governing beyond the metropolis_urban studies

Article

Urban Studies2015, Vol. 52(6) 1113–1133� Urban Studies Journal Limited 2014Reprints and permissions:sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0042098014532853usj.sagepub.com

Governing beyond the metropolis:Placing the rural in city-regiondevelopment

John HarrisonLoughborough University, UK

Jesse HeleyAberystwyth University, UK

AbstractDespite a select group of urban centres generating a disproportionate amount of global economicoutput, significant attention is being devoted to the impact of urban-economic processes on inter-stitial spaces lying between metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, there remains a noticeable silencein city-region debate concerning how rural spaces are conceptualised, governed and represented.In this paper we draw on recent city-region developments in England and Wales to suggest aparalysis of city-region policymaking has ensued from policy elites constantly swaying between aspatially-selective, city-first, agglomeration perspective on city-regionalism and a spatially-inclusive,region-first, scalar approach which fragments and divides territorial space along historical lines. Inthe final part we provide a typology of functionally dominant city-region constructs which we sug-gest offers a way out from the paralysis that currently grips city-region policymaking.

Keywordscity-region, metropolis, spatial planning, functional areas, rural space, subnational governance

Received September 2013; accepted March 2014

The focus thus far has been almost exclusively

on urban manifestations . But what, wemight ask, is becoming of the interstitial spaceslying between metropolitan areas . Manysuch spaces are undergoing significant trans-formation in this historical moment of capital-ism, especially as they become increasinglyarticulated with the rhythms and cultures ofthe modern metropolis. As such, they arealso a significant and revealing element of theworld in emergence. (Scott, 2011: 857–858)

Sub-regional scales of working have increas-ingly been promoted as a means of securing

greater spatial equity and economic competi-tiveness. But whilst significant attention hasbeen placed on the impact of new sub-regionalgovernance arrangements on urban areas,there has been little consideration of the natureand effectiveness of such arrangements onrural areas. (Pemberton and Shaw, 2012: 441)

Corresponding author:

John Harrison, Department of Geography, School of Social,

Political and Geographical Sciences, Loughborough

University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK.

Email: [email protected]

Introduction: City-regionalismand the rural question

Avoiding the cliches about this being the‘urban century’, or that 50% of the world’spopulation are now urban dwellers is a nearimpossible task. Even within more criticalscholarship we are replete with references tothe ‘triumph of the city’ (Glaeser, 2011), the‘resurgent metropolis’ (Scott, 2008), even‘planetary urbanisation’ (Brenner, 2013). Allthis is fuelled by a belief in bigger urban-economic units being the key drivers of theglobal economy, alongside a recognition thatthe exceptional rate of city expansion intolarger (mega) city-regions continues apace(Harrison and Hoyler, 2014b). But whileaccounts documenting processes of globalurban change undoubtedly do much to breakdown the traditional dichotomy betweenurban and rural, city and country, it is ourcontention that even in our increasingly urba-nised modern world there remains much to beachieved by tackling the ‘rural question’ withincritical urban studies. Here we echo concernsraised elsewhere regarding the ascendency ofcity-regional planning models in Europe(Hoggart, 2005), concurring with Woods(2009: 852) that the city-region approach:

. carries risks of addressing rural localitiessolely in terms of their relation to the urban,of disregarding any sense of an overarching,interregional rural condition, and of margina-lizing rural concerns within structures domi-nated economically and demographically bycities.

Simply put, there is a limit to how far city-regionalism – as currently constructed – canrepresent the interests of the population atlarge.

If the two opening quotations point to ashared endeavour their propositions emergefrom distinctly different academic impulses:one addresses a process-driven ‘post-rural/post-urban’ manifesto, the other remains

tied to the relevance of urban/rural distinc-tion in a socio-political context. In the firstinstance, Allen Scott (2011: 858) is concernedwith the diffusion of the ‘ethos of capitalismacross the entirety of geographic space’. Inthis era of greater economic integration andrapid urbanisation, Scott’s interest in ruralspace is determined by what he and othersidentify as ‘continuity’ and ‘interpenetration’of urban-economic processes across all geo-graphic space. From this perspective eventhe least urbanised spaces on the planet have‘become increasingly articulated with therhythms and cultures of the modern metro-polis’ (Scott, 2011: 857; see also Brenner,2013). It follows that these spaces ‘prosper’from their deepening connection to, andintegration with, the modern metropolis.

One important consequence of this inten-sifying interest in the interdependence ofurban and rural places and economies is theheightened awareness among policy elites ofthe need to design new subnational planningand governance arrangements which cross-cut the territorial divides that have tradition-ally prorated geographic space into localisedurban, rural, or peri-urban units. Aided andabetted by ‘new regionalist’ orthodoxy thisheightened consciousness among policy eliteshas been reflected in a move from ‘rural’ to‘regional’ to ‘city-regional’ in subnationalplanning policy and economic governance.The latter is especially significant becausethe popular consensus surrounding city-regions is that they represent the ‘ideal scalefor policy intervention’ (Rodrıguez-Pose,2008: 1029) – itself a recognition that func-tionally integrated urban-regional spaces arepivotal societal and political–economic for-mations in globalisation.

This argument is based in large part onthe normative claim that city-region policyinterventions can overcome the arbitrarydivide between urban and rural, city andcountry, because they are based on function-ally networked, not territorially-embedded

1114 Urban Studies 52(6)

administrative, geographies. Nonetheless,those approaching the city-region debatefrom a more explicitly policy-oriented gov-ernance perspective have been quick to iden-tify the emergence of a new territorial politicsaround the recasting of ‘the rural’ in regional,then city-regional, discourse and policy. Oneof the most prominent in this respect hasbeen Neil Ward, whose work placing therural in regional development has led him tosuggest the city-region approach representssomething of a backward step:

The city region approach reproduces a ruraldevelopment problem. It establishes and rein-forces out-of-date notions of geographical cen-trality and hierarchies, and it activelymarginalises places, consigning them to theperiphery, dividing and polarising. Cityregions are taking root in regional economicdevelopment and spatial planning across theUK, and they are raising profound challengesfor those involved in the economic develop-ment of rural areas. (Ward, 2006: 52)

It is in this context that Pemberton andShaw (2012) examine the wider implicationsfor rural spaces of new forms of regionaland sub-regional governance structures inEngland. Talking of the perceived ‘cloudi-ness’ surrounding city-regionalism in UKpolitical discourse, they concede that in spiteof a critical body of work emerging toaddress the impact of city-regionalism onmajor urban areas, this has not been ade-quately explored in the rural context.Echoing Shucksmith’s (2008: 63) criticalaccount of the geo-economic logic of city-regionalism – which sees the UKGovernment’s approach to city-region pol-icy caricature the modern metropolis asbeing the ‘locomotives’ of economic compe-titiveness and rural areas the ‘carriages’being pulled along in their wake1 –Pemberton and Shaw (2012: 446) stress thatspaces located between metropolitan areas‘are important spaces that cannot and

should not be ignored’. Whether it is thegeo-economic logic (of Scott and others) orthe geo-political rationale (of Pembertonand Shaw), surely these interstitial spacesmust be brought into closer conceptualfocus. Ultimately, this means building theminto our theories of city-regionalism.

