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This paper explores what needs to be done to better address the growing and substantial inequalities in the UK and how the 'Levelling Up' policy that seeks to address them could be improved. It argues that a much longer-term vision and a sharper, cross-government focus on fewer challenges is required to make a more tangible impact. Four key findings are identified: a focus on health and education is fundamental for our social and economic prosperity; there is a need for greater devolution of power, with transparent and robust accountability; an open, nationwide knowledge base to share what works and what does not, and the lessons learned from innovative pilots, is required; and a more holistic approach is needed to support businesses and provide them with better-quality support. This paper argues that without these issues being taken into consideration, the lives and well-being of our disadvantaged citizens, our children and our economy will continue to worsen. It concludes that making economic development a statutory function, putting it at the very heart of our public services, is needed to ensure that the levelling up outcome is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of steadily declining Natural Capital and universal recognition of the imperative to reverse this trend before we get to the point that nature is not able to restore itself, cities have a crucial role to play. The UK Government commissioned a comprehensive study into the value of biodiversity, and by extension nature, reinforcing “why we should change our ways”—yet what is missing is the “how?”. This paper uniquely describes both the “how?” and a conclusive demonstration of the remarkable benefits of implementing it in a city. Critical to this process, it took a UK Parliamentary Inquiry to reveal that nature has become invisible within the economy, yet the ecological ecosystem services nature provides have enormous benefits to both people and the economy. Therefore integration—or seamless weaving—of urban greenspace and nature into people's lives and the places where they live, work, and spend their leisure time is vital. Moreover, what nature does not provide must be provided by engineered systems, and these have an economic cost; put another way, there are enormous cost savings to be made by taking advantage of what nature provides. In addressing these issues, this paper is the definitive paper from a 20-year portfolio of research on how to bring about transformative change in the complex system-of-systems that make up our cities, providing as it does the crucial in-depth research into the many diverse strands of governance—the last link in a chain of the creation, testing and proof of efficacy of methodologies underpinning a theory and practice of change for infrastructure and cities. The impact of this portfolio of research on Birmingham is two-fold: the Star Framework that placed natural environment considerations at the heart of all decision-making in the city, and the successful bid for the largest of the UK Future Parks Accelerator awards. While both are transformative in their different ways, yet mutually supportive, the latter enabled the design of a suite of system interventions from which the value of Birmingham's greenspaces is estimated to rise from £11.0 billion to £14.4 billion—a remarkable return on investment from the research's conceptualization of Birmingham's urban greenspace as a “business” (with its associated business models). In achieving this, the necessary enablers of thinking and practicing systemically, seamlessly working across disciplinary boundaries, an unusually strong focus on both the aspirations of all stakeholders and the context in question to define “the problem,” and the testing of proposed system intervention(s) both now and in the future have been iteratively combined. However, it is the critical enabling steps of identifying the complete range of value-generating opportunities that the interventions offer, formulating them into alternative business models to underpin the case for change and ensuring that they are synergistic with all the dimensions of governance that yielded the profound outcomes sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges of historic building adaption for reuse are well documented and often refer to building fabric, listed status, historical significance, environmental sustainability, and structural layout as limitations to their successful re-development. However, few studies have explored how such issues manifest in the operational use of historic buildings developed for reuse, the significance on cities, and the long-term socioeconomic value. This study proposes a stewardship-based strategy to manage facilities to improve the socioeconomic value of historic buildings and support the socioeconomic demand in cities and territories. Within the context of a selected case study in the UK, a mixed-method approach was used to attain the data. Quantitative evidence, using a questionnaire survey with building users, and qualitative evidence, using semi-structured interviews with the facility management team, are presented. The results suggest that historic buildings are empowered by an organisational stewardship strategy, resulting in an acceptable operational compromise that involves an acceptance of building issues and their impact on the building users' experience, and this can support the more operational adaption of facilities by the facility management team. The research proposes a stewardship-based strategy to support an improved socioeconomic value by incorporating user perspectives while ensuring a less preservation-centred and a more flexible-oriented approach towards managing facilities in historic buildings. This study constructively forms a base for further research into facility management strategies in historic buildings and their impact on cities' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on the latter is surprisingly sparse. In this article, we explore the long-term, causal impacts of the cultural and creative industries on surrounding urban economies. Adapting Moretti's local multipliers framework, we build a new twenty-year panel of UK cities, using historical instruments to identify causal effects of creative activity on noncreative firms and employment. We find that each creative job generates at least 1.9 nontradable jobs between 1998 and 2018. Prior to 2007, these effects seem more rooted in creative services employees' local spending than visitors to creative amenities. Given the low numbers of creative jobs in most cities, the overall impact of the creative multiplier is small. On average, the creative sector is responsible for over 16 percent of nontradable job growth in our sample, though impacts will be larger in bigger clusters. We do not find the same effects for workplaces, and we find no causal evidence for spillovers from creative activity to other tradable sectors. In turn, this implies that creative city policies will have partial, uneven local economic impacts. Given extensive urban clusters of creative activity in many countries, our results hold value beyond the UK setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how robot adoption and Chinese import competition shaped employment patterns in 352 cities across the United Kingdom. We find that cities whose initial industry composition exposed them to industrial robots and China's integration into the world economy experienced significant employment declines. When pitched against other capital and technologies, the impact of robots remains distinct. Our findings suggest that one more robot per thousand workers reduced the employment-to-population ratio by 0.5 percentage points, while an increase of $1,000 imports from China per worker reduced the employment-to-population ratio by 0.11 percentage