thomasforth

Joined 1 year ago

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Jan 26

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I don't think this is right. Secondary cities in Britain are consistently more positive about development than London. I give the example in the piece of Leeds voting to expand its airport and how this was blocked by the UK government. In London it is the UK government trying to force that city to expand Heathrow after London itself rejected it.

The best data I can suggest to try and convince yourself of this is from a fantastic London Centric article on approving 5G masts. This is just one example of how open cities are to growth, but the results are really clear --- "The end result is that in London it is uniquely hard to get permission for new equipment. According to Mobile UK’s internal data in Greater Manchester, Leeds, and Edinburgh more than 80% of requests for new masts are approved at the planning stage. In Greater London this approval rate plummets to less than 40%, one of the worst in the country."

https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-pho...

Comment · 1 year ago

"It's funny reading these articles from people who haven't grew up poor, in the north, never seen a council estate, or the way of life". I didn't grow up poor, but I did grow up in the North, went to the local comprehensive, and have lived on plenty of council estates. When I lived in Manchester I went to Ashton plenty of times, it's not that different to Hull.

Comment · 1 year ago

Not a typo I'm afraid. East Germany's economy overtook North England's economy in 2010. Excluding Berlin, East Germany's economy overtook North England's economy in 2013. Every East German large city (Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Halle, Chemnitz) is today a stronger economy than every North English large city except Manchester. Manchester is still a weaker economy than Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig.

All the data is from the OECD using comparable definitions of the cities and collecting at https://tomforth.co.uk/humancapital/

Comment · 1 year ago

In my comparisons with the Netherlands I explore this in detail. The centre of the Netherlands' main urban region is a six metre below sea level swamp that the Dutch never have and never will build on and which is just as much of an obstacle to agglomeration as the Pennines. So I really don't think this matters.

As for the weather, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark are hardly renowned for their fantastic weather and they're all doing much better than North England. Meanwhile Southern Spain, Southern Italy, and Greece are lovely places but not doing well economically. I don't think the weather is a good excuse for Northern underperformance.

Comment · 1 year ago

I agree it sounds odd. It's a phrase I've moved to using after fifteen years of being shouted at for using other phrases. North England, while sounding a bit odd, generates much fewer rage replies than other formulations. There's also a slight preference on my part for shorter phrases because of social media.

Comment · 1 year ago

Thanks for reading.

For my precise work on the hyper-local angle you're asking after I did this analysis of Greater Manchester when I lived there in 2018 and it holds up really well. https://www.tomforth.co.uk/inequalityingreatermanchester/

Specifically on the GDP per capita numbers you quote, it's important to know what the "capita" means here. In your numbers, the capita is of residents. So people who commute into Manchester to work are counted in the GDP side of the equation and not in the capita side of the equation giving a largely meaningless number when comparing the strength of an economy. In the case of Leeds and Bradford that you mention it's largely the same effect. When someone commutes from Ilkley or Harrogate to Leeds to work their GDP is counted in Leeds but their capita is counted in Bradford or North Yorkshire.

While I agree that looking at smaller geographies is useful, and indeed I do in the link top, we need to consider that overall Greater Manchester, and all of the North's other cities, just have very little prosperity to go around. There are pockets of wealth, but they are pockets against a backdrop of poverty. And of course in London there are pockets of poverty, but they are pockets against a backdrop of wealth. You can convince yourself of this by looking at the ONS small area income estimate dataset and map.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...