Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth did emerge in London a decade later than first...

The way in which households and firms trade off economic opportunities (wages, income), living costs (housing) and amenities has profound implications for rural economic policy. Because area effects in earnings are small, not very much affected by policy, and offset by living costs, observed area...

This publication contains three papers: The first paper, by Professor Paul Lawless of Sheffield Hallam University, looks at the impact of the New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme. The programme evaluation has shown more signs of positive change in relation to place outcomes (community, crime...

Debates about urban growth and change often center on specialization.However, arguments linking specialization to metropolitan economic development contain diverse, and sometimes conflicting, claims. Is it better to be highly specialized or diversified? Does specialization refer to the absolute scale of an activity in a region...

Advocates for devolution of responsibility for economic development have frequently made a link between the governance of city-regions and their economic performance. The evidence they adduce for this does not clearly bear this out, since there are problems in defining the scale of the cities...