points. We also show that while these are sizable effects, penetration of both robots and Chinese imports are too small to account for Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of an ongoing longitudinal study, this article provides evidence on the emerging impacts of Covid-19 on the demand for, configuration and role of offices in cities, drawing on primary data from semi-structured interviews with UK-based corporate real estate managers. The research is grounded on a 'theory of change' framework combining real estate, institutional economics and economic geography literature. Our findings confirm an acceleration towards hybrid working patterns. While some changes in the current use of offices may be temporary or more dynamic, other adjustments may be permanent (for example working from home, portfolio rationalisations) and trigger structural changes across cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levelling up and the everyday economy are two crucial concepts for understanding the direction of policy making in the UK, but the relationship between them has not yet been fully explored. Moreover, the UK's industrial and regional policies are woefully underdeveloped. This article suggests how levelling up and the everyday economy concepts could contribute to Labour's emerging industrial and regional policies. It argues that Labour is right to pursue an economic growth agenda, but must make growth work for communities and workers, and the everyday economy can help. The everyday economy can contribute to, and benefit from, local productivity growth, but regions still need companies that export or are at the technological frontier to raise demand, productivity and pay. Labour should work with the government's Levelling Up White Paper, but this was overly focussed on cities and knowledge intensive business services: there is an economic case for including towns and manufacturing too, and they should prioritise connecting places and sectors, building on the diverse strengths which different places can offer, and setting a long‐term direction of travel. Over time, Labour should try to ensure that cities, towns and smaller communities are better connected, better coordinated and more specialised within larger regions. Labour should, therefore, set out an industrial and regional strategy; work up an economic development toolkit; and devolve economic powers to Mayoral Combined Authorities and councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2016, large-scale 20 miles per hour speed limits were introduced in the United Kingdom cities of Edinburgh and Belfast. This paper investigates the role that scientific evidence played in the policy decisions to implement lower speed limits in the two cities., Methods: Using a qualitative case study design, we undertook content analysis of a range of documents to explore and describe the evolution of the two schemes and the ways in which evidence informed decision-making. In total, we identified 16 documents for Edinburgh, published between 2006 and 2016, and 19 documents for Belfast, published between 2002 and 2016., Findings: In both cities, evidence on speed, collisions and casualties was important for initiating discussions on large-scale 20 mph policies. However, the narrative shifted over time to the idea that 20 mph would contribute to a wider range of aspirations, none of which were firmly grounded in evidence, but may have helped to neutralize opposing discourses., Discussion and Conclusions: The relationship between evidence and decision-making in Edinburgh and Belfast was neither simple nor linear. Widening of the narrative appears to have helped to frame the idea in such a way that it had broad acceptability, without which there would have been no implementation, and probably a lot more push back from vested interests and communities than there was., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This article examines the key features of the UK's spatial productivity relationships and discusses some of the key questions currently being articulated or debated as they relate to potential devolution-related discussions. The paper demonstrates that the local productivity challenges facing UK regions are nationwide in nature rather than local, and systemic rather than specific. In particular, the scale-productivity relationships across cities and regions which are evident in almost all other OECD countries are largely absent in the UK. Instead, previous prosperity is the dominant marker of current local prosperity, suggesting that cumulative causation processes define the UK regional and urban economic landscape rather than scale relations. This article explains these features in a manner which is accessible to a wide audience, in order to provide greater clarity regarding the fundamental economic problems to be addressed and also the underlying objectives which the Levelling Up agenda needs to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the importance of the climate crisis and embodied carbon in the landscape architecture sector. The study was carried out in a multiprofessional team with the collaboration of the Landscape Institute (LI) Chartered Body of Landscape Architecture, UK, and experts in the field. Using the expertise and knowledge of professionals as well as existing landscape examples and pioneering tools on carbon, this review paper focuses on the importance of low/net-zero carbon landscapes for our cities and regions and the ways in which these can contribute to the broader health and wellbeing of our communities. Examining the current situation on carbon methodologies and the latest knowledge on carbon calculations through a landscape lens, the paper explores why embodied carbon is important for open spaces/landscapes and the necessary policies to support a more efficient implementation of these concepts. The intensity of recent environmental challenges demands action. This review highlights the need for holistic approaches that integrate embodied carbon calculations on large-scale landscape design. Using the innovative example of the Pathfinder App, a carbon calculation tool, as well as other similar software, this paper argues that more steps are needed towards the calculation and adaptation of CO2 emissions resulting from design, construction and materials in landscape schemes. The low availability of carbon calculation tools, specially developed for landscape schemes, is a major concern for the profession as it creates several issues with the sustainable development of the landscape projects as well as fragmented policies that exclude spatial and open spaces. Even though carbon calculation and embodied carbon are being calculated in buildings or materials, it is a relatively new area when it comes to land, the landscape and open and green space, and therefore, this study will present and discuss some of the pioneering carbon calculation tools focusing on landscape projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the majority of the global population resides in cities, it is imperative to understand urban well-being. While cities offer concentrated social and economic opportunities, the question arises whether these benefits translate to equitable levels of satisfaction in these domains. Using a robust and objective measure of urbanicity on a sample of 156,000 U.K. residents aged 40 and up, we find that urban living is associated with lower scores across seven dimensions of well-being, social satisfaction, and economic satisfaction. In addition, these scores exhibit greater variability within urban areas, revealing increased inequality. Last, we identify optimal distances in the hinterlands of cities with the highest satisfaction and the least variation. Our findings raise concern for the psychological well-being of urban residents and show the importance of nonlinear methods in urban research.

