The London Problem Revisited

I've been thinking about the matter of London and the kind of 'two-speed Britain' stories which have been in the press recently. The idea is that London's continued growth and prosperity - in contrast to the rest of the UK - is a problem. The BBC covered this via Stephanie Flanders in March and the Guardian did a piece on it in May this year. The Economist even did a special supplement on London last year, entitled 'On a High' in which they covered a range of issues, not just economic growth - e.g. a map and some of my work on deprivation on p. 7 of the pdf. These kinds of stories always generate a lot of debate (see the comments on the Guardian piece for an example) of the 'London vs. the rest' variety but I suppose the thing that sticks in my mind is that none of this is really new. The precise nature of London's recent resurgence is perhaps unique but it's hardly a new problem. I was reminded of this last week at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies 30th Anniversary conference in Manchester when Sir Brian Briscoe quoted from the Barlow Report of 1940 (photo below - yes, I actually have a real copy to hand!). 

This in turn reminded me of the 1985 edition of the Planner magazine that I've had on my desk for some time. Why do I have this? Because it's a special issue to commemorate the life of former Chief Planner and University of Sheffield Professor JR James, who featured on the front cover of the April 1985 edition, five years after his untimely death in September 1980. In this edition, leading planners of the time gave a series of lectures on seminal reports - Peter Hall on The Barlow Report, Gerald Wibberley on The Scott Report and HR Parker on The Uthwatt Report.

Peter Hall's reading  of Barlow is fascinating for many reasons but I found it interesting that he chose to pick out the exact same quote that Sir Brian Briscoe did last week: "the continued drift of population to London and the Home Counties constitutes a social, economic and strategical problem which demands immediate attention" (p. 202 - see below for copy of the original, in paragraph 5).

These words were written in very different times (e.g. it was published shortly after the outbreak of WW2 and in fact some of the content had to be changed to reflect this) but the over-arching message of a dominant London and a lagging rest of Britain resonates today. The policy solutions proposed in 1940, however, are rather different to those suggested today. For example, there was a strong emphasis on regionalism in the Barlow Report - unlike today. Further, there was a real concern about what could be done to address this nationally problematic uneven development (well, at least in theory) - e.g. Part IV from p. 185 is entitled 'Remedies ... And to Report what Remedial Measures, if any, should be taken in the National Interest'. So, this is not just an historical curiosity. On p. 197 we have more on 'methods of decentralisation or dispersal', which many today would like to see.

As for the man himself, Sir Anderson Montague-Barlow (image at bottom of page), I'm not sure what he'd make of the current rhetoric of a 'two-speed' UK but I'm sure he'd recognise that it's nothing new. The question that remains in my mind is whether this London boom will continue indefinitely and what the consequences of that might be. Some final thoughts for now...

1. Lost in much of this two-speed UK talk is the fact that inequality and poverty in London are quite extreme. That's what I was getting at in my very small contribution to the Economist supplement last year and in another Guardian piece. This is something that Ben Hennig has been looking at in more detail in recent times - see here for more.

2. Much less has been said about why this London/rest issue might be a problem and - more importantly - what might be done about it. Certainly, I don't think we'll see a Barlow-style Royal Commission about this any time soon.

3. What about the contribution of the rest of the UK to London's growth - e.g. in sending graduates, commuters, funding for infrastructure, and public transport - to name just four factors. The question here might be to what extent is London's growth down to the fact that it has a Barlow-esque gravity? Easy to answer but harder to quantify.

4. Are we witnessing a 'London supernova'? Will this bright shining star gradually fade? Fancy rhetoric, but worth thinking about, given the cyclical nature of boom and bust. See p. 52-54 of this RTPI report for more.

5. And, finally, we ought to look at old books and magazines more! 

HS2 geodata - for download

Yesterday I wrote a short post on the Guardian's Datablog about my difficulties getting hold of the route data for the proposed routes for the new high speed rail lines in England. Coincidentally (or maybe not) HS2 responded to my request at almost exactly the same time as the piece appeared online. Anyway, sometimes it does take time for public bodies to respond to requests so my real question was why the shapefiles were not available for download, given that they are available under the Open Government Licence. I have a few ideas about why this must be but it would be good to have some information from this on HS2, though maybe they're too busy with other things! Clarity on this issue might, however, reduce the likelihood of data conspiracy theories and enhance transparency.

Anyway, enough about that. So that other people don't have the same wait as me to get hold of the GIS data I've made them available here via the link below. A few important points to bear in mind...

1. The Phase 1 (London to West Midlands) route is the 'post-consultation' route from January 2012.

2. The Phase 2 (Leeds and Manchester) routes are the 'initial preferred routes' from January 2013.

3. There is an interactive map of the Phase 1 route on the HS2 web pages, which is quite useful.

4. Users of the data need to remember to acknowledge the source.

5. It's not my data - I'm just making it available.

6. You can also get these files from Barry Cornelius, but not - as yet - from data.gov.uk

7. The route data available for download here doesn't necessarily reflect the precise location of where the train lines will be built - particularly for Phase 2. 

HS2 shapefiles, as of 2 May 2013

Population 'explosion' in English city centres

A paper I wrote about English urban policy and the 'return' to the city is now out in Cities, so I thought I'd blog about it. It's just something I wrote after the first release of small area data from the 2011 Census and the results are not entirely surprising to those with a knowledge of these things but the scale of change over the decade from 2001 to 2011 was pretty big, particularly in the case of Manchester, which I've written about previously. I also reflect upon wider international issues associated with 'reurbanization' (with a z because it's a US journal!) so I think that although the focus is on England it should have wider resonance.