This is particularly important in the pres-ent era. Despite a select group of urban cen-tres generating a disproportionate amountof global economic output, the bulk ofnational growth is generated outside thosecities positioned at the epicentre of the glo-bal economy (OECD, 2012). By way of illus-tration, the OECD highlights how 57% ofnet aggregate growth in the UK wasaccounted for by ‘intermediate regions’ inthe period 1995–2007.2 More broadly,Europe is particularly exposed to the impor-tance of growth beyond the metropolis.Only 7% of the EU population live in citieswith over 5 million inhabitants,3 while 56%of Europe’s urban population, approxi-mately 38% of the total European popula-tion, live in small and medium sized citiesbetween 5000 and 100,000 inhabitants(European Commission, 2011). Of course,the OECD (2012) is using these data toargue that ‘promoting growth in all regionsmakes good economic sense’. Broad-basedgrowth, they contend, is good growthbecause it could reduce vulnerability toexternal shocks, is more likely to be goodfor equity (e.g. access to services and eco-nomic opportunity), while reducing the fiscalpressure to ‘prop up’ underperformingareas. Nevertheless urban economists suchas Henry Overman working at the SpatialEconomics Research Centre argue the oppo-site – namely that privileging investment insuccessful cities ‘may make for good eco-nomic policy’ because, at least in the UK,‘the evidence points towards prioritisinggrowth in our more successful cities’(Overman, 2012). This raises importantquestions concerning the geo-economic and

Harrison and Heley 1115

geopolitical logics underpinningcity-regionalism as a political project.Furthermore what we will focus on in thispaper is the noticeable – and we would argueworrying – silence at the centre of contem-porary accounts of city-regionalism concern-ing the way rural spaces are conceptualised,governed, and represented, and the potentialrole those interstitial spaces located betweenmetropolitan areas have in contributing to‘growth beyond the metropolis’ as well asand alongside ‘growth in the metropolis’.

In this paper we aim to respond to theOECD’s (2011: 222) recent claim that ‘city-regions are an innovative way to manageurban–rural interaction, but at present therural component seems to be ignored’. Wedo this by putting forward the argument thatcity-regionalism, as constructed politically,continually reproduces a rural developmentproblem when agglomeration is taken as thestarting point for defining, delimiting anddesignating city-regions. This emphasis onagglomeration in discourses of global eco-nomic development actively promotes a city-first perspective, often marginalising (rural)spaces dislocated physically from an urbancentre irrespective of whether they are func-tionally (dis)connected. Indeed, whenagglomeration is the determining factor inthe political construction of city-regions thefunctional coherence of these spaces is oftenassumed (Harrison and Hoyler, 2014a).Conversely, when economic function is thekey determinant this permits the identifica-tion of spaces which are city-region-like inappearance, but which do not necessarilyrepresent a metropolitan landscape or have acity (or cities) as their designated centre.These spaces constitute one aspect of theworld’s ‘imagined metropolis’ (Nelles, 2012),that is, those non-urban spaces which albeitexhibiting urban-economic functions do notcurrently feature prominently in the domi-nant city-first framing of city-regionalism innational and international political discourse.

Here we can think in particular of the ruraleconomic development literature, whichdespite some resistance now plays moredeterminedly to the notion of a multifunc-tioning globalising countryside (McCarthy,2008; Woods, 2007).

Notwithstanding the fact that each geo-political project of city-regionalism is spe-cific to the national context within which itis located (Jonas, 2013), our paper focuseson recent developments in the UK. Thisfocus is guided, in part, by recognition thatEngland includes no ‘predominantly rural’areas (OECD, 2010).4 The OECD go on tosuggest that England’s compactness resultsin ‘a high degree of connectivity betweenurban and rural’ (OECD, 2011: 17), with itspolicy elites at the ‘forefront’ of policyadvances to develop those new subnationalplanning and governance arrangements nec-essary to ‘bridge’ the urban–rural divide.Wales by contrast is comprised of three ‘pre-dominantly rural’, three ‘intermediate’, andsix ‘predominantly urban’ areas (OECD,2010), and as a devolved nation has only justembarked on a city-region institution build-ing programme (City Regions Task andFinish Group, 2012). When consideredtogether, our empirical research reveals howpolicy elites in England and Wales areresponding differently to the challenge ofplacing the rural in city-region development.This is due in large part to their differentgeo-political constructions of city-regional-ism. In this way it also provides a revealingcontext from which to unpack how and whycity-regionalism continues to be constructedgeo-politically to the detriment of ruralspaces and rural development needs, and tobegin considering how to build these intersti-tial spaces between metropolitan areas intoour theories of city-regionalism.

To develop this argument, the next sec-tion places the rural in city-region develop-ment through a retrospective take on the‘rural’ to ‘regional’ to ‘city-regional’ shifts in


UK subnational policy and governance. Thisis important in providing a platform for ana-lysing how the divergent city-region initia-tives recently developed and currentlypursued in England and Wales have beenconstructed politically. Our aim is to accountfor the opportunities, barriers and con-straints to constructing city-region govern-ance frameworks that adequately reflect theinterpenetration of urban-economic pro-cesses across all geographic space and thecontribution of rural areas to growth in andbeyond the metropolis. In its broadest termswe suggest this can only be achieved wherecity-first agglomeration perspectives giveway to functional dominance in the geopoli-tical construction of city-regionalism.

Placing the rural in city-regiondevelopment

1997 and beyond: Rural developmentand the regional agenda

Rural affairs were one of the policy areasimmediately devolved by the UK LabourGovernment to the Scottish Parliament andWelsh Assembly in 1999. Likewise there wasa concerted effort to have more rural policyintervention at the regional level in England,with rural development policy incorporatedinto the remits of Government Offices for theRegions (GOR) and Regional DevelopmentAgencies (RDA) (Ward et al., 2003; Winter,2006). This regionalisation of rural affairsand rural development policy had importantconsequences. Established in 1994 to be thevoice of regions in Whitehall and the voice ofWhitehall in the regions, GORs coordinatedthe regional spending and activities for thedepartments of the environment, employ-ment, and trade and industry. By 2002 tencentral government departments had initia-tives which were administered and deliveredthrough GORs, and rural affairs were centralto the work of the bodies. In their early years

GORs implemented the work of theDepartment of the Environment and deliv-ered European Structural Fund Programmessuch as LEADER and Objective 5b.Thereafter, the growing remit of GORsrequired them to deliver Department forEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs policythrough designated Rural Affairs Teams,draft regional strategies for rural affairs, andestablish Rural Affairs Forums.

GORs undoubtedly played an importantrole in defining the region as the scale atwhich to identify and tackle rural problemsin England. Yet the extent to which theyraised the profile of rural issues and high-lighted the importance of rural areas tonational growth – let alone whether theirinterventions proved successful in tacklingrural problems – have all been called intoquestion (Pearce et al., 2008; Winter, 2006).Contributing to the perception that GORsfailed to adequately place the rural inregional development, the still hard felteffects of deindustrialisation in England’smajor cities also ensured the regionalisationof activity through GORs was driven for-ward ostensibly to tackle urban problems byfacilitating implementation of urban policy(Winter, 2006).