Rising demand for emergency food during the last couple of decades in the UK has led to a great deal of academic interest in food aid provision, and food banking in particular. Efforts have also been made to examine food poverty and responses to it in more critical terms, which has entailed moving beyond a focus on emergency food support to engage with 'more than food aid' approaches. In this paper, I discuss how these latter approaches are beginning to be mobilised by national organisations, local authorities and place-based food partnerships in the UK. An important catalyst for this shift was the Covid-19 pandemic, which provided the crisis conditions that encouraged public and third-sector actors to think about, and act upon, food poverty in different ways. Drawing on an analysis of submissions to a Covid-19 food inquiry, place-based food initiatives implemented during the pandemic period and more recent initiatives instigated by national food support and anti-hunger groups, the paper examines how a diverse range of organisations are becoming more critical of existing (food aid) responses to food poverty and are seeking to develop more supportive local foodscapes based on a 'more than food aid' approach. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this shift for future research on food poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which first generation migrants living in a UK city engage with urban nature. Through understanding mundane connections with local nature (plants, animals and seasons), we attend to two questions 'what can narratives of urban nature tell us about experiences of migration', and inversely 'what can diverse migrant voices tell us about experiences of urban nature'? We draw on interview data with 23 participants, all born overseas, with a diverse mix in terms of age (young adults to older retired people), gender, country of origin and length of time resident in the United Kingdom. The analysis focuses on three areas: multisensory engagements with weather, care for nature and how transnational identities surface through the relational dimensions of nature narratives. We conclude by highlighting the potential of embodied nature engagement to support a sense of wellbeing and transnational identity across the life‐course, with potential to more broadly reflect pluralist understandings of the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence that social relationships are associated with well‐being is so strong that it is taken as a 'fact' (Kushlev et al., 2018, Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 124). The bulk of the existing evidence derives from research examining social relationships with close others, such as family, romantic partners, and friends (Dolan et al., 2008, Journal Economic Psychology, 29, 94; Li & Kanazawa, 2016, British Journal of Psychology, 107, 675). However, less is known about how connecting with strangers is associated with well‐being, how such connections are represented by people, and what motivates people's desire to connect with strangers. This study aims to examine representations and motivations for social connectedness with strangers in contemporary British cities. To do this, an interview study of 52 city‐dwellers living in Britain's two largest cities, London and Birmingham, was conducted. The Grid Elaboration Method (GEM) (Joffe & Elsey, 2014, Reviewof General Psychology, 18, 173), a free association and interview technique, was applied. Thematic analysis revealed that representations of strangers vacillate between 'good' and 'bad', are built upon the 'self/other' thema, are shaped by the contextual factors place, time, and technology, and are motivated by a desire to 'matter'. This work makes a key contribution to the study of social connectedness in cities and can inform effective urban policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptions of climate change and associated risks are complex and require greater consideration of the context in which behaviours are formed and changed. People tend to create their own stories of climate change providing an opportunity to capture personal experiences and frame solutions accordingly through narratives. Engagement with the issue can be further enhanced when using topics that resonate with individuals, especially through place attachments and local interests. Positioning climate change around communities, cities, homes and the countryside, for example, resonates with certain audiences as action at these scales provides useful narratives through which to engage audiences and increase positive associations with resilient and low-carbon futures. Nevertheless, we show how engagement with these narratives is complex and may overlap or contest in some cases. We present findings from thirty semi-structured interviews conducted with academic, policy and practitioner communities in the United Kingdom (UK) which explored what sub-themes could be utilised to engage audiences on climate change through narratives focused around cities, the countryside, communities and the home. We identify 10 sub-themes ranging from technological change (homes), connecting people (communities), alternative infrastructures (countryside) and positive visions of identity (cities). In search of a coherent coalition of diverse interests in shaping climate change action, we discuss two cross-cutting themes on technology and social norms which emerge strongly across each of the sub-themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little robust evidence of how sustainable park interventions impact on physical activity and other behaviours important for wellbeing. This controlled natural experimental study aimed to examine the effects of co-designing a sustainable park intervention, in a deprived UK urban area, on walking and other wellbeing behaviours. Behaviour observations were conducted at two intervention sites and two matched comparison sites (n = 4,783). Walking observations (primary outcome), wellbeing behaviours (vigorous, sedentary, social and take notice activities) and demographic characteristics were assessed at pre-intervention, and post-intervention (3 and 15 months). Outcomes were compared between intervention and comparison groups, controlling for pre-intervention using multilevel negative binomial regression models. Additional behaviour observations were conducted in two unchanged nearby sites to assess changes in general local activity. Intercept surveys (n = 623) assessed change in self-reported outdoor space usage at intervention and control areas. Post-intervention, walking increased 203 % at 3 months (IRR 2·03, 95 % CI 1·01-4·09) and 351 % at 15 months (IRR 3·51, 95 % CI 2·07-5·93), for intervention sites relative to comparison sites. Large increases for other wellbeing behaviours were also observed. The proportion of non-white persons increased substantially post-intervention, compared to comparison sites. Nearby unchanged sites showed little evidence of general increased activity. Self-reported outdoor usage increased more in the intervention sites (p=<0·001). Sustainable solutions can yield large increases in walking and wellbeing in deprived areas, especially where interventions are co-designed with residents. More collaborative and robust natural experimental studies like this are needed to better inform decision-makers how to maximise health and wellbeing outcomes from sustainable interventions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

