Category Birmingham
What is happening with Greater Birmingham’s Economy
The recent publicity around the growth of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull – being the LEP with the highest GVA growth almost got me to write a post about the underlying reasons for its growth – (it is in draft but will it surface?) but I was diverted when I received an email from the […]
HSBC moves its UK headquarters to Birmingham; a well needed boost for the City’s Financial Sector
The news today that HSBC is moving its UK headquarters to the City is a much needed boost. The decision to take a lease on the Arena Central development with the potential of bringing 1000 jobs to the city is important for despite much of the hype about the sector in the city is has […]
Birmingham’s Cuts – lets focus on Income Generation
Hardly a day went by recently without me receiving a request via email/social media to sign a petition against one cut or another arising out of the consultation on Birmingham City Council’s budget proposals for 2015/16 (Proposals here). There is real concern over the cuts to Library Services – so there was a petition against […]
Evidence to support the need for a Combined Authority in the West Midlands
I wanted to dig deeper behind where the under performance in terms on nominal GVA per head in the West Midlands lies. My previous post has shown how Greater Manchester has overtaken the West Midlands – we need to understand where this is most apparent and then dig deeper into why? This post will focus […]
How Greater Manchester overtook the West Midlands
This is a simple and short post. All the discussions recently about how Greater Manchester is enhancing its joint working yet further compared to the slow but tentative progress on joint working in the West Midlands started me thinking – well how have these two powerhouses been doing in recent years. The graph below is […]
How should Birmingham react to a Global Report on Climate Change
Has it happened to you? You realised you have missed an important document in your field? Well it happened to me when I was listening to Albert Bore giving his Brussels speech in October 2014 on how cities and regions can lead in the response to climate change. Now I don’t think this is a […]
Our Cities need our Universities
There was a welcome report last week from the City Growth Commission on the importance of Universities for the UK’s largest Metros and what Universities and Cities could do to increase their importance and linkages to their local economies. The link to the ‘UniverCities: The Knowledge to Power UK Metros report‘ is here. Let me say […]
EU OpenDays 2014 – 12th European week of Regions and Cities
Just got back from this annual event and thought I would briefly summarise my experiences and thoughts. Well the sessions are mainly about EU Structural funds or as they are generally known now as ESIF. The trouble was for this year we are right at the end of one period and right at the beginning […]
Fascinating Event coming up: The Cross Innovation Conference October16th/17th
This event which has both great European speakers but also a hands on Blender event will look at how the Creative Industries can assist other sectors to Innovate. To book your place go to http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cross-innovation-final-conference-and-blender-workshop-tickets-7084757701
Birmingham’s Enterprise Zone: An Innovative Financing Experiment
Over many years there has been much debate about greater freedoms and flexibilities around cities financing of major urban regeneration projects. This is a current debate with the work of the City Growth Commission in its recent publication ‘Connected Cities: The Link to Growth ‘ which calls for wide ranging empowerment of English cities. One of […]
UrbanPivot 