By contrast, the RDA had the hallmarksof the new regionalist orthodoxy. Enrichedwith an economic boosterism that promotedregions and regional institutions as a meansto generating meaningful economic prosper-ity and greater spatial equity, part and par-cel of this political discourse was an explicitfocus on how RDAs would help tackle ruralproblems (Ward et al., 2003). In the RDAWhite Paper, Building Partnerships forProsperity, the ‘need to understand the par-ticular needs of rural areas, but to addressthem within an overall framework for theregion as a whole’ (DETR, 1997: 24) madeclear the Labour Government’s approach toplacing the rural in regional development.To facilitate this, the Rural Development


Commission (established 1909) was abol-ished: its rural regeneration remit passing tothe RDAs and its community developmentfunctions transferring to the CountrysideAgency. The Countryside Commission(established 1969) was also folded: its socialand conservation activities transferring tothe Countryside Agency, which operated asa national organisation operating withregional offices. In turn, and in the wake ofthe 2003 Haskins Review into rural policyand delivery, the socio-economic functionsof the Countryside Agency passed into thehands of RDAs. The significance of this is itpointed to Labour’s regional devolution andrural policy agendas being developed in con-junction, as if they were two sides of thesame economic development coin. Yet forall the political hubris surrounding the inter-face between Labour’s regional devolutionand rural policy agendas the reality was thisperiod saw institutional flux surroundingrural policy and a fragmentation of respon-sibility (Goodwin, 2008). Illustrating thispoint, Ward and Lowe (2007: 413) asserthow the Countryside Agency was estab-lished as ‘a side effect of setting up theRDAs’ rather than any ‘urge to improve theinstitutional machinery’ of rural policy.

In addition, RDAs were criticisedbecause: (1) national co-ordination and co-operation on rural affairs proved muchweaker than its predecessor, the RuralDevelopment Commission (Ward, 2006); (2)their business-led boards were dominated byrepresentatives with a strong urban focus;(3) nationally prescribed performance tar-gets greatly influenced RDA priorities,encouraging large scale programmes ofinvestment and activity to the detriment ofthe smaller investments with more modestreturns that are often required in less urbanareas; and critically (4) following the failureto establish directly elected regional assem-blies in 2004, RDAs became increasinglyinvolved in promoting the interests of

England’s core cities and their advocacy of acity-region approach to spatial economicdevelopment (Harrison, 2012). It can comeas little surprise that the OECD surmisedthat while ‘there is clear evidence that ruralproofing5 has had a positive impact’ at theregional scale ‘there still appears to be a pol-icy bias in favour of urban areas’ (OECD,2011: 22–24).

All of which points to rural issues beingsqueezed out of the mainstream agenda ofregional economic development. But it wasalso serving to reignite the local territorialpolitics surrounding spatial equity of RDAinvestment, which although evident in thedebates surrounding the regionalisation ofeconomic development activities in the late-1990s had been largely contained to thispoint. Pike and Tomaney encapsulate theensuing territorial politics best when arguing:

[I]n the wake of a faltering commitment toregionalization and regionalism, the UK statein England has recently encouraged a prolifera-tion of competing ‘spatial imaginaries’ – citiesand/or city-regions, localisms and pen-regionalisms – in order to identify, mobilizeand valorize their economic growth potentials. [As a result] the experience of the govern-ance of economic development within Englandis marked by complexity, experimentation,fragmentation and incoherence with largelynegative implications for territorial equity andjustice. (Pike and Tomaney, 2009: 14)

What is missing from their quote is thatregions and regional institutions remainedimportant actors in constructing these com-peting ‘spatial imaginaries’ and the institu-tional landscape of subnational economicdevelopment. In fact it was only after 2010that GORs, RDAs, and the regionalisationof economic development activity wereannulled by the incoming coalition govern-ment. As a result, in those intervening yearsthe challenge of ‘placing the rural’ was fur-ther complicated by Labour pursuing


regional, city-regional, as well as local andpan-regional agendas in England.

2004 and beyond: City-regions and ruraldevelopment

In 2000 a New Local Government Networkpamphlet entitled Is There a ‘Missing Middle’in English Governance? suggested that policyinterventions in economic development couldbe more usefully delivered at the scale of city-regions in England. Published at a time whenpolitical commentators were heralding RDAsas trailblazers in economic development it isperhaps unsurprising that the case for city-region governance received a lukewarmreception. Nevertheless, the stalling ofLabour’s regionalisation agenda in Englandin 2004 paralleled by city-regionalism becom-ing an officially institutionalised task for pol-icy elites worldwide saw the city-regiondiscourse emerge from the shadows cast byregions to establish itself as the in vogue spa-tial scale among policy makers in the mid-2000s.6 Firmly focused on ensuring England’smajor urban regions became more attractiveto transnational capital there was now astrong political desire to create new, generallyaccepted to mean more flexible, networked,and smart forms of metropolitan-scaled eco-nomic infrastructure, governance and plan-ning arrangements across England.

Initially this saw the government priori-tise new governance structures in south eastEngland – the UK’s only genuine ‘global’/‘mega’ city-region (ODPM, 2003). Fourdesignated growth areas – London–Stansted–Cambridge–Peterborough, ThamesGateway, Milton Keynes–South Midlands,and Ashford – were established, all locatedbeyond the metropolis (up to 125km fromcentral London) and with 18 ‘key growthlocations’ identified ranging in populationfrom 50,000 to 200,000. And yet, it was actu-ally in response to this prioritising of growthwithin south east England that the overt

language of city-regionalism in England roseto prominence with the launch of TheNorthern Way. Conforming to the principlesof city-region orthodoxy, the Northern Waywas constructed as a multi-nodal inter-urbannetwork based around eight interacting, buthierarchically differentiated, city-regions inthe north of England. Quickly followed bylike-minded initiatives in the Midlands,South West, and East of England, the domi-nance of the city-region approach inEngland became synonymous with a newcity-centric representation of the space econ-omy (Harrison, 2012). Nevertheless,England’s first attempt at city-regionalismwas guilty of overlooking the potential con-tribution of prospering rural spaces – mostnotably market towns and the rural land-scape which have become increasinglyattractive to growth-oriented businesses andkey to an increasingly profitable touristtrade (see Scott, 2010, 2012) – it reawakenedurban–rural political divides by partitioningand fragmenting regional space (Harrison,2010), and it reproduced Ward’s (2006) ruraldevelopment problem.

The response in England was noteworthy.Programmes launched in 2006 as part ofLabour’s second-wave of city-region initia-tives included City Development Companies,organisations charged with stimulating eco-nomic growth and regeneration across a cityor city-region-wide geography, and Multi-Area Agreements, institutional arrangementsdesigned to enable local authorities toengage more effectively in cross-boundaryworking across functional economic areas.Both initiatives promoted collaborationbetween local authorities on those ‘strategic’issues identified as crucial to the effectivefunctioning of city-regions – economicdevelopment, housing, and transport. Morethan this, they marked a discursive shift inthe framing of city-regionalism from a spa-tially selective, city-first, agglomerationapproach to a situation where relations


between local governments were positionedmore centrally.