As urban populations grow, it is increasingly important to accurately characterize flood risk in cities and built up areas. Global digital elevation models (GDEMs) have recently enabled flood risk analysis at broad scale and worldwide, but their accuracy and its impact on modeled flood risk in cities has not been fully investigated. We compare flood extents, hydrographs, depths, and impacts between hydrodynamic simulations, using five spaceborne GDEM products and an airborne LIDAR product. Benchmark observations of a historical flood event in Carlisle (UK) were used to assess the accuracy of each simulation. GDEM simulations are shown to perform significantly less accurately than the airborne LIDAR‐based simulations. No DEM outperforms the others across all metrics; the MERIT DEM is the best predictor of flood extent, but TanDEM‐X performs best for discharge. However, the impacts of flooding from GDEM simulations are consistently overestimated, 2 to 3 times higher than those from LIDAR simulations. Until a high resolution, accurate, global DEM is available, multiple products should be used concurrently to enable the full uncertainty range to be quantified and communicated, to ensure flood risk management decisions are not misinformed. Key Points: Flood models using five global DEMs are worse at predicting flood extents, hydrographs, and floodplain depths than a model using LIDARGlobal DEM flood models consistently overestimate the impacts of flooding in a city by 2–3 times compared to a model using LIDARNo single global DEM performs best across all validation metrics, so multiple DEMs should be used to capture uncertainties in flood risk [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing interest in the social geography of dementia, with the development of dementia-friendly communities, localities and cities in the developed world. This paper considers the claims being made for cities to be risky spaces for people with dementia. It debates this through an analysis based on Bacchi's 'representation of problems' framework, evidencing this with policy documents and research findings. This reveals that the city is often seen as problematic for people with dementia, despite evidence to the contrary, and that local politicians are making claims for cities to be responsive dementia communities. The nature of local political ambitions is illustrated by strategies from London and from Manchester in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As infrastructure is key to the prosperity and sustainability of cities, this article discusses whether London's and the central government's critical investments in infrastructure capacity in recent years have been sufficient, and, especially for the government, whether they are understood spatially. Taking recent projects like Crossrail, HS2 and the National Infrastructure Plan into consideration, it explains what is being done to keep ahead of the pace in order to maintain London's and Britain's leading positions globally and within Europe after 'Brexit'. Critically, the analysis addresses the need for a new framework of spatial strategy for sustainable infrastructure and its sustainable financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and scale of inter-regional and inter-urban inequalities in the UK in the context of international comparisons and our aim is to identify the extent to which such inequalities are associated with strong national economic performance. In order to do this, we first discuss the evolution of UK interregional inequalities relative to comparator European economies over more than a century. We then focus specifically on comparisons between the UK and the reunified Germany. These two exercises demonstrate that the experience of the UK has been rather different to other countries. We further explore UK inter-urban inequalities in the light of international evidence and then explain why observations of cities only tell us a partial story about the nature of interregional inequalities, especially in the case of the UK. Finally, we move onto an OECD-wide analysis of the relationships between economic growth and interregional inequality. What we observe is that any such relationships are very weak, and the only real evidence of a positive relationship is in the post-2008 crisis period, a result which points to differentials in regional resilience rather than inequality-led growth. Moreover, once former transition economies are removed from the sample, the relationship disappears, or if anything becomes slightly negative. As such, the international evidence suggests that the UK's very high spatial inequalities have hampered, rather than facilitated, national economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the West, in the post-war and post-industrial period, urban regeneration has undergone a critical shift, from focusing primarily on the built environment (1.0) to focusing also on activity within it (2.0). Predicated upon a more holistic 'place-based' approach, building culture, health, human capital, learning and other capabilities has informed or led regeneration programmes, often improving outcomes. Yet even with this shift, regeneration and renewal interventions have not always succeeded fully in their aims; they have missed opportunities, and in some cases have been detrimental to communities. The reasons for this are complex, but it is our contention that included in their ranks is a fundamental lack of understanding of the emotional and psychological impacts of city living as a whole, and the deeper existential impacts of regeneration programmes which literally reshape the urban landscape, displacing or blending communities at great speed. It is astonishing that psychology, the discipline most concerned with human behaviour and emotional well-being, has been almost absent from urban regeneration thinking, policy and practice. In response to this, a second potential shift is emerging, birthing 'regeneration 3.0', which is seeking to understand the intimate links and symbiotic effects which exist between place and person, taking a psychologically informed approach. Informed by their pioneering book Psychology and the City and their innovative 'Urban Psyche' test, since 2016 the authors have sought to make a case for the development of a new generation of urban psychology scholarship and praxis. This paper introduces readers to their thinking on why place matters to mental health and why mental health matters to place; the evolution of regeneration policy and why ways of reading the city open and foreclose opportunities to engage psychological concerns; the potential of psychology for regeneration policy and practice; and examples of tools from psychology that might be adopted. The paper focuses mainly on UK-based regeneration, although the conclusions are potentially applicable internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Brexit referendum in 2016, the United Kingdom has started the process of leaving the EU. In fact, it is not only a challenge for the British State but also for local governments and for British cities in particular. The aim of the article is to examine how the largest British cities have dealt with this process. We would like to check what the cities have done, in what way and what the current results are. In order to answer these questions we prepared a theoretical framework that helps us to distinguish different kinds of cities' strategies. We conclude that cities have mostly dealt with the Brexit process on their own, focusing on information actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Prompt HIV and STI diagnosis and treatment is a public health priority and relies on accessible testing. Technology-based approaches to distribute test kits have the potential to increase access to testing. We evaluated the acceptability and uptake of vending machines in publicly available settings in Brighton and Hove (BH) and Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG), to distribute HIV rapid self-test and STI self-sample kits., Methods: Seven machines were installed in BH and four in BNSSG. User characteristics, proportion of kits returned and test results, taken from the machine database and clinic records, combined with online questionnaires completed by self-recruited users and analysed using Stata and SPSS., Results: 2536 kits were dispensed over 12 months (April 2022 to March 2023). The STI self-sample kits were most popular (74% of vends). 78% of kits dispensed were among users aged 16-35 years and 56% identified as male. 68% and 59% of users had either not tested in the last 12 months or never tested for HIV and STIs, respectively. 51% of STI kits were returned via post, lower than the local online service (65%). 