Structural Transformation, Adaptability and City Economic Evolutions

在过去几年中，城市和城市地区在关于经济增长和业绩的讨论中占据了越来越重要的地位。地理学家和经济学家都指出，经济活动和财富创造越来越集中在城市，城市作为国家繁荣的所在地至关重要。各国政府和国际机构同样认识到城市在经济中发挥的关键作用，并相应地将注意力转向城市，将其作为政策干预和治理改革的重点。在英国，考虑到政府在空间上对不太繁荣的北方和较繁荣的南方之间经济再平衡的关注，对城市经济表现的兴趣尤为重要。为北方城市“供电”以释放其增长潜力被视为确保这一政治必要性的关键。本项目旨在帮助为这些关切和辩论提供信息，重点关注在中长期内，各城市在应对或预测需求、竞争、贸易和技术的变化而重新定位和转变其经济结构的能力方面存在多大程度的差异，以及这些差异如何影响城市的相对增长路径。虽然一个城市的增长表现受到各种因素的影响，但从中长期来看，很大程度上取决于一个城市在摆脱旧的衰退或增长缓慢的活动部门进入新的更具活力的部门方面取得了多大的成功。如果由于某种原因，一个城市的经济结构变得越来越缺乏竞争力、过时，或者生产率福尔斯落后，那么它将在经济增长、就业创造、人均收入和福利方面落后。因此，重要的是，特别是从中长期来看，一些经济学家称之为经济增长的结构性动力，或适应性增长。这是这个研究项目试图探索的关键问题，与英国约70个城市有关。有一些证据表明，近几十年来，各城市的经济增长有很大差异，尤其是在南方城市和北方城市之间。这些不同的增长演变在多大程度上受到结构转型和重新定位的差异的影响是本研究的基本焦点。大部分分析将集中在自1971年以来的过去40年中，这一时期，在全国范围内，国民经济发生了从制造业到服务业的重大转变。这种转变的结构细节如何在英国城市中发挥作用，以及对城市增长模式产生了什么影响，是这项研究试图解决的关键问题。为了实现研究目标，将为英国城市构建新的数据集，包括许多单个部门的就业和产出。从1991年开始的较近时期，还可以较为详细地研究各种城市特有因素（如集聚、技能、创新和公司人口统计）在解释各城市在结构适应和经济增长方面的差异方面的作用。此外，将在最近一段时间内更详细地审查大约10个案例研究城市，以确定地方经济和产业政策以及日益被称为治理安排的安排（例如，地方积极和集体行动的政治和商业机构）如何与结构变化和经济增长的速度和方向相互作用并形成这种速度和方向。它的目的是，研究将不仅有助于我们的城市经济演变的理解，但也有助于告知当前的政策辩论有关创建一个“北方发电站”集中在英国的北方城市。

Over the past few years, cities and city-regions have assumed growing prominence in discussions over economic growth and performance. Both geographers and economists point to the increasing concentration of economic activity and wealth creation in cities, and their crucial importance as the loci of national prosperity. National governments and international bodies have likewise recognized the key economic role that cities play, and have correspondingly directed attention to cities as the foci of policy intervention and governance reform. In the UK, interest in the economic performance of cities takes on particular importance given the Government's concern spatially to rebalance the economy between the less prosperous North and the more prosperous South. 'Powering up' northern cities to unlock their growth potential is seen as crucial to securing that political imperative. This project is intended to help inform these concerns and debates by focusing on how far and in what ways, over the medium to long term, cities have differed in their ability to reorientate and transform their economic structures in response to or anticipation of changes in demand, competition, trade, and technology, and how those differences have then influenced the comparative growth paths of cities. While a city's growth performance is influenced by a wide range of factors, over the medium to long run, much turns on how successful a city is in moving out of old declining or slow-growth sectors of activity into new more dynamic ones. If, for some reason, a city's economic structure becomes increasingly uncompetitive, outmoded, or falls behind in productivity, it will fall behind in economic growth, job creation, per capita incomes and welfare. What matters then, especially when viewed over the medium to long term, is what some economists call the structural dynamics of economic growth, or adaptive growth. It is this key issue that this research project seeks to explore, in relation to some 70 cities across the UK. There is some evidence to suggest that cities have differed significantly in economic growth in recent decades, especially as between more southern cities and more northern ones. How far these divergent growth evolutions have been influenced by differences in structural transformation and reorientation is the basic focus of this research. Most of the analysis will focus on the past forty years, since 1971, a period when, nationally, a major shift in the national economy has occurred from manufacturing to services. How the structural details of this shift have played out across Britain's cities, and with what consequences for city growth patterns, are key questions the research seeks to address. To address the research aims, new data sets for British cities will be constructed, on employment and output for numerous individual sectors. For a more recent period, since 1991, it is also possible to examine in some detail the role of various city-specific factors (such as agglomeration, skills, innovation and firm demographics) in explaining differences across cities in structural adaptation and economic growth. Further, some 10 case study cities will be examined in yet more detail over this more recent period, with a view to ascertaining how local economic and industrial policies and what are increasingly called governance arrangements (for example locally active and collectively acting political and business institutions) have interacted with and shaped the pace and direction of structural change and economic growth. It is intended that the research will not only contribute to our understanding of city economic evolutions, but also help to inform current policy debates about the creation of a 'northern powerhouse' centred upon Britain's northern cities.