By 2007 city-regions had been replacedby – or relegated to a subset of – the morepolitically-palatable concept of ‘sub-regions’in the discursive framing of subnational eco-nomic development. City DevelopmentCompanies were quickly rebranded asEconomic Development Companies, a rec-ognition that they were ‘equally valid vehi-cles for urban and non-urban sub-regions’(Communities and Local Government(CLG), 2007: 6), while a major Review ofSubnational Economic Development andRegeneration signalled how ‘MAAs willallow sub-regions, including city-regions, totake a much more active role in leading eco-nomic development’ (HM Treasury, 2007:89). Conscious not to reproduce Ward’srural development problem by overtly pro-moting a city-first approach, retuning thediscursive frame to focus on sub-regionsprovided political leaders with a mechanismto continue promoting city-regions, but cru-cially, within a spatially inclusive frameworkwhich allows all geographic spaces to estab-lish institutional arrangements that are city-region-like in appearance. Illustrating thispoint more sanguinely a national evaluationof MAAs went on to record how ‘in areasthat span urban and rural areas, one of thedimensions of the MAA that will have to becarefully managed will be the perceptionthat the rural authorities are getting fewerbenefits’ (CLG, 2010: 50) – for only in areasencapsulating a large rural territory did:

. elements of the new rural paradigm .appear . to be informing the views of domi-nant metropolitan actors towards fully enga-ging their rural equivalents . to securebenefits for the overall sub-region.(Pemberton and Shaw, 2012: 455)

Nevertheless, the perception of metropolitandominance was not alleviated when a seriesof follow-up announcements amounted to

the creation of an MAA hierarchy, wherebysome predominantly urban MAA wereascribed statutory duties, and Leeds andManchester became forerunner statutorycity-regions (with the prospect more core cit-ies could soon follow).7

In May 2010, a new Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition governmentformed in the UK and with it the challengeof placing the rural in city-region develop-ment took another twist. Fervent opponentsof Labour’s regional policies, the CoalitionGovernment quickly signalled the end ofregionalisation. According to Eric Pickles,Secretary of State for Communities andLocal Government, the problem was simple:

the whole concept of ‘regional economies’ is anon-starter. Arbitrary dividing lines across the

country for bureaucratic convenience ignorethe fact that towns probably have far more incommon with their neighbours than withanother town in the same region but manymiles away. (Pickles, 2010: 1)

In the place of regionalism Pickles and hiscolleagues took to advocating localism,central to which was the establishmentLocal Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs): jointlocal authority-business bodies to promotelocal economic development across func-tional economic areas. LEPs are designed tooperate across the ‘natural’ economic geogra-phy of England, replacing what are seen asthe ‘unnatural’ regional blocks which hadarbitrarily divided the country along politico-administrative lines and ‘did not alwaysreflect real functional economic areas’ (HMGovernment, 2010: 13). Crucially it wasclaimed LEPs can ‘differ across the countryin both form and functions’ (CLG, 2010: 14).Clearly implying that the political construc-tion of LEPs does not prescribe a city-centricfocus, it opened the way for a more flexibleapproach which can, in principle, respondmore directly to the challenge of placing therural in city-region development.


The next section uncovers how local pol-icy elites have responded to this particularchallenge. We do this by contrasting theevolving landscape of LEPs in England withthe embryonic city-region agenda emergingin Wales. The aim is to account for theopportunities, barriers, and constraints toconstructing city-region governance frame-works that reflect the interpenetration ofurban-economic processes across all geo-graphic space. In adopting this approach,we argue that only by analysing the con-struction of city-regions politically can webegin to comprehend how – and criticallywhy – the rural component continues to beignored as a basis for practical policy devel-opment despite a semantic recognition of itsimportance to growth both in and beyondthe metropolis.

Responding to the challenge:Placing the rural in city-regiondevelopment8

The challenge of placing the rural in city-region development derives from the foun-dations upon which the global discourse ofcity-regionalism is constructed. Principallyfounded on a geo-economic logic affirmingthe propensity of wealth-creating economicactivity to coalesce in dense metropolitanclusters of socioeconomic activity, the dis-course of city-regionalism has been deepenedby a belief that it is ‘a city and its region’(Parr, 2005) – or increasingly cities and theirregion – which are key to global competi-tiveness. This ensures city-regionalism ispolitically constructed by conferring city-region status upon designated cities; onlythen does the process of locating the widerregion begin. Depending on their proximityto an urban centre the consequence is thatwhile some rural areas are included, someare located on the fringes, and some areclearly excluded from the political project ofcity-regionalism altogether.

This city-first approach has clearly beenevident in England, but is also visible inother national and international contexts.Within national discourses, political pressure(particularly from the rural lobby) forcespolitical elites to respond to their previousspatial selectivity and more often than notthis leads to compromises being struck. Thenature of this compromise is important.Firstly, as noted above, it is common for the‘city-region’ to be actively marginalised orremoved completely from the political dis-course by invoking ‘sub-regions’ as a con-cept that enables spatial inclusivity to beachieved. However this compromise onlyserves to frustrate the urban lobby, who feelthe city-region concept is being watered-down to the detriment of their pursuit ofglobal urban competitiveness, while not fullyappeasing the rural lobby, who see this as‘mainstreaming’ city-first policies for appli-cation in rural areas.

The second trend is to redefine city-regions within an existing discursive frame.Almost always defined by a spatially-selective city-first ‘agglomeration’ perspec-tive, many spatial strategies have seen their‘city-region’ geography morph over time toemploy alternative geopolitical definitions.Relating directly to the first point, oneapproach sees city-regions morph from aspatial to a scalar concept: ‘a strategic andpolitical level of administration and policy-making’ (Tewdwr-Jones and McNeill, 2000:131). This scalar construct is employed bypolicy elites who wish to ensure spatialinclusivity while still allowing the superiorstrategic importance of city-regions to berecognised. A second option is to employ afunctionally-networked definition. Oftenreferred to as the ‘hub and spokes’ model,this way of defining city-regions is com-monly used by policy elites to visually repre-sent how city-regionalism promotesinteraction and integration across space. Inshort, it is a way of ensuring that even the


most peripheral, least urbanised, and mostfunctionally disconnected places can be rep-resented as being somehow connected to,and prospering from, the modernmetropolis.

As we will illustrate below, this geopoliti-cal construction of city-regions is absolutelycrucial to the placing of rural areas in con-temporary city-region development. Butmore particularly, it is a necessary startingpoint for understanding how the rural com-ponent could be more directly integratedand ensure that ‘city-regions are an innova-tive way to manage urban–rural interaction’(OECD, 2011 [emphasis added]). The diver-gent trajectories of city-regionalism currentlybeing constructed in England and Walesare particularly illustrative of this broaderpoint. In their own way they both highlightour more specific contention that they repre-sent missed opportunities for creating thetype of innovative city-region frameworknecessary to begin considering whether city-regionalism can in fact generate meaningfulgrowth both in and beyond the metropolis.

