to have been a step along the way. No doubt they can claim some economic impact but for their wider communities these efforts pass largely unnoticed and, as noted in this week’s Economist, the divergences of well-being means that many feel they are being left behind. Rather than celebrate diversities the good citizens of less-prosperous places are more likely to fret about ‘post-code lotteries’ when austerity drives down public service standards. Fortunate indeed are those places that rise above party politics to embrace inspired local leadership. But this is a balancing act – local threads woven into wider regional fabrics.
What marks out the new New Localism are signs of vastly greater local engagement – and with that higher-octane fuel the drivers of the UK economic performance and our social and cultural developments are very firmly in the hands of local communities and their place-makers.
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.
[Editorial co-authored by Susie McAleer of 21c Consultancy & David Brunnen, Groupe Intellex]
Brexit=uncertainty. Business leaders have no idea how government negotiations with the European Commission will evolve. The likelihood that nothing will change is at, or very close to, absolute zero.
What is certain is that cross-border transactions will be different in at least two ways – pricing and regulation. The consequences (even if the UK moves to WTO tariffs) will probably involve potentially costly administrative adjustments to the way we all do business in any transnational flow whether import or export, inward investment, overseas acquisition, emigration or immigration.
Anyone already immersed in overseas trade will know the current complexities. In recent times it has been useful to (a) simplify the process and/or (b) outsource the hassle. Wholesale elimination of tariffs and trade barriers within the EU expanded the scale of accessible markets on our doorstep. But old customs die hard, so a new industry has emerged – an army of specialist intermediaries to handle the ‘red tape’ and logistical complexities that add extra costs but very little extra value.
Conventional analysis would see easy/local market access shrinking and also increased regulatory red tape, but could Brexit have an unforeseen silver lining? Some enthusiastic Brexiteers have suggested that technology can somehow bridge new borders.
Is it possible that we now have the will to design transnational transaction systems sans rubber stamps in triplicate?
Is it plausible that the UK could find competitive advantage through some new global protocol to make trading easier?
What is the chance that all other countries would agree and fall into line?
And could all this be designed and implemented before the guillotine falls?
It may sound unlikely but the underlying spirit of our digital times – disintermediation – should, in theory, sweep away the old (or new) roadblocks.
Consider, for example, the vexed question of a land border between Northern Ireland and the rest of that island. Their border had lost much of its polarising significance but may now return to regulate the flow of people, goods and services. Can technology save everyone the hassle of stopping, searching and rubber-stamping?
Well, in theory, yes. Adopting blockchain technology has the potential to create simple, fast and efficient systems for organisations on both sides of the border enabling them to trade using a robust, secure platform and network with automatically pre-assured customs clearances, dues paid and all boxes ticked.
The chain itself is simply an electronic document ledger that enables people and businesses to share information – financial, legal, electronic or physical asset description – securely across a network of computers without the need for a central authority, be it a bank or government department. No one member of the chain has the power or authority to change or tamper with the records, and the blockchain algorithms keep everyone honest by ensuring data integrity and authentication of the transactions. This transference of governance from centralized institutions to a system of distributed networks of peer-to-peer collaborators ensures a trust protocol is created and managed by the members of the chain, the ones who create and drive value, not by a third-party middleman.
So, that’s the theory, but what would the blockchain mean in real life?
In the Northern Ireland Brexit case blockchain could provide complete trade transparency enabling borders to be kept open without hindrance. For example, supply blockchain’s would ensure the provenance of food (the titular brexit bacon) and of goods that cross the border, ensuring they are transported at the right temperature, in the right volumes, keeping quality from source to destination without the need for overwhelming volumes of paperwork and ‘red tape’.
Selling high value assets, such as property and enterprises between those from Northern Ireland and the Republic could be made faster with automatic and immutable historic ownership data, from copies of deeds to due diligence information, thereby removing fraud and reducing bureaucracy.
The use of faster, secure payments means local businesses could rival bigger companies. Imagine if a local mini-cab firm could take on Uber by placing transactions on the blockchain, thereby removing the centralized organistation taking a 30% cut from fees. The idea of blockchain is to give better value/more money to those in the network, rather than large corporates based in, say, China or the USA.
Whilst the potential of blockchain is still largely theoretical, advances in its use for trade are being made. At the start of 2017 seven European banks (Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit) created the Digital Trade Chain (DTC) consortium in order to collaborate on the design, development and commercialisation of a shared supply chain management and trade finance platform for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) using blockchain technology. In addition, a new initiative called BlockchainCITIES provides an EU membership platform of local authorities in BlockChain transition. Could we be on the cusp of reinventing the trusted city trading partnerships of the Hanseatic League in the 15th Century?
