Universities, regional policy and the knowledge economy

This article focuses on the spatial clustering dimension of new information and communications technology (ICT)-driven economic activity based on knowledge industries and especially the tacit knowledge synergies to be achieved through networking in geographical space. The article first details the new knowledge economy, reviewing claims made for its distinctiveness and its role in raising levels of productivity before turning to a brief study of the clustering effects of new ICT-driven economic activity and the development of policies designed to enhance regional development. The remainder of the article details a case study – Univercities: the Manchester Knowledge Capital Initiative – in the North-west of the United Kingdom based on recent research into the attempt to create a ‘Knowledge Capital’ within the Greater Manchester conurbation, which is designed to position Manchester at the heart of the knowledge economy

Religion, Resources and Representation: three narratives of engagement in British urban governance

Faith groups are increasingly regarded as important civil society participants in British urban governance. Faith engagement is linked to policies of social inclusion and “community cohesion,” particularly in the context of government concerns about radicalization along religious lines. Primary research is drawn upon in developing a critical and explicitly multifaith analysis of faith involvement. A narrative approach is used to contrast the different perspectives of national pol- icy makers, local stakeholders, and faith actors themselves. The narratives serve to illuminate not only this specific case but also the more general character of British urban governance as it takes on a more “decentered” form with greater blurring of boundaries between the public, private, and personal

England's north west A strategy towards 2020 and regional planning guidance review; spatial implications of the North West Regional Strategy

Published for the DETRSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m00/25407 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Structure and imagination of changing cities: Manchester, Liverpool and the spatial in-between

The emergence of new urban configurations - marked by enlarged scale, polycentrism and strong cities - often conflicts with the settled institutions of the ‘old’ city, with its hierarchical, centripetal development model. This model is challenged through the autonomous locational decisions of commercial and private actors, and sometimes through planning initiatives that aim to establish new planning spaces adapting to this new spatial reality, but despite this ongoing challenge, traditional conceptions of cities seem to prevail. This article offers a sociological-institutional approach to analysing how the institutions of the ‘old’ city are challenged, looking at the role of symbolic markers in planning strategies as an explanation for the institutional activation of new perceptions of the changing city. The urbanised zone of the Manchester and Liverpool city regions in the UK - where a massive investment strategy by a private-sector company has presented a new vision that challenges the entrenched positions of the two core cities - provides an excellent case study for investigating how symbolic markers spark a conflict over the meaning of two city regions that are closely linked but have thus far worked in isolation. The degree to which the meaning of existing institutions is reflected in the strategy is crucial for the success potential of establishing new governance spaces

Compositional and urban form effects on residential property value patterns in Greater London

The objective of this research is to determine the role of urban street layout design in the process of shaping property values. The effect of spatial accessibility on rent is a classic finding of spatial economics. Using space syntax fine-grained spatial design analysis, which indexes the spatial centrality and accessibility, the patterns of property prices are analysed for a large contiguous sample of over 60 000 residential dwellings in a North London borough, using the council tax band as a proxy variable for the property price. Few studies have examined the effect of spatial contiguity on the housing sub-market classification. The findings demonstrate that the council tax band proxy is a good indicator of residential property sale prices. In addition, a hedonic model framework shows that spatial centrality and accessibility, as indexed by the space syntax spatial design analysis, accounts for the variations in residential property values for single and multiple dwellings when controlling for the property size, relative density and building age. Multivariate analysis is used to establish the weighting of the different variables. The single most important spatial factor is the property size, followed by the ambient density, the local and global spatial accessibility and the building age. Non-residential land use location, the proximity to main arterial roads and the associated traffic and air pollution are shown to inhibit the residential property location