Last month, in a rare and refreshing piece of pre-local election commentary written outside the Ukip prism, author and urbanist Leo Hollis stated that the government does not understand cities.
His argument amounts to the claim that, because Labour has a stranglehold on city councils, the coalition’s efforts to engage with cities and their leaders are a shallow, meaningless attempt to force an economic ideology onto self-sustaining left-wing communities.
Hollis is wrong; ask the people leading our urban communities how they feel and they’ll tell you the opposite. The Conservative party has has taken up the mantle, connecting with the people and the industries that matter to the future of our cities, while a complacent Labour leadership appears to have forgotten its heartland.
David Cameron and, to a greater extent, cities minister Greg Clark both recognise that a fundamental shift is taking place in our society.
Hollis delights in the fact that we are already 90.1 per cent an ‘urban nation’ and growing at a rate of 0.7 per cent every year. This is not just a national trend. In 2008, half the world’s population already lived in cities and by 2030 five billion of us across the globe will be urban dwellers.
Clark knows that creeping urbanisation will have a dramatic effect on the demands placed on public services, on the way businesses behave and the challenges that urban economies would be expected meet.
His ‘city deals’ – which offer funding and greater autonomy to city leaders in return for meeting tough growth targets – have proved one of the genuine successes of this coalition government. Clark’s eagerness to hold on to the cities brief upon his move to the Treasury demonstrates he understands this.
The kind of financial freedoms and ideas ushered in by the deals – tax increment financing, ‘smart cities’ – can seem wonkish and remote. When Hollis criticises the government for seeing ‘cities solely as economic zones’ he ignores that fact that these policies lead to tangible benefits for city residents. Look to the vast improvement to Greater Manchester’s public transport system for evidence of what happens if you let cities think and work for themselves.
Critically, the deals have been a huge hit with the England’s eight leading urban areas. This ‘core cities’ group is now so relaxed about its influence in Whitehall that it has threatened to leave the Local Government Association, a membership group which lobbies central government on behalf of local councils.
In fact, the only significant political figure that turned down requests to meet Core Cities was Ed Miliband.
Hollis is right that Labour still holds the cities: of the 68 London and metropolitan boroughs in the UK, 51 are Labour led. Locally, Labour is doing some exciting work: in Sandwell, councillors have introduced a new mortgage for first-time buyers delivered by the local authority.
Yet it is Conservative HQ that understands how to influence city leaders. Labour’s policy team has become blind to their needs. It is failing to connect with the individuals, the urban decision makers that matter. It is a critical problem for the party in the race to 2015.
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