Closing the door: Local EnterprisePartnerships and rural development

The large-scale removal of regional govern-ance in England saw LEPs installed as thepreferred governance model for subnationaleconomic development. Able to take on dif-ferent forms and functions across the coun-try, there was no suggestion that LEPswould be a spatially-selective, city-first, ini-tiative (‘agglomeration’). LEPs were to bedefined instead by functional economies geo-graphies (‘hub and spokes’) and be open toall areas alike (‘scale’). What this amountedto was an acceptance that although the LEPprogramme was never explicitly branded ascity-regional, it did have the hallmarks ofcity-regionalism, albeit an alternative, func-tionally-dominant, city-regionalism. Yet,what is striking about the 39 LEPs

established is that they are not city-regionalin appearance – either as city-dominant orfunctionally-dominant (Pike et al., 2012).Over half of LEP areas are based on existing(or amalgamated) county structures – thatis, historically-embedded political structureswhich territorially divide space alongpolitico-administrative lines. Conversely,only four LEPs explicitly identify with being‘city-regional’. A further 15 explicitly iden-tify a city (or cities) at the heart of theirLEP. In fact, only three LEP areas have acore geography which identifies them ascross-regional – in each case reflecting estab-lished cross-regional partnership working.

What LEPs represent is a transition inEngland’s city-region political discoursefrom constructs framed according to city-first ‘agglomeration’ or ‘hub and spokes’perspectives to the total coverage availed bythe (sub)region-first ‘scale’ concept.Producing a sub-regional mosaic of territor-ial units (tessellate except for 37 localauthorities included in more than one LEParea), total LEP coverage does ensure nolocal authority in England is excluded (andtherefore marginalised politically) but this issomething already afforded by the previousmodel of regionalisation. In this way, andcontrary to the need for new, more flexibleand networked forms of subnational eco-nomic governance, LEPs are likely to fail ingenerating the new local authority relationsand strengthened partnership workingacross functional economic units necessaryto confer the potential benefits of city-regions managing urban–rural interaction inan innovative way. Nevertheless, it is ourcontention that the original premise of afunctionally-dominant city-regionalism wasa step in the right direction – a view sup-ported by amongst others Coombes (2013).However, the opportunity for LEPs to be aninnovative way to manage interactionbetween urban–rural areas was lost whenthe window to functional dominance was


closed. In the context of this paper it isimportant to briefly reflect why this was.

With only 69 days to design a ‘new’ insti-tutional architecture for England, evidencepoints to the positive intentions some actorshad to examine the potential for developingmore appropriate, flexible and networkedarrangements being stymied by the practicalreality of having to put bids together quicklyto meet the deadline (Harrison, 2011). Theoutcome was a retreat by policy elites toalready existing territorially-embedded poli-tico-administrative structures, with the fewtrans-territorial spaces to emerge as part ofthis new landscape reflecting areas wherepartnership working already existed. Butmuch more than this, the LEP example is auseful reminder that the (city-)regionalismquestion is as much about state territorialityand territorial politics as it is discourses ofglobalised economic competitiveness (Jonas,2012). For what we see with the establish-ment of LEPs in England reflects thedivision between the globalisation-drivengeo-economic logic for a competitive, selec-tive and differential approach to the regionalscale, and the more state-centric geopoliticallogic for achieving inclusivity and uniformitywith its territorial-scalar hierarchy. On theone hand, despite the UK CoalitionGovernment’s ideological opposition toregions (a manifestation of what DavidCameron’s right-of-centre ConservativeParty view as one of the worst examples of‘big state’), that the result of LEPs is a defacto new manifestation of a regional scaleof governance suggests that regionalisationis accepted from an economic pragmatismperspective (if not featuring as overt statepolicy). Meanwhile, on the other hand, thatthe result of LEPs is a set of territorial struc-tures which are both inclusive and uniformalerts us to how the centrally-orchestratedprocess by which LEPs were constructedpolitically could be seen as the latest in along-line of state spatial strategies designed

to protect the state’s legitimacy for main-taining regulatory control and managementof the economy in the face of globalisingtrends.

Our argument is that despite the existenceof a functional definition of city-regions, ascurrently constructed the ‘hub and spokes’model is limiting because it is used to iden-tify a hub (or hubs) before then indicatingthe metropolitan functions linked to themand which define the wider region. Put sim-ply, the ‘hub and spokes’ model is a func-tional definition but it is not a functionally-dominant definition for city-regions. Theoption which remains un(der)explored incity-region policymaking is functionallydominant city-regions. Following Coombes(2013), this would see the identification offunctional regions first, with or without adominant city (or cities) acting as the hub.9

From this perspective city-regions could bevariously conceptualised as ‘spokes with adominant hub (or hubs)’, ‘spokes with anemerging hub (or hubs)’ or ‘spokes with aformerly dominant hub (or hubs)’ to reflectthe size and relative importance (centrality)of the hubs in relation to their spokes. Inparticular, ‘spokes with an emerging hub (orhubs)’ could be usefully deployed to capturethose rural places – for example, markettowns, tourist hotspots – which Scott (2011)and others (notably McCarthy, 2008 andWoods, 2007) have demonstrated arebecoming more centrally positioned withinwider circuits of globalised capital accumu-lation and modes of state intervention. Forus this typology of functionally dominantcity-region constructs offer a way out of theparalysis that currently grips city-region pol-icymaking; a paralysis resulting from policyelites constantly swaying between a spa-tially-selective, city-first, agglomeration per-spective on city-regionalism and a spatiallyinclusive, region-first, scalar approach,which fragments and divides territorial spacealong historical lines.10


Returning to the example of LEPs, theparalysis caused by these two dominantapproaches ensured the initial premise ofidentifying functional economic geographieswas quickly drowned out by the ensuingrealpolitik. As Coombes (2013) notes, theresulting compromise is those aforemen-tioned county structures which, while oftenholding a significant level of functional dom-inance, most certainly did not amount tonew governance arrangements bearing thehallmarks of the new city-regionalism inaction. Nor did they recognise the contribu-tion of rural areas to growth in and beyondthe metropolis. The Commission for RuralCommunities (2010), for example, reflectedon a ‘patchy’ appreciation of rural economiccontributions in many LEP areas. As a mat-ter of fact, since their launch the effects ofcompromised city-regionalism have beenaccentuated by a shift in the UKGovernment metanarrative for economicdevelopment away from a need to rebalancethe economy spatially and sectorally to anincreased acceptance that growth, whereverthis is most viable, was vital in an economywhich at the time was moving in and out ofrecession.

Placing LEPs in the broader context ofsubnational economic development alsoreveals that overlaying their spatial-inclusivity are a series of city-centric policyprogrammes and interventions acting as sti-muli for growth in the metropolis. These sti-muli include: the Regional Growth Fund, acompetitive fund of £2.6bn open to all butwhich by virtue of requiring matched fund-ing by private investment and an ability tocreate jobs in the private sector channelledfunds towards metropolitan areas;Enterprise Zones, which offer simplifiedplanning and business rates discounts toattract private sector investment into areaswith specific local economic challenges, butmainly located in metropolitan areas; CityDeals, tailored arrangements designed to

enable cities to identify their economic prio-rities, with central government devolvingpower to unlock projects or initiatives tohelp boost the urban economy; the establish-ment of Combined Authorities in theManchester and Leeds city-regions; andfinally, the creation of a Minister for Cities(July 2011) and Cities Policy Unit (August2012).