208 users completed questionnaires. Convenience, desire for instant access and increased confidentiality were the most common reasons for using machines. 92% of respondents thought the machines were user-friendly and 97% would recommend the service. Concerns about safety and privacy while using the machine were reported by 42% and 66% of respondents., Conclusions: This study demonstrates that vending machines are an acceptable and effective means of accessing infrequent or never testers in the general population and can act as a horizontal intervention to tackle HIV and STIs. Research is needed to understand optimal machine locations to assure privacy and safety along with the long-term impact on sexual health services., Competing Interests: Competing interests: JK and JH are partly funded by NIHR ARC West and NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Behavioural Science and Evaluation. SDenford's time is supported by the NIHR HPRU in Behavioural Science and Evaluation., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Urban ecology has matured as a field of investigation. This paper explores how well it has transitioned into the educational curricula of UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) by mapping the presence of urban ecological or environmental topics across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The prevalence of different topics, the level at which they are taught, and the disciplinary areas in which they are housed, are quantified. Urban ecological topics are found in programmes across 50 of 147 HEIs (34%), mainly taught in ancillary fashion to support wider subjects, though some specialist modules and even programmes do exist. Only one HEI incorporates a compulsory (core) dedicated urban ecology module at undergraduate level. Much urban ecology teaching takes place at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Applied topics are usually taught from an environmental science perspective, with common examples including urban hydrology, climate, and green infrastructure; probably to address global concerns about urban sustainability and resilience. In particular there is scope for greater incorporation of urban ecology topics and themes into biological and ecological programmes, and utilising cities as labs to explore these topics. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of these possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has among the worst regional economic imbalances in the developed world, despite attempts to change this stretching back decades. Second tier (core) cities have a significant role in addressing this imbalance, as drivers of wider city regions and labour markets, although that happens best when surrounding areas also benefit, through a ‘networked economy’ approach rather than trickle-down. Successful cities rely on a vibrant cultural scene as part of their offer, and culture is an important economic and employment sector in its own right. Yet in the UK, public funding for culture is under intense pressure due to the programme of austerity which has diverted funds to statutory services with rising demand. The Cultural Cities Enquiry was set up to investigate innovative sources of cultural investment, and was launched in early 2019. This paper sets out the key recommendations of that enquiry, linking them to the vital importance of culture in supporting the future success of cities, as they in turn support economic rebalancing in the UK. The paper argues that a more radical approach to devolution, national locational investment decisions and alignment of resources is needed to deliver rebalancing, and that this will also deliver new sources of — and free up investment for — culture, as part of the mix of creating successful places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the resilience of British cities to major economic shocks. Using a novel data set for 85 cities, it analyses their resistance to and recovery from the last four major recessions, over the period 1971 to 2015. It reveals a distinct shift in the relation between resistance and recovery between these shocks, as well as major differences between northern and southern cities. Some possible factors shaping these patterns are explored, and tentative estimates of the likely impact of the Brexit shock (Britain's withdrawal from the European Union) are also provided. A key implication is that differences in resilience to major shocks can contribute to the long‐run growth paths of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brighton - a city on the south coast of the UK with a vibrant food scene but also home to some entrenched inequalities - presents an excellent local case from which to explore some of the wider issues considered in this IDS Bulletin on the political economy of food. This article explores some of the issues facing the city and local food systems from the perspective of Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, a leading organisation behind the city's food strategy, one of the first in the UK. Brighton's experience shows how local organisations can put food at the centre of wider social issues and forge action plans that work across sectors to address the underlying inequities in food systems together. This should be of relevance not only to other cities in the UK, but others wanting to work at the heart of the food system in local contexts elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are characterised as places of increased human capital accumulation, dynamic labour markets and faster wage growth: in short, places where workers can get ahead. Studies suggest that urban workers can benefit from faster learning and from better job matching. This article assesses the extent to which cities act as escalators for workers in low-wage jobs using panel data from Great Britain covering the period 2009–2014. When defining low pay using a standard national wage threshold, workers in London, the largest city, are significantly more likely to make a transition from low- to higher-paid employment than workers in non-urban areas. However, the use of a national wage threshold to measure progression from low pay is sensitive to geographic variations in wage levels. When using an alternative, occupation-based definition of low pay there is little to no evidence of faster wage growth in London or other large British cities, suggesting that low-paid workers do not benefit significantly from faster learning or more efficient job matching in cities. The findings, once adjusted for differences in the wage distribution, fail to identify an urban escalator effect for those in low-paid employment, suggesting that there is a fairly consistent set of underlying factors shaping progression from low pay across geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In order to assess the potential future impacts of climate change on urban areas, tools to assist decision-makers to understand future patterns of risk are required. This paper presents a modelling framework to allow the downscaling of national- and regional-scale population and employment projections to local scale land-use changes, providing scenarios of future socio-economic change. A coupled spatial interaction population model and cellular automata land development model produces future urbanisation maps based on planning policy scenarios. The framework is demonstrated on Greater London, UK, with a set of future population and land-use scenarios being tested against flood risk under climate change. The framework is developed in Python using open-source databases and is designed to be transferable to other cities worldwide. Highlights • Urban climate impacts must consider processes of socio-economic change alongside climate change. • A multi-scale modelling framework for climate impact assessment is presented and applied to London, UK. • Flood risk will increase with future climate change and socio-economic change may increase risk and impacts. • Potential adaptation options have trade-offs and co-benefits that can be assessed with the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities are necessarily implicated in processes