Facilitating Institutional Reform in England: Reconciling City-regions and Community Planning for Efficiency Gains?

Abstract

Considerable debate has taken place in England around the concept of the city-region. While there is contestation over the terminologies and interpretations of city-regionalism, this paper considers the extent to which it can offer a more integrative set of arrangements for community planning practices in England. Community planning is concerned with securing institutional efficiencies and sustainable development gains in the context of local service provision and integration. Attention is drawn to the extent to which the convergence of these two parallel processes may either exacerbate or ameliorate the institutional barriers to securing efficient and effective community planning. The paper argues that the effective translation of city-regionalism into practice is influenced by (i) variance in the territorial imaginaries/operational boundaries of local institutions and the impact on city-regional governance structures; (ii) the consistency of approach to city-regionalism that is evident within central government and the impact of national policy guidance on the establishment of functional city-regions and (iii) a lack of vertical integration between community planning and city-regional working. These impinge on the extent to which an effective "spatial fix" can be secured locally and the ability of community planning to act as a "decongestant" within an increasingly congested state.

Rethinking City-regionalism as the Production of New Non-State Spatial Strategies: The Case of Peel Holdings Atlantic Gateway Strategy

“…A third point is that not only did Peel have to engage with the NWDA, they also had to engage and secure the support of the city-regions themselves. In the case of Liverpool, this was less problematic, in part because more of Peel’s 50 projects are located within their city-region but also, as Pemberton and Lloyd (2011, p. 508) point out, the city-region “does not have a clear institutional identity and, as a consequence, no overarching city-regional governance mechanism currently exists” to combat Peel’s advances. In contrast, Manchester City Council has been the most vocal critic of the AGS, growing increasingly frustrated and exasperated by Peel’s failure to fully acknowledge what they see as the primary role within the Atlantic Gateway of the Manchester city-region.…”

Democratic Accountability and Metropolitan Governance: The Case of South Hampshire, UK

“…Often, as with the 1972 Act for England and the 1999 Greater London Authority Act, these efforts have involved the reconfiguring of administrative boundaries around the notion of the ‘city-region’, at times dramatically altering the spatiality of public services and public administration. During the 2000s, reflecting the shift to ‘joined-up’ governance under New Labour, the British government generally promoted collaborative partnerships in favour of administrative rejigging through sub-regional strategies, multi-area agreements (MAA) and economic prosperity boards which became particularly salient in the wake of the failed English regionalism project (Pemberton and Lloyd, 2011). Since election in 2010, the Conservative—Liberal Democrat Coalition government has put in place a similar framework for partnering across most of England through Local Enterprise Partnerships—public–private bodies intended to support local economic development across functional economic areas (Harrison, 2011; Harrison, forthcoming).…”

“…In recent years, in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere there has been notable focus on governance arrangements which transcend jurisdictional boundaries and strengthen the ability and capacity to tackle governing challenges (Brenner, 2002, 2004; Jonas and Ward, 2007; Kantor, 2008; Neuman and Hull, 2009; Pemberton and Lloyd, 2011). It is argued that these ‘metropolitan regionalist’ (Brenner, 2002) or ‘new city-regionalist’ (Ward and Jonas, 2004; Harrison, 2008, 2010) arrangements are a response to the dramatic state rescaling and restructuring processes of the past several decades.…”

“… 1. The paper does not produce a comprehensive assessment of English city-regionalism. For recent national reviews, see Pemberton and Lloyd, 2011, and Harrison, 2010. …”

The emergence of ‘new’ spatial coalitions in the pursuit of functional regions of governance

“…Since the 1990s or earlier, policies for ‘functional areas’ have provided the impetus for a new wave of spatial strategies and the formation of ‘spatial coalitions’ . It is the precise forms and nature of such sub‐national structures of governance that have led to competing political constructions and alternative policy prescriptions, prompting scholars to assert that the idealization of one particular spatial scale is unlikely to provide an ultimate ‘fix’ for a multitude of social, economic and environmental challenges (Harrison ; Pemberton and Lloyd ; Pugalis and Townsend ). The primary aim of this paper is to examine the fixation of English political and policy elites upon the formation of spatial coalitions, often formalized in state endorsed governance structures, and which are expected to operate according to the theoretical principles of ‘functional’ geographies.…”