Functional integration, political conflict and muddled metropolitanism in the London region: 1850–2016

London still is a somewhat ‘unique city’, as Rasmussen (1937) claimed, in several ways that impact on its capacity for self-governance. Notable among these is its international orientation – both historically as the power centre of a great trading and colonial empire, and, more recently, as the most globalised of financial centres – placing powerful demands (beyond those of its citizenry) on its ordering and development. And yet, the organic character of its evolution, which is what particularly struck Rasmussen, might also make it the epitome of a post-industrial metropolis, unique in its early experience of dilemmas that all large and complex city-regions will come to face, if not to resolve. From a French perspective, at least, this kind of development – ‘more by fortune than design’ in Hebbert’s phrase (1998) – might be seen as simply reflecting a particular British cultural bias in favour of ‘muddling through’ rather than harnessing state power to a rational ordering of this complexity. There is a flavour of this in applause for Rasmussen’s suggestion that ‘London had benefited from fragmentation, checks and balances in its system of governance’, which resisted modernist ‘clean sweep’ planning and thus preserved a variety in the city’s urban fabric that came to be widely valued (Hebbert, 1998, 203)

Less certainty and more choice: still waiting for a credible metropolitan strategy

Ian Gordon examines some key considerations for future strategies for the London econom

Quantitative easing of an international financial centre:how central London came so well out of the post-2007crisis

This paper documents and seeks to explain the remarkably positive employment trends of a central area of London in the years since the onset of the financial crisis. The volatility of this economy since the 1980s had suggested the likelihood of a sharp loss of jobs, maybe followed by a strong bounce-back, if the finance sector could overcome reputational damage from its role in the debacle of 2007-8. In fact this area proved both the most resilient in the downturn and the most dynamic in the upturn, accounting for all/most net job gains in the UK. This paper considers three types of explanation for this positive outcome - in terms of: fundamental economic strengths allowing it to keep going through generally tough times; an advantaged position in relation to elite choices about resource allocation and restructuring in the face of a general fiscal/commercial squeeze; and (less conventionally) the impact of massive support to/through the banking sector, in first mitigating impacts of the downturn for the financial centre, and then fuelling another global city boom. The last of these is argued to be key to understanding not only why central London has done so well since the crisis, but how it is still liable to be ‘the capital of boom and bust’

Ambition, human capital acquisition and the metropolitan escalator

This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high-order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by A. J. Fielding. It argues that occupational progression in such places particularly depends on concentrations both of people with more of this asset and of jobs offering preferential access to valued elements of tacit knowledge, interacting in thick, competitive labour markets. This is partially confirmed with analyses of British Household Panel Study (BHPS) data on long-term progression showing that only the more ambitious gain from residence in the extended London region, and that they only progress faster there

The data suggesting a million people left Britain in 2020 doesn’t hold up

Recent Labour Force Survey data seem to suggest that around a million overseas-born people left Britain during the pandemic. But the survey now relies on recruiting respondents by phone, which those with less confident English may decline. Ian Gordon (LSE) says this break in the survey practice exaggerates the actual scale of ‘exodus’

In what sense left behind by globalisation? Looking for a less reductionist geography of the populist surge in Europe

Brexit, the wider populist surge in Europe and Trumpism all seem to involve interesting geographies that have been taken as clues to the worrying puzzle facing a political/academic establishment about what’s driving the surge and how might it be abated. One major theme has been that of the places left behind economically by an opening up to competition from cheap (migrant or overseas) labour – counterpointed by the idea that specific types of people have been left behind culturally. This paper attempts a less reductive approach, starting with examination of oddities in the Brexit geography and then investigating how populist support across European regions is influenced by the interaction of economic/demographic change with varying cosmopolitan/localist influence

Urban escalators and inter-regional elevators: the difference that location, mobility and sectoral specialisation make to occupational progression

This paper uses evidence from the (British) Longitudinal Study to examine the influence on occupational advancement of the city-region of residence (an escalator effect) and of relocation between city-regions (an elevator effect). It shows both effects to be substantively important, though less so than the sector of employment. Elevator effects are found to be associated with moves from slacker to tighter regional labour markets. Escalator effects, on the other hand, are linked with residence in larger urban agglomerations, though not specifically London, but also across most of the Greater South East and in second/third order city-regions elsewhere. Sectoral escalator effects are found to be particularly strong in knowledge-intensive activities, with concentrations of these, as of other advanced job types (rather than of graduate labour), contributing strongly to the more dynamic city-regional escalators. The impact of the geographic effects is found to vary substantially with both observed and unobserved personal characteristics, being substantially stronger for the young and for those whose unobserved attributes (e.g. dynamic human capital) generally boost rates of occupational advance

Hydrodynamic stability of swimming in ostraciid fishes: role of the carapace in the smooth trunkfish Lactophrys triqueter (Teleostei: Ostraciidae)

The hydrodynamic bases for the stability of locomotory motions in fishes are poorly understood, even for those fishes, such as the rigid-bodied smooth trunkfish Lactophrys triqueter, that exhibit unusually small amplitude recoil movements during rectilinear swimming. We have studied the role played by the bony carapace of the smooth trunkfish in generating trimming forces that self-correct for instabilities. The flow patterns, forces and moments on and around anatomically exact, smooth trunkfish models positioned at both pitching and yawing angles of attack were investigated using three methods: digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV), pressure distribution measurements, and force balance measurements. Models positioned at various pitching angles of attack within a flow tunnel produced well-developed counter-rotating vortices along the ventro-lateral keels. The vortices developed first at the anterior edges of the ventro-lateral keels, grew posteriorly along the carapace, and reached maximum circulation at the posterior edge of the carapace. The vortical flow increased in strength as pitching angles of attack deviated from 0°, and was located above the keels at positive angles of attack and below them at negative angles of attack. Variation of yawing angles of attack resulted in prominent dorsal and ventral vortices developing at far-field locations of the carapace; far-field vortices intensified posteriorly and as angles of attack deviated from 0°. Pressure distribution results were consistent with the DPIV findings, with areas of low pressure correlating well with regions of attached, concentrated vorticity. Lift coefficients of boxfish models were similar to lift coefficients of delta wings, devices that also generate lift through vortex generation. Furthermore, nose-down and nose-up pitching moments about the center of mass were detected at positive and negative pitching angles of attack, respectively. The three complementary experimental approaches all indicate that the carapace of the smooth trunkfish effectively generates self-correcting forces for pitching and yawing motions — a characteristic that is advantageous for the highly variable velocity fields experienced by trunkfish in their complex aquatic environment. All important morphological features of the carapace contribute to producing the hydrodynamic stability of swimming trajectories in this species