City region pre-lecture video City-regions · Looking beyond the global city - advantages and ideologies of modern progressive cities and the problems associated with gentrification · In terms of geographical boundaries, where does the city stop? · Alan Scott (2001)(also talked of clustering) suggested forms of urban conglomerations spill out beyond traditional city boundaries · Represent an outgrowth of large metropolitan areas . Jonas and Ward (2007) these expanding city regions are the "building blocks" of the global economy · Example might be London and South East as a global city region - areas outside contributing to what London is including the commuter belt Scale · City region looked at through scalar approach (global, regional, national, sub-regional, local/urban) · Scale is a highly contested term in human geography · Taylor and Flint (1985) claimed: o Urban is micro scale of experience (what we experience individually with our senses) o National is the meso scale of ideology (people create ideas of nation- state ... ) o Global is the macro scale of reality (political reality of operation through globalisation) Model based on spread of capital and creates a hierarchy . Silicon Valley thrives on the inter-collaboration of companies, people and ideas (Saxinien 1994) . Do processes that occur within each scale level stay with in each level or is this a by- product. E.g. google headquarters locally based but have global reach and effects · Scale is relational - not as rigid as people think and is a by-product (Marston et al 2005) City-region looked at through scale · Are city-regions making scales porous and linking existing scales or just producing a new scale · Empirically they are changing the way people look at cities · Different views to how a city region develops: o Politically (and/or privately) o Transport-led o Unstructured/'organic' Greater Manchester City Region · Greater Manchester has a mayor as a whole and their own regional councils · In 2004, new labour government with push to sort productivity gap as south £30billion more productive . the Moving Forward: The Northern Way - improve transport, shopping malls, retail parks, private-sector involvement, business innovation · Created Greater Manchester Statutory City Region to allow for harder lobbying for more funds from national government · In 2009, GMSCR is a designated pilot zone, all city authorities able to pool resources
· Ability to politically manoeuvre itself as a region has helped during covid · Could be seen as a 'twin city' - neighbouring cities collaborate (