What we have arrived at in England is adecade of city-regionalism dominated andconfounded by a paralysis of city-region pol-icymaking; the result of ongoing failure toadequately redress two prevailing tendencies.On the one hand, this apparent impasse iscaused by the need for a spatially-selective,city-first, agglomeration perspective on city-regionalism to conform to the geo-economicprinciples of city-regionalism and assuagethe demands of the urban lobby. On theother hand, there is a conflicting tendency topursue a spatially inclusive, region-first, sca-lar approach to placate the fears of a rurallobby who see city-regionalism as reprodu-cing this traditional rural development prob-lem. This bottleneck serves to scupperattempts to forge new, more networked andflexible planning and governance arrange-ments in England, which rarely – if ever –make headway in solving the city-regionconundrum. The result is we do not have thetype of innovative framework for managingurban–rural interaction necessary to con-sider whether city-regionalism, as a politicalproject, can actually generate meaningfulgrowth both in and beyond the metropolis.

Nevertheless, this is not the end to thisparticular story. For in the UK context whatis most interesting is how Wales, as adevolved nation, did not pursue city-regionalism as an explicit policy agenda inthe 2000s. Yet arguably, through the WalesSpatial Plan, they did provide an innovativeframework for managing urban–rural inter-action. That was until political leaderstook the decision to pursue an explicitly


‘city-region’ agenda in 2011 and becameconfronted by the same city-region conun-drum that continues to plague politicalattempts to implement city-region policy inEngland and other national contexts.

From functional economies to city-first:The Welsh retreat

As a newly devolved administration theeagerly anticipated Wales Spatial Plan (WSP)signalled a new approach to planning for eco-nomic development in Wales (Welsh Assem-bly Government (WAG), 2004, 2008). Akinto the new spatial planning frameworks pro-moting ‘soft space’ and ‘fuzzy boundaries’found in England’s aforementioned Sustain-able Communities Plan and Northern Waygrowth strategy – as well as National PlanningFramework for Scotland (Scottish Executive,2004) and Regional Development Strategy forNorthern Ireland 2025 (Department forRegional Development (DRD), 2001) in theother devolved nations – the ‘invention’ of sixnew loosely-bound regional ‘areas’ not coter-minous with any pre-existing territorial unitsensured the WSP was imbued with all thehallmarks of the policy rationale for city-regionalism (Heley, 2013). Where Wales isespecially relevant though, is the prominentrole afforded to market town initiatives in thedevelopment strategies for rural regions. Withno mention of market towns (and very littleon rural areas) in WSP 2004, the market townoccupied a more prominent role in the 2008update where, pace Scott (2010, 2011), it washeralded as having the ‘potential to developcultural tourism [.] through developing‘‘place marketing’’, building on local assets ofculture, history and landscape’ (Welsh Assem-bly Government, 2008: 60–61). But perhapsmore important than this, market towns weredefined in contrast to urban forms:

These small market towns differ from theextensive urban areas . in their relative

isolation, their enhanced service function com-pared to population and their interactionswith the surrounding rural areas. Because ofthe Area’s rurality, relative peripherality andpopulation sparsity, its most populous settle-

ments need to fulfil roles and functions that

would normally be associated with much larger

towns. (Welsh Assembly Government, 2008:85 [emphasis added])

A reflection of the growing importanceattached to market towns by policy elites,the revised national spatial vision expandedthe 35 ‘key centres’ identified in 2004 to spa-tially select 57 ‘key settlements’ in the 2008WSP update. Prioritising growth in andbeyond the metropolis, this inclusion of set-tlements located on the fringes of (and evenbeyond) metropolitan areas signalled clearengagement by the WAG to drive forwardcompetitiveness by engendering functionalintegration across all geographic space. Thesignificance of the Wales case is that for thefirst time rural spaces were constructed, rep-resented and governed by a functionallydominant city-regionalism that recognisedthe ‘continuity’ and ‘interpenetration’ ofurban-economic processes across all geo-graphic space (cf. Scott, 2011).

Shifting the discursive frame from ‘keycentres’ in WSP 2004 to ‘key settlements’ inWSP 2008 recognises that despite markettowns not independently providing the fullsuite of services, amenities and functions oflarger towns and cities, their enhanced ser-vice provision relative to their populationrenders them vital for securing socio-economic viability. As such, while markettowns may not easily conform to a ‘city-regional’ profile in terms of their physicalappearance, their multi-functional role asprime locations for retail, service, adminis-trative, tourist, leisure and cultural purposescertainly renders these settlements aspunching above their weight and ‘acting’ ina way which increasingly resembles city-regionalism in action. In short, the city-first,


agglomeration approach (as seen in WSP2004) excludes these more ‘imagined’ metro-poles (cf. Nelles, 2012) and alerts us oncemore to the need for functionally-dominantapproaches to conceptualising city-regions.

This is further supported by the newtypology of ‘key settlements’ utilised in WSP2008 to reflect the functional roles performedby different types of settlement – six keysettlements with national significance(Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Newport,Swansea, Wrexham); 26 primary key settle-ments; seven cross-boundary settlements (e.g.Carmarthen, Dolgellau); and, nine linked cen-tres representing a single ‘key settlement’ (e.g.Pwlheli-Porthmadog). This new typology isimportant in allowing those emerging hubs(e.g. market towns) and those linked-towns –which as part of a polycentric networkamount to a local functioning economic area– to be included alongside the ‘key centres’identified in WSP 2004. In so doing WSP2008 enabled those settlements which wereperipheral to the new governance areas inWSP 2004 to be identified as integral compo-nents of this new spatial planning frameworkbecause while they may be small in agglom-eration terms they are not functionally dis-connected. And finally, we argue it offered amiddle-way between the extremes of agglom-eration and scalar approaches. On the onehand, the 2008 typology allowed those urbancentres with the most metropolitan functionsto be recognised as such, but did so withoutfalling into the trap of fuelling the perceptionthat a new hierarchy had been constructed toprioritise investment and growth in a selectgroup of city-regions. Meanwhile, on theother hand, it did not actively marginalisethose places which fell on the fringes of, oroutside, the larger agglomerations. In effect,WSP 2008 effectively achieved spatial inclu-sivity but crucially it did so without the needfor such explicit territorial division.

What makes the Wales case so alluring isdespite this there has been a significant

retreat from WSP 2008. For in the yearsthereafter, the WAG has become increas-ingly captivated by the geo-economic argu-ments of economic boosterism underpinningwhat Jonas (2013) recognises as the trendtowards ‘international-orchestrated city-regionalism’. This is no more evident than inthe words of Rosemary Thomas, Head ofPlanning at the Welsh Government:‘Planning has its fashions and city-regionsare the popular fashion at the moment’(quoted in Early, 2013: 24); and in theNovember 2011 formation of a City RegionsTask and Finish Group ‘to identify potentialcity regions in Wales’ (Chair, ElizabethHaywood, quoted in City Regions Task andFinish Group, 2012: 1). The importanceattached to this discursive shift in Welsh pol-itics was recognition among policy elites thatWelsh cities generate just 33% of nationalincome/wealth – significantly lower thanother parts of the UK. Compiling nationaland international evidence in support ofcity-regionalism, the City Regions Task andFinish Group strongly recommended southeast Wales (Cardiff) and the Swansea Bayarea be recognised by the WelshGovernment as city-regions. Moreover, new‘best-fit’ governance arrangements should beestablished to improve skills, infrastructure,and innovation.

