The Local Economic Impact of Shale Gas Extraction

Advocates of UK shale gas expansion have focused upon predicted national economic benefits, but local and/or regional impact has been largely neglected. This paper seeks to address this deficit by creating a unique dataset, combining industry data with consumer and supply chain surveys, thereby overcoming the current absence of suitable secondary data. Local economic impact in the Bowland field is estimated via a simple Keynesian local income multiplier model. Results emphasize the importance of facilitating local employment opportunities, through skills initiatives, and development of regional supply chain clusters, to anchor economic benefits within the local economy. Policy implications are discussed

Venture capital and investor readiness in a post-crisis and state-rescaling context: Revisiting the North East of England

This paper supplies a historical and geographically rooted account of how three separate but ongoing processes (state-rescaling, recessionary conditions and SME business support reforms) were perceived to be intersecting and manifesting themselves at the juncture of venture capital and investment readiness provision in the North East of England primarily from the perspective of local fund managers in December 2012. The paper demonstrates how these myriad processes played out in both predictable and unusual ways in a region often constructed as lagging and not known for its buoyant levels of venture capital activity. In particular, the paper provides empirical insights into the uncertainties created by the Coalition government during the transition from Regional Development Agencies to Local Enterprise Partnerships while also going beyond investor narratives to highlight how the empirical findings connect to broader debates in local and regional development. Here the way in which venture capital policy speaks to the Coalition aspirations of rebalancing the economy, decentralisation and localism in both complementary and contradictory ways are emphasised. As is how the North East (but also other Northern regions) is embedded in multi-scalar relationships by virtue of its connections to EU funding streams, and in particular equity funding through the JEREMIE programme, thus raising interesting questions about the future direction of UK venture capital policy

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