Perhaps a good UK starting point would focus on trade between cities within Commonwealth countries where we have a shared heritage of law and commercial frameworks.
However, it remains to be seen if the traditionally bureaucratic institutions such as banks and government can actually drive an innovation of this nature and overcome a range of deterrents from high initial capital costs to large computing power consumption. The new energy for development of blockchain-enabled cross-border trading will almost certainly come from major cities where inward investors could be attracted by frictionless trading environments.
BUT, all this hope (and hype) for an easier trading life requires massive concerted effort.
In the US-State of Illinois, for example, 107 students have been immersed in a month-long ‘hackathon’ to explore the possibilities. Five pilot projects undertaken by the state include the areas of land title registry, academic credentials, health provider registries, energy credit marketplaces and vital records.
‘The state’s idea is that if it can figure out blockchain, there are a lot of record keeping and transaction processes that can be made more secure and more reliable.‘ – statescoop.com But none of these pilots have yet tackled International Trade Transactions – most probably because they live in a giant single market where import/export rules are a minority sport.
As yet there is little sign that here in the UK we are assembling any similarly scaled collaborative efforts – and time to organise these before Brexit is slipping away.
Does the UK government have any clear idea of the investment required for such innovation?
And if the Department for International Trade is not on top of this, will some of our leading Cities take the lead?
Will we let go of something that we’ve not yet fully grasped?
One thing is certain; we have a golden opportunity now to transform digital platforms for the borders of tomorrow with Blockchain forming the central nervous system of trade. Surely, regardless of Brexit outcomes, it’s time to start a chain reaction!
[Why I took Doughnut Economics[1] to the 2017 ICF Global Summit]
The time for tolerance of misguided creeds is over. That’s an existential issue for politicians searching for economic growth. The relentless pursuit of progress has not suddenly vapourised but its measurement is, at last, being sidelined.
Economists and politicians have known since the 1930’s that GDP is a poor proxy for progress. The conventional metrics do not come anywhere near measuring the value of real activities. But even if GPD was better formulated it misses the point. The purpose of policy should not be some slavish devotion to a metric and particularly not to one so unfit. But arguing for some higher purpose begs the question: without growth are we doomed to decline? Nobody surely votes for making things worse?
Dissatisfaction with GDP growth addiction is deeply rooted. For decades economists have tried different rationales. Could we, please, have Green Growth (more sustainable) or Inclusive Growth (more equitable) or even Humanistic Growth – presumably less inhuman? The rationales for policies to be regenerative (less wasteful) and redistributive (fairer) are well argued and sometimes non-contentious – leastways, perhaps, at some future ‘transitional’ time if not inconveniently right now. These growth-variants may not immediately upset the supposedly free market dogma. But they are still argued in the context of never-ending growth that will somehow ease the pain of eventual readjustment – really?
Take away that prop – declare that we need not overly care about economic growth – and the well-established response is that the sky will fall down. This growth detox is one of the central tenets of Kate Raworth’s unexpected best-seller ‘Doughnut Economics’. Kate is the latest in a long and fine tradition of economic re-thinkers starting in the 1930’s with Simon Kuznets who first defined what was then called Gross National Product. He well understood its shortcomings and mourned its excessively ill-informed but widespread application.
Being Growth Agnostic, as much as it may offend all right thinking dogma-driven hard-liners, is not some denial of economic variability – the course of life rarely runs smooth (in sickness and in health) – but is simply a matter of therapy for the growth-addicted and a reminder that true leadership should aim for some deeper (or higher) purpose like societal safety and wellbeing. And whilst we are in brain reboot mode, can you please stop calling all those investments that happen not to be to your liking, by the derogatory label ‘subsidies’?
There are many reasons for reading Kate Raworth and her illustrious forbears such as Donella Meadows and Manfred Max-Neef (and more recently Lorenzo Fioramonti) but expecting her book to somehow magically reprogramme the deeply embedded dinosaurs of national politics is not one of them; far better to take her inspiration and apply it locally within your own community.
Mayors and civic leaders are desperate for direction every bit as much as they are constrained by top-down austerity. In the search for ‘taking back control’ these community champions can use the doughnut (and other frames) to spark imaginative and enterprising routes to greater public, private and environmental wellbeing. Low flying demands great skill and is risky but it gets stuff done under the radar of the high flyers.