Arguing that the city-region model is‘tried and tested on a global scale’ (CityRegions Task and Finish Group, 2012: 6),what is revealing about the Welsh exampleis the retreat from a functionally dominantcity-regionalism, and how giving way to theomnipresence of city-first approaches hasthrust Wales headlong into Ward’s (2006)rural development problem. For in thisbrave new world of Welsh city-regions, notonly do market towns all but vanish fromthe national planning agenda – and with itthe ascendancy of arguments purveying theneed to recognise the interpenetration ofurban-economic processes across urban and


rural space as mutually beneficial for growthin and beyond the metropolis – but ruralareas are determinedly excluded. On thispoint the City Regions Task and FinishGroup (2012: 21 [emphasis added]) contend:

[Our advocacy of city-regionalism] is not tosuggest that the city region approach is theonly answer to economic development prob-lems. It clearly is not applicable to large ruralareas, which require a different approach; noris it necessarily the answer for all towns andcities, some of which (for example Cambridge)

are perfectly capable of thriving economicallywithout recourse to the concept.

This is one of just two acknowledgements torural spaces in the 75-page final report. This,the first, identifies city-regionalism as ‘notapplicable’ to large tracts of rural Wales,while the second relays how city-regionalismleads to ‘forced improvements in surround-ing rural areas’ (City Regions Task andFinish Group, 2012: 22). On this point it isdifficult to escape the conclusion that thenew discursive frame in Wales reinforcesthose notions of geographical centrality andhierarchies, and actively marginalises placesby dividing, polarising and consigning themto the periphery. Following Shucksmith(2008), the caricature presented is once againone which sees cities as the ‘locomotives’ ofeconomic development and rural areas the‘carriages’ being pulled along in the wake ofthe great modern metropolis.

Perhaps more significant is the reaffirma-tion of a city-region development problem.Any possibility of functionally-dominantcity-regionalism that duly recognises the con-tinuity and interpenetration of urban-economic processes across all geographicspace is snuffed out by the irresistible forcethat is the geo-economic logic for an agglom-eration inspired, spatially-selective, city-firstconstruction of city-regionalism. In thisrespect, the quiet disappearance of the WSPfrom spatial planning agenda and the

ascendency of city-centric development stra-tegies in Wales represent another missedopportunity. More pointedly, it remains tobe seen if this step-change provides moreammunition to those who would argue thatWelsh Government policy (inclusive of bothfocus and apparatus) continues to be‘Cardiff-centric’, and that the devolutionproject continues to be unrepresentative ofthe nation as a whole (Foster and Scott,2007). In making these points we should beclear that we are acutely aware of thepragmatism underpinning the pursuit of aneconomic dividend by constructing city-regionalism from a city-first perspective inWales, as elsewhere. Yet it is our contentionthat the emphasis now attributed to theCardiff and Swansea city-regions couldequally have been achieved without being atthe expense of (or rather in preference to) theWSP and the functionally-dominantapproach to constructing city-regionalism weadvocate. For us, extending the typology offunctionally-dominant city-regions identifiedin WSP 2008 to create a new category of ‘keysettlements with international significance’could usefully have served the same purposeof prioritising Cardiff and Swansea as themain city-regional centres of growth and dis-tinct from what would then be four key set-tlements with national significance(Aberystwyth, Bangor, Newport, Wrexham).Similarly, by extending the typology offunctionally-dominant city-regions constructsto include ‘spokes with a formerly dominanthub (or hubs)’ we can more accurately cap-ture and represent settlements within city-region policy that despite no longer havingdynamic centres do endow a legacy of func-tional patterns – such as the former miningand industrial towns located in South Wales.

Concluding comments

There is considerable evidence to demon-strate that in the era of globalisation


‘city-regions have . by and large, tended toperform better than their countries in eco-nomic terms’ (Rodrıguez-Pose, 2009: 51).We cannot be surprised then at the attentionacademics, political leaders and policy-makers have afforded to analyse theirgrowth dynamic, alongside how best to gov-ern these dynamic ever-expanding metropol-itan centres. Notwithstanding this, there isnow growing appreciation among many ofthe same individual commentators and insti-tutional organisations that the bulk ofnational growth in the Global North is gener-ated beyond metropolitan centres (EuropeanCommission, 2011; OECD, 2012).

All of which posits the urgent need toplace the rural in city-region development.But it is also forcing us to confront searchingquestions as to the way city-regions are con-structed politically. For despite recent aca-demic inquiry advancing our understandingsof the role of rural spaces in city-regiondevelopment, the construction of city-regionsin political discourse has so far failed to ade-quately reflect the growing importance ofthose interstitial spaces located between met-ropolitan centres to economic growth.Current constructions of city-regionalism asa political project continue to prioritisegrowth in the metropolis. Moreover, the geo-economic dominance of city-first approachescan be seen, at best, to present rural areas asprospering from growth in the metropolis,and at their worst, erasing rural areas fromthe picture altogether. The political responseis to sway between a spatially-selective,city-first, agglomeration perspective on city-regionalism and a spatially-inclusive, region-first, scalar approach which fragments anddivides territorial space along historicallines). Our contention is that this has led usto a paralysis of city-region policymaking,where the strength of one approach is theweakness of the other – and vice versa.

What our paper reveals is that placing therural in city-region development is a

particularly thorny political issue. Yet if thespectre of growth in and beyond the metro-polis is to be realised through city-regionpolicymaking then it is a challenge whichurgently requires our attention. A decade ofcity-regionalism in the UK has offered littlecause for optimism. And yet we would arguecontained within its recent history is oneway to conceive moving beyond the currentparalysis of city-region policymaking. Inmany ways what makes the WSP 2008 sucha pertinent example for uncovering how andwhy city-regionalism continues to be con-structed as a geo-political project to the det-riment of rural spaces and ruraldevelopment needs is the document’s posi-tioning of functionally-dominant city-regions as an under-explored phenomenon.

What the Welsh example in particularhighlights is how functionally dominant city-region constructs could offer a middle-waybetween spatially-selective ‘agglomeration’and spatially-inclusive ‘scalar’ approaches.On the one hand, the WSP 2008 updatereveals the capacity for functionally-dominantcity-region constructs to achieve spatial-inclusivity without the clear divisions createdby partitioning and fragmenting regionalspace under the more commonly deployedscalar approach. Yet on the other hand, thetypology of functionally-dominant city-region constructs we outlined is spatially-inclusive of the broader range of urban andrural places exhibiting city-regional tenden-cies: ‘spokes with a hub (or hubs)’ to recog-nise those key centres which are generating adisproportionate amount of national eco-nomic output; ‘spokes with a formerly domi-nant hub (or hubs)’ to acknowledge wherefunctional economic linkages relating to for-mer industrial towns and cities persist; and‘spokes with an emerging hub (or hubs)’ torecognise the important contribution togrowth of smaller functional economies thatare otherwise marginalised and/or excludedby city-first agglomeration approaches. By


capturing those settlements that might notappear ‘city-regional’ in their physicalappearance but do perform a functional rolewhich resembles city-regionalism in action,we see functionally-dominant approaches toconceptualising and constructing city-regions politically as critical to integratingthose rural spaces which are undergoing sig-nificant transformation – market towns,tourist hotspots – and increasingly attunedto the rhythms of the modern metropoliswithin the discursive frame of city-regionalpolicymaking (Scott, 2011, 2012).

