Category London
UK City Productivity Musings
There has been much comment (and some puzzlement) in the last year about how and why productivity growth at national level has not returned back to pre-crisis levels. This article in the Economist goes over some of the theories behind why this might be happening. Given the publication of a broad measure of productivity […]
Open Work Spaces in London
I came across two things of interest today relating o the creative industries in London today. Firstly this mini report and ongoing survey of open work spaces in London being undertaken by IPPR supported by the GLA. Secondly this report on Creative Factories – focused on the creative community in Hackney Wick and Fish Island […]
Is Greater Birmingham connected and contributing to the debate on the future of English Cities
Today another important report has been published on the role of cities in the English economy by the City Growth Commission. The report titled Connected Cities: The link to growth argues that investment in infrastructure in UK has historically been low compared to our competitor countries and argues that a focussed approach on investment in […]
London’s Transportation Investment is not the Problem
There has been a lot of comment in recent months and years about the imbalance of transport investment between London and the rest of the English cities and regions and undoubtedly it is fair comment – investment is hugely imbalanced as the following graphic from the recent IPPR North report Still on the Wrong Track (May […]
Don’t you just miss a space for rational policy debate in and about Birmingham
I have for long wished that there was much more debate about policy in the city and about policies that effect the city. I worked for the City Council for 15 years, latterly at a fairly senior level but what was shocking was the minutiae of the bureaucracy 95% of the time took over from […]
European Funding Allocations announced in England: London a clear winner @globalbirminghm
In a statement today the Government has announced the notional allocations of ERDF and ESF for England’s LEP’s. The figures can be seen here So for Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP the allocation is €255m which equates to roughly £220m. This with the announcement yesterday for the LEP’s of £2bn annually in the Single Local Growth […]
Boris Launches His Vision for London 2020: lessons for Birmingham
Boris Johnson launched his vision for London yesterday (details here) gaining significant press and twitter coverage . In skim reading it it leapt out at me that this sort of summary overview; this distillation of objectives is what is missing certainly in Birmingham and possibly other cities. Now the document might be a little too […]
Air pollution: the hidden and neglected killer!
Now this is not my area of expertise but I thought I ought to raise at least the issue of air pollution in our cities, particularly outside of London. I have been following recently the impact of the EU Air Quality directives on the UK and the fact that at many sites in the UK […]
Quirky Festivals for Quirky Places
I recently did a blog post on the forthcoming Digital Shoreditch Festival which seems to exactly fill the billing for the title of this post. Shoreditch is a fascinating area, close to the City of London but with none of its coldness. It draws from the artistic and entrepreneurial drive of its host borough Hackney […]
Digital Shoreditch – An Interesting Festival
If you are a techie/a social media junkie or someone like me who is interested in the link between digital, innovation and place there is a really interesting week coming up in Shoreditch – titled Digital Shoreditch. A week focussing on Tech City Tomorrow’s World – what’s coming up round the corner Future Brands – […]
UrbanPivot 