Enough is enough. It really is time to shake off our tolerance of dented and dodgy rulers. We must not rest until we’ve rebuilt our local communities. If that reconstruction of better places turns out to be Growth Agnostic, well so be it.
___________
[1] Kate Raworth, ‘Doughnut Economics‘: ISBN 9 781847 941374
In the aftermath of Manchester’s terrorist outrage observers the world over have heaped generous praise on the way the community ‘came together’.
Some even went so far as to regard Manchester as exceptional: “a sense of identity that you don’t find elsewhere” along with a hint of already being case-hardened – “There is a deep resilience in this city and it’s kept people going in the past “.
What has certainly been evident over this last sad week has been excellent leadership – not just from the City Council Leader and the newly elected Greater Manchester Metro Mayor but also across the wider community from leaders in Police, Health, Education, Religion, Business, Sports and (especially in Manchester) Music.
That sense of ‘community cohesion’ should hardly be a surprise given such extreme provocation and intense media scrutiny. Yet in some sense it is instructive that the media should marvel at this combination of grief, steely determination and a proud local identity.
Community cohesion rarely gets the media spotlight and yet it doesn’t suddenly spring into life; the seeds are being constantly sown and nurtured in all communities. Communities – the tribes we work with, the crowds we shop alongside, the after-school clubs the children attend – are all part of a rich fabric that so many economists, policy makers and news reporters fail to notice. These things don’t get routinely measured and, from a distance, are rarely valued in the way that GDP, RPI, employment and consumer borrowing statistics are subject to intense scrutiny.
Why is so much attention paid to dismal national average data when so much of what makes life worth living is all around us in our multiple overlapping communities? Why should the central management prioritise policies that ignore the stuff of life? The answer, of course, is that with their merely average understanding they should not be worrying themselves about matters beyond their comprehension.
If Manchester is different it is because for years, like many other great cities, it has banged the drum for freedom to manage its own affairs. This is the essence of what is now called ‘place-making’ – determined locally directed leaderships that have transformed London, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow and umpteen others, often in the face of central governments reluctant to relinquish control.
Many of the levers of community cohesion and wellbeing are well known. If those levers are not being used it is entirely down to local leaderships who feel (rightly or wrongly) that they have not been empowered to take action. All communities are different and have different priorities but there’s a strong body of research that has probed how best to assess their economic and social fabric. And that assessment ultimately measures the quality of local projects that determinedly cut across the silos of top down management.
The great lesson from Manchester is the value of investment in those cross-cutting programmes that may seem insignificant to those focused exclusively on growth in the silos of standard economic sectors.
This is what some call ‘mission economics’ or ‘policy with purpose’ but down in this neck of the woods we just call it Community Cohesion.
With just one exception the planned topics were neatly summarised three years previously in the concluding chapter of Brain Gain – a book that captured more than a decade of learning through the Intelligent Community Forum.
By the end of May, homework complete, all delegates – whether from the UK or the other side of world – will be fully prepped and prompted to probe the great gathering of expert speakers and community leaders at the ICF Global Forum.
IMS – the very British Institute for Management Services – seems to have been around forever. And the terribly British problem with productivity continues to puzzle, despite decades of effort, a long train of government ministers and grand policy initiatives.
I’m not a disinterested observer. I’ve written previously about Municipal Enterprise and the need to translate and apply the work of fresh economic thinkers like Kate Raworth and Mariana Mazzucato from national to more local perspectives. I’ve watched the brilliantly creative work of Knowle West Media Centre building community cohesion in part of Bristol and for several years I’ve contributed to the work of the US-based Intelligent Community Forum with its global network of around 160 cities.
What is certain is that cross-border transactions will be different in at least two ways – pricing and regulation. The consequences (even if the UK moves to WTO tariffs) will probably involve potentially costly administrative adjustments to the way we all do business in any transnational flow whether import or export, inward investment, overseas acquisition, emigration or immigration.
There are many reasons for reading Kate Raworth and her illustrious forbears such as Donella Meadows and Manfred Max-Neef (and more recently Lorenzo Fioramonti) but expecting her book to somehow magically reprogramme the deeply embedded dinosaurs of national politics is not one of them; far better to take her inspiration and apply it locally within your own community.
If Manchester is different it is because for years, like many other great cities, it has banged the drum for freedom to manage its own affairs. This is the essence of what is now called ‘place-making’ – determined locally directed leaderships that have transformed London, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow and umpteen others, often in the face of central governments reluctant to relinquish control.
Groupe Intellex 