I discuss this growth in the context of New Labour's urban policies, and particularly those which emerged from the Urban White Paper of 2000. Although some of the aims were achieved (e.g. making city centres look nicer, with better design), I conclude that the changes have been mostly superficial and that perpetually high levels of inner city deprivation in cities which were the main foci for urban policy during this period does not represent a very positive legacy, despite the 'success' of getting people to move back to the city. The fact that this picked up immediately by @urbandata suggests that these themes are also relevant in the United States, and beyond. It's a short paper but I hope to follow up on it at some point* with more detailed data on tenure, etc. to dig a little deeper.

*This is normally code for 'it will never happen'!

Deprivation in your area - search and zoom

After making a new website when the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2012 was released, I've been looking at some of my old English IMD web pages and tools and so have decided - in anticipation of the next update to the IMD - to add a 'search and zoom' tool so that anyone who is interested can find out what deprivation is like in their area - or any other area of England you are interested in. Like my previous versions of this kind of thing it's based on Google Maps but in the version seen in the screenshot below you can simply enter a place, neighbourhood, postcode or address (or even an organisation, like Centre for Cities) into the search box and it will go straight there after clicking 'search'. Click the image or the link below to use the tool.

IMD Search and Zoom

As usual with these kinds of maps, if you click on an area the pop-up will give you more information. The next update of the IMD was to have been in 2013 but I'm not sure if that is still going to happen. However, I've updated this tool just in case so that I can add in the next update whenever it becomes available. The Scottish version of this tool is on this page, but I have not yet done the same for Wales or Northern Ireland.

Child poverty in the United Kingdom - for small areas

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently doing some work on child poverty and social mobility. I did this for English parliamentary constituency areas in 2011 but the problem I had then was that I didn't have a dataset that covered the entire UK at the small area level. Since then, however, I've been looking more into the HMRC's child poverty statistics and their revised local child poverty measure (linked to the Child Poverty Act 2010). To cut a long story short... I've mapped child poverty at the small area level for the whole UK - for those areas where child poverty is at 33.3% or higher (the UK average is 20.6%). The map is zoomed to London but you can zoom around and use the full screen version. Click on an area to find out more.

Full screen map

The highest value in the UK is in part of Springburn in Glasgow - with a value of 83.3% of children in poverty according to the HMRC definition. The highest value for anywhere outside Scotland is 75.0% in part of east central Manchester. 

Some technical information... The small areas used are Super Output Areas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, Data Zones are used. These have around half the population of Super Output Areas (around 800, compared to 1600). Using these smaller areas means that Scottish areas dominate the list of the highest child poverty neighbourhoods in the UK. In the HMRC definition, 'children' are all dependent children aged 0 to 19. They also provide data on child poverty rate for children under 16 and this figure is usually about a half to one percentage point higher (e.g. 21.1% for under 16 compared to 20.6% for the whole UK). The data are from the most recent release - 2010.

Toddlers, teens and yoofs - where are they?

I've been doing some work on child poverty and social mobility recently, and part of this has involved looking at simple stats like the percentage of people in each area who are under 18. This has given me a better insight into which areas might be most affected by children's issues and policies. I've been looking across Great Britain but focusing on England and Wales and so I thought I'd just post a couple of maps showing the % of children across London Boroughs and the core cities - see below.

Bigger version for London

The results are quite striking - and particularly interesting I think are the differences between and within the core cities. What is also very interesting is the spatial divides in terms of which areas have a high concentration of children and which don't. These data overlap with many other datasets - which is partly what I'm looking at in my research right now - but this post is simply about the two maps.

Bigger version for core cities

One academic-related thought on this, though. I've been looking at the literature on neighbourhood effects over the past few years and following with interest the debate on where people 'choose' to live. This got me thinking about who might not get to choose, and children is one obvious group. As you can see from the maps there are large areas where 25% or more of the residents are children, and some areas where it is nearly 50%. Also interesting for me is the extent to which city centres in (e.g.) Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are largely child-free - possibly linked to the concentration of students and new city centre living. Anyway, that's enough for now.

Technical note: this is done at the lower super output area level and for the local authority boundaries of the English core cities, plus all of Greater London. The data are from 2011 Census table KS102EW.

The Highlands and London: lots of space vs. lots of people

I've been doing some work recently looking at local authority data from across the UK. One thing that always fascinates me about this is the differences between areas at a very basic level, such as the different sizes and populations of local authority and other sub-national areas. The two examples which always stand out in my mind are the Highland council area (because that's where I'm from) and Greater London (because it's so big and dynamic). The other reason the Highland council area stands out is because it is by far the biggest local authority in the UK. It's bigger than both Wales and Northern Ireland, yet it only has 232,000 people. London, on the other hand, would fit into the Highland council area about 20 times over yet it has 8.2 million people - as you can see from the map (click to enlarge - and see full screen here).

The map above shows Greater London and the Highland Council area mapped to the same scale, with London moved to the middle of the Highlands (not expecting this to become official Scottish Government policy any time soon, but you never know). Greater London is about 40 miles across but it is totally dwarfed by the Highlands. What is the relevance of all this? Well, it is interesting to think about this in the context of local government and the challenges they currently face.

Within Greater London you have 32 Boroughs plus the City of London all performing a variety of functions and in the whole of Scotland there are 32 Council Areas (which esteemed blogger Peter Matthews can list alphabetically off the top of his head). In the context of the ongoing fiscal crisis, there has been some talk of merging all local authorities in Scotland. I doubt it is going to happen but you never know. A Scotland on Sunday article on it from late 2012 seems to suggest there is some truth to the idea.