of globalisation and neoliberalisation. But this also finds an expression in the ways that they operate in the cities in which they are located. They are always located in place, but the question remains whether they can be understood to be of the places in which they find themselves, capable of contributing to their development as learning cities. That is the question explored in this paper, with the help of evidence drawn from a research project in the United Kingdom which examined the regional role of four contrasting universities in four different urban locations. The paper highlights the importance of understanding the complexity of the relationships between universities and their cities—universities negotiate their roles within particular urban settings, and they do so in instrumental ways, reflecting their own distinctive institutional priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Examines the role of food partnerships in reworking socio-ecological relations. • How the political-economic context, micro-politics and spatial imaginary shape food coalitions. • Differential capacity, priorities and power relations limit systemic change. • Uncovers an emerging (uneven) landscape of urban food governance in the UK. • Argues for a critical geography of urban food governance. Abstract Drawing upon Urban Political Ecology and recent developments around place-based approaches to food security, this article examines how various urban food coalitions in the United Kingdom (UK) are acting to influence their local food environment and forge more sustainable socio-ecological relations within a highly unequal, contested and multi-scalar governance and policy context. An exploratory qualitative case study approach was utilised, drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews with food partnership coordinators and on secondary data, to examine the differential priorities, internal contestations and capacity of socio-spatial assemblages to reconfigure socioecological relations. Our analysis uncovers an emerging (uneven) geography of urban food governance in the UK, pointing to the role of micropolitics in constraining the transformative and emancipatory potential of food partnerships. On this basis, we argue for a critical geography of urban food governance that highlights the importance of the political and economic context and spatial imaginary in shaping the contingent and relational character of place-based food partnerships and their capacity to engender systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrafine particles (UFPs) are respirable particles with a diameter less than 100 nm, which some studies have associated with adverse effects upon health. UFPs are currently not regulated as the health evidence is insufficient and very few observational data are available in most cities. The 2021 WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines highlighted the pressing issue of UFPs and provided a good practice statement for UFPs, which recommends that more measurement and modelling studies are implemented in future. Particle number concentrations (PNC) are the most common metric for UFPs as this fraction normally dominates the total ambient PNC in urban environments. This study simulates the dispersion of particle number concentrations in the West Midlands (a metropolitan area), UK using the local scale ADMS-Urban model, which is an advanced quasi-Gaussian plume dispersion modelling system. ADMS-Urban implements a physics-based approach to represent the characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer and has been widely used in the dispersion modelling of air pollutants. It can represent a variety of source types (such as road and grid emissions) occurring in urban environments and requires a range of input data. Particle number was used as a passive scalar, with no inclusion of aerosol microphysics within the model, as a first implementation in the ADMS-Urban model for the West Midlands, UK. Evaluation was conducted by comparing the modelled (from a receptor run) and measured data at the Birmingham Air Quality Supersite. Overall, the model performed well although there was a slight underestimation for PNC. Based on the modelling output from a contour run, PNC maps at a variety of spatial scales (i.e. street scale, ward level and local authority level) and temporal resolutions (i.e. annual, 24-hour, and 1-hour) were generated. PNC mapping could be linked to local population and health data for potential epidemiological studies., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The recent United Kingdom (UK) Environment Act consultation had the intention of setting two targets for PM 2.5 (particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm), one related to meeting an annual average concentration and the second to reducing population exposure. As part of the consultation, predictions of PM 2.5 concentrations in 2030 were made by combining European Union (EU) and UK government's emissions forecasts, with the Climate Change Committee's (CCC) Net Zero vehicle forecasts, and in London with the addition of local policies based on the London Environment Strategy (LES). Predictions in 2018 showed 6.4% of the UK's area and 82.6% of London's area had PM 2.5 concentrations above the World Health Organization (WHO) interim target of 10 μg m -3 , but by 2030, over 99% of the UK's area was predicted to be below it. However, kerbside concentrations in London and other major cities were still at risk of exceeding 10 μg m -3 . With local action on PM 2.5 in London, population weighted concentrations showed full compliance with the WHO interim target of 10 μg m -3 in 2030. However, predicting future PM 2.5 concentrations and interpreting the results will always be difficult and uncertain for many reasons, such as imperfect models and the difficulty in estimating future emissions. To help understand the sensitivity of the model's PM 2.5 predictions in 2030, current uncertainty was quantified using PM 2.5 measurements and showed large areas in the UK that were still at risk of exceeding the WHO interim target despite the model predictions being below 10 μg m -3 . Our results do however point to the benefits that policy at EU, UK and city level can have on achieving the WHO interim target of 10 μg m -3 . These results were submitted to the UK Environment Act consultation. Nevertheless, the issues addressed here could be applicable to other European cities., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Crown Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Purpose This paper aims to explain how thinking regarding multinationals, competitiveness and location in cities has evolved over the past five decades and how our current understanding and thinking about future challenges is contingent on these previous shifts.Design/methodology/approach The design of the paper is a conceptual piece linking different theoretical strands.Findings Global cities are not always necessarily the key locations for future multinational investments. It depends on the activities taking place. Knowledge and technology and how they interact with the firm’s capabilities and objectives are crucial.Research limitations/implications The implications are that future multinational location choices will be driven by diversity, demography, protectionism, automation and industrial policy.Originality/value This paper provides a roadmap for scholars in the international business and competitiveness fields to understand the current and future challenges facing multinationals and their location behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across OECD countries productivity growth has slowed, not just in recent years but over the past four decades: the so-called productivity puzzle. This paper examines the differing productivity growth paths of some 85 British cities since the beginning of the 1970s, and explores how far these paths reflect differences across cities in the pace and nature of structural change. We find that while northern cities led productivity growth over 1971-91 southern cities then led after 1991. However, at