In making this argument we join a grow-ing number who claim an important junc-ture in city-region policymaking and theconstruction of city-regionalism as a geopo-litical project of capitalism has been reached(see Jonas, 2013; Harrison and Hoyler,2014a; Scott, 2012). In the context of ourpresent argument, the recent work ofCoombes is particularly enlightening forrevealing a shared concern. Exploring howthe city-region concept is translated intoboundaries for governance in England,Coombes (2013: 4) argues ‘the crucial pointis that there is an alternative conception ofcity regions which does not presume such adominant role for the city’. The alternativespoken of is a ‘regions first’ approach tocity-region definition where the ‘possibilityof the region taking ontological precedenceover the city’ is considered (Coombes, 2013:3). Nevertheless, our analysis differs some-what from Coombes. Coombes’ analysisproposes a new set of territorial boundariesfor subnational policymaking in England –in effect, what the LEP map might havelooked like if two sets of flow data (migra-tion and commuting flows) were taken asthe starting point for defining subnationalgovernance units based on functional eco-nomic areas (Coombes, 2013: Figure 3).This achieves spatial inclusivity, but themosaic of tessellate sub-regional units repro-duces a set of territorially-bounded units.

Moreover, despite adopting the ‘region first’approach, the nodes identified subsequentlyare all cities; meaning ‘the empirical analysisfound no ‘‘non-city-region’’ in England’(Coombes, 2013: 15). Our analysis proposesextending the typology of functionally-dominant city-regions. We argue this canachieve spatial inclusivity, but has theadvantage that it does not require space tobe carved up along explicitly territorial lines,and critically, it allows non-cities – markettowns, tourism hotspots – to be duly recog-nised and considered as functionally impor-tant. Moreover, we argue that our typologybrings the hitherto neglected temporalaspect into sharper focus. Rather than pre-senting a static snapshot of regional spaceour typology considers which hubs arenewly emergent (fledgling), which are domi-nant (fully fledged), and which are formerlydominant (emeritus).

Having said this, the shared concern isthat for all the geo-economic logic underpin-ning spatially-selective, city-first, agglomera-tion perspectives on city-regionalism, theyare proving to be a major obstacle to city-regions providing the innovative way tomanage to urban–rural interaction. Whatthis prevents is the ability to assess thedegree to which city-regionalism as a politi-cal project can in fact deliver meaningfulgrowth both in and beyond the metropolis.It follows that this inherent bias in city-region policymaking has a debilitating effecton the ability of rural representatives toengage in a political process, which – by vir-tue of urban-economic processes increas-ingly penetrating the entirety of geographicspace – is having an ever greater impact overthe constituencies they represent. Purcell(2006) has previously warned how the latterhighlights the danger of such a democraticdeficit in the form of a ‘local trap’. Referringto the US experience, he argues that ‘if wefavour urban inhabitants over state-wideinhabitants, we are just as likely to diminish


democracy as we are to enhance it’ (Purcell,2006: 1936).

Nevertheless, we must also be carefulhow far we take this critical line and inap-propriately reinforce the assumption thatthe order of the day in every regional con-text is that of the ‘urbanisation of the rural’;be it in terms of governance, representation,function or otherwise. In this way we wouldre-emphasise the increasingly blurred statusof conventional boundaries between city andcountry, and that this blurring is occurringin both directions. A scenario discussed atlength by Cloke (2006), they bring our atten-tion to the critically under-addressed processof the ‘ruralisation of the urban’. Drawingexplicitly on arguments put forward byUrbain (2002), Cloke insists that the city hasitself been radically reshaped through theprocesses of deconcentration and decentrali-sation, and that the ‘urban form therebyencapsulates very strong rural characteristicsand influences’ (2006: 19). With this influ-ence extending to urban managers who areincreasingly pursuing virtues more com-monly associated with rural space and ruralliving, this shift is endemic in policy con-struction and emerging planning regimeswhich emphasise solidarity, identity, diver-sity and community – amongst other things.What is for sure, however, is that it is nolonger going to be acceptable to conceptua-lise the rural simply as an appendage hang-ing on to the coattails of the great modernmetropolis if city-regionalism is to succeedas a policy development tool. After all, ruralareas appear increasingly to be the ‘glassjaw’ of city-region policy.

Funding

Findings derive from empirical research con-ducted by the authors into English and Welshcity-regions. This work was conducted as part ofthe Wales Institute of Social and EconomicResearch, Data and Methods (WISERD) pro-gramme, funded by the UK Economic and Social

Research Council (RES-576-25-0021) and HigherEducation Funding Council for Wales, and alsosupported by the Department of Geography,Loughborough University.

Notes

1. This is the same logic underpinning theEuropean Spatial Development Perspective.

2. This was despite the focus of successive UKgovernments on creating the conditions neces-sary for continued economic expansion in theLondon mega city-region during this period.

3. This compares to 25% in the United States.4. This is a cross-national classification of sub-

regional geographic space as predominantly

urban, intermediate, or predominantly rural.The OECD classifies regions as predomi-nantly urban if the share of population livingin rural local units is below 15%; intermedi-ate if the share of population living in rurallocal units is between 15 and 50%; and pre-dominantly rural if the share of populationliving in rural local units is higher than 50%.

5. Rural proofing requires policymakers toensure the needs and interests of rural peo-ple, communities and businesses are properlyconsidered in the development and imple-mentation of all policies and programmes. Itwas one of the perceived benefits to accruefrom the regionalisation of rural affairs.

6. It is important to note that the lack ofdevolved institutional settlement in Englandprovided room for city-regionalism toemerge compared to the other UK terri-tories which were all in receipt of an addi-tional tier of elected political representationas part of Labour’s post-1997 Devolutionand Constitutional Change programme.

7. This point is given further weighting becauseManchester, often held up as an exemplar ofcity-region governance on the internationalstage, includes none of its rural surroundings(Pike et al., 2012).

8. This section derives from empirical researchconducted by the authors into LEPs and theWales Spatial Plan. The former was con-ducted in 2011 and involved both desktopresearch and semi-structured interviews (30)

with the findings published in a report(Harrison, 2011). The latter was conducted


as part of the Wales Institute of Social andEconomic Research, Data and Methods(WISERD) programme, funded by the UKEconomic and Social Research Council(RES-576-25-0021) and Higher EducationFunding Council for Wales.

9. City-regions can be monocentric (have a sin-gle centre) or polycentric (have many cen-tres). Our analysis therefore refers to ‘city (orcities)’ and ‘hub (or hubs)’ throughout. It isbeyond the scope of this paper to go into thisin more detail but it is also important to note

that distinguishing city-regions which exhibita more monocentric or polycentric spatiallayout is important because if the size andscope of the functional region is similar, asingle large hub will exercise greater domi-nance over its functional region than the sumof multiple smaller hubs (Meijers, 2008).

10. We are not arguing that functionally domi-nant city-region constructs will appease bothurban and rural lobbies; just that it presentsan opportunity to move beyond the paraly-sis which currently surrounds city-regionpolicymaking.

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governing beyond the metropolis_urban studies

Documents

cityregion policymaking

dominant cityregion

city glaeser

aparalysis of city

urban areas

impact of urban

urban dwellers

metropolitan areas