the same time, the rate of productivity growth slowed across almost all cities between these two periods. We find evidence of considerable structural convergence across cities and a general tendency for the degree of specialisation to fall. This then leads to a decomposition analysis which identifies the relative contribution of between-sector (structural change) and within-sector effects to city productivity growth. The analysis reveals that structural change -- and especially the shift from manufacturing to services -- has had a negative impact on productivity growth across all cities, but that within-sector productivity developments while positive and outweighing structural change effects, have also declined over the past 45 years, as well as varying across cities. These findings point to the need for further research on the causes of this slowdown in 'within-sector 'productivity growth and why those causes appear to differ from city to city. They also point to the need for a 'place-based' dimension to policies aimed at improving national productivity performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the forces, public and private, that have exerted political power over the longue durée of the modern city since 1848. The article identifies three major turning points that contextualize the modern moment: the rise of democratic movements of 1848 and their gradual targeting of city governments; the rise of an expert-managed, urban reform state beginning in 1870; and the birth of neoliberal state, from 1974 to the present. The article positions the knowledge of urban history within the rise of democratic, participatory movements concerned with opening, replicating, and publicly analyzing governmental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of 21 st century challenges including globalisation, urbanisation, climate change and anti-microbial resistance, disaster risk governance must ensure top-level buy-in from city leaders. The Sendai Framework calls for focused action in strengthening disaster risk governance. Over the last decade Greater Manchester has transformed its disaster risk governance to reflect a more sophisticated understanding of resilience. At the start of this century, the UK experienced a series of crises that led to modernisation of its civil protection arrangements. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 enabled Greater Manchester to formalise existing partnership structures to strengthen the local platform for disaster risk reduction. This created the multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder Greater Manchester Resilience Forum which coordinates civil protection activities for nearly 3 million residents. The UK recognises that local and national platforms need to work together and this alignment is delivered through a specialist Government team working closely with the Forum. In 2014 Greater Manchester joined the UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign. Use of the campaign’s toolkit led to a review of governance and renewed trans-disciplinary collaboration across multiple thematic local partnerships. A role model city within the campaign, Greater Manchester also participated in an EU-funded project (USCORE) to pilot the UNISDR’s Disaster Resilience Scorecard. Outcomes highlighted the importance of place-based assurance together with relevant metrics to inform decisions. This case study draws on this experience of strengthening disaster risk governance arrangements, a journey which will continue as Greater Manchester works with the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid urbanisation of the twentieth century, along with the spread of high-consumption urban lifestyles, has led to cities becoming the dominant drivers of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing these impacts is crucial, but production-based frameworks of carbon measurement and mitigation-which encompass only a limited part of cities' carbon footprints-are much more developed and widely applied than consumption-based approaches that consider the embedded carbon effectively imported into a city. Frequently, therefore, cities are left blind to the importance of their wider consumption-related climate impacts, while at the same time left lacking effective tools to reduce them. To explore the relevance of these issues, we implement methodologies for assessing production- and consumption-based emissions at the city-level and estimate the associated emissions trajectories for Bristol, a major UK city, from 2000 to 2035. We develop mitigation scenarios targeted at reducing the former, considering potential energy, carbon and financial savings in each case. We then compare these mitigation potentials with local government ambitions and Bristol's consumption-based emissions trajectory. Our results suggest that the city's consumption-based emissions are three times the production-based emissions, largely due to the impacts of imported food and drink. We find that low-carbon investments of circa £3 billion could reduce production-based emissions by 25% in 2035. However, we also find that this represents <10% of Bristol's forecast consumption-based emissions for 2035 and is approximately equal to the mitigation achievable by eliminating the city's current levels of food waste. Such observations suggest that incorporating consumption-based emission statistics into cities' accounting and decision-making processes could uncover largely unrecognised opportunities for mitigation that are likely to be essential for achieving deep decarbonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK government's 'Industrial Strategy' is a product of a Conservative party in power, coming to terms with a particular set of economic and political circumstances. In contrast, international bodies have commended long-term concepts of 'green growth' rather than conventional industrial development, whilst individual local authorities in the UK and elsewhere have been working towards economic regeneration policies that are both environmentally aware and also related directly to local communities. Taken together, the UK industrial strategy, the reports of international agencies and the efforts of individual local authorities raise the question as to the possible shape of a national strategy that reflects ideas of green growth and applies these ideas to processes of urban regeneration, urban development and planning. This paper gives a brief outline of such a strategy, suggesting that green growth must deal with towns and cities, both as causes of pollution, carbon emissions and resource consumption and as places where people should be able to enjoy a good quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dartford, a town in England, heavily relied on industrial production, particularly mining, which caused significant environmental pollution and geological damage. However, in recent years, several companies have collaborated under the guidance of the local authorities to reclaim the abandoned mine land in Dartford and develop it into homes, known as the Ebbsfleet Garden City project. This project is highly innovative as it not only focuses on environmental management but also provides potential economic benefits, employment opportunities, builds a sustainable and interconnected community, fosters urban development and brings people closer together. This paper presents a fascinating case that employs satellite imagery, statistical data, and Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) calculations to analyse the re-vegetation progress of Dartford and the development of the Ebbsfleet Garden City project. The findings indicate that Dartford has successfully reclaimed and re-vegetated the mine land, maintaining a high vegetation cover level while the Ebbsfleet Garden City project has advanced. This suggests that Dartford is committed to environmental management and sustainable development while pursuing construction projects., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The European Union Waste Framework Directive revised in 2018 sets an ambitious target of recycling 55 percent of municipal solid waste by 2025. Separate waste collection is an important prerequisite for achieving this target, but progress is uneven among Member States and has slowed down in recent years. This makes it paramount to identify effective waste management systems to enable higher recycling rates. Waste management systems vary greatly within Member States and are established by municipalities or district authorities, making the city-level the ideal level of analysis. Based on quantitative analysis of data from 28 European Union capitals (pre-Brexit), this paper speaks to debates about the effectiveness of waste management systems more broadly and the role of door-to-door bio-waste collection in particular. Drawing on encouraging findings in literature, we investigate whether door-to-door bio-waste collection contributes to boosting the collection of dry recyclables such as glass, metal, paper and plastic. Employing Multiple Linear Regression, we sequentially test for 13 control variables including six related to different waste management system and seven controls related to urban, economic and political aspects. We find evidence that door-to-door bio-waste collection is associated with greater amounts of separately collected dry recyclables. Cities with door-to-door bio-waste collection, on average, sort 60 kg per capita per year more of dry recyclables. Although the causal mechanisms behind such a relationship need further investigation, this finding indicates that European Union waste management could benefit from a stronger promotion of door-to-door bio-waste collection., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

There is growing concern in many developed economies that the benefits of economic growth are not shared equitably. This is particularly the case in the UK, where economic growth has been geographically uneven and often biased towards already affluent cities. Yet there is relatively little evidence on the relationship between growth and poverty in the UK. This article addresses this gap with an analysis of the links between economic growth and poverty in British cities between 2000 and 2008. We find little evidence that output growth reduced poverty. While growth was associated with wage increases at the top of the distribution, it was not associated with wage growth below the median. And there was no relationship between economic growth and the low skilled employment rate. These results suggest that growth in this period was far from inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most contemporary research accounts for conflict within cemetery space, but does not consider the potentially contested and poorly understood role of cemeteries within their broader cityscape. This study draws on stories from cemetery managers across England and Wales to narrate this multifunctionality, as they hold the pivotal role which oversees both the day-to-day running of the cemetery, and its strategic role within a given municipality. The study outlines how cemeteries hold multiple functions in the cities in which they are located, specifically contributing to greenspace or green infrastructure, civic identity and local place attachment. These varying city level roles in turn impact on what is deemed (il)legitimate behaviour within the cemetery. Moreover, they raise important considerations for urban planners and policymakers who currently have little guidance on planning for new or existing cemeteries but are critical in the ongoing successful development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 2 November 2014 George Osborne stood in the impressive great council chamber of Manchester town hall and, flanked by the ten leaders of Greater Manchester's local authorities, announced a devolution deal for the city-region. Greater Manchester would receive a significant package of powers over transport, housing, planning, skills, business support and welfare in exchange for creating new governance structures, including a directly elected mayor for the city-region. This article explores the background to the Devo Manc deal, arguing that it is the product of both a long history of local government collaboration in Greater Manchester and George Osborne's desire for a sweeping restructure of English governance. It traces how the key decisions were taken quickly and by a small number of key officials. The article also identifies some flaws in Devo Manc and considers whether it is an appropriate model for other city-regions in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

According to Moretti (2013), deindustrialisation has been responsible for a 'great divergence' between cities that have moved to become centres of innovation and ideas, and those that have continued to produce material goods. Other authors however, place more emphasis on trends in specialisation and differences in productive bases as the driving forces behind urban divergence. Somewhat similarly, Storper (2013) argues that recent divergence been fundamentally been driven by the fact that some cities have become more specialised in knowledge intensive sectors. While most of this interest in urban divergence has been based on US cities, recent European research also reports divergent processes. The aim of this article is to examine the degree of divergence across UK cities and to analyse how far this has been driven by differences among cities in industrial structure and specialisation, tradable bases and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, the increasingly dominant assumption is that the big cities are the motor of regional economic growth. This city-centric view stands in marked contrast to the pre-2000 assumption that Britain's largest cities were actually the main focus of declining employment and population. Drawing on a range of theoretical ideas and evidence, this article questions the view that the big cities are the key drivers of UK regional growth. It recognises that there have been important changes in trends, notably in London, but argues that the geography of recent economic trends in the UK is largely one of regional divergence. There is scant evidence that the big provincial cities perform better than other places--in fact, rather the opposite. The relationship between the big cities and their hinterlands is one of interdependence. The article also argues that the performance of UK cities is deeply intertwined with the structure of UK economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on recent research in the United Kingdom, we consider how to investigate the mediation of news in a contemporary city. We put forward the notion of a "media ecology" to capture the relationships between varied news media and practices--from mainstream news media and community media to the everyday circulation of news through local grapevines--and to explore how individuals and groups relate to the city and to one another. We outline the methodological challenges and decisions we faced in mapping such a complex thing as a media ecology and then in seeking to describe how it operates and to explain the difference it makes to the lives of city dwellers. We advocate the use of multiple methods because none could have provided an adequate explanation of the media ecology or the mediation of news in the city on its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation, especially in high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley. Do ‘ethnicity–innovation’ channels exist elsewhere? Ethnicity could influence innovation via production complementarities from diverse inventor communities, co-ethnic network externalities or individual ‘stars’. I explore these issues using new UK patents microdata and a novel name-classification system. UK minority ethnic inventors are spatially concentrated, as in the USA, but have different characteristics reflecting UK-specific geography and history. I find that the diversity of inventor communities helps raise individual patenting, with suggestive influence of East Asian-origin stars. Majority inventors may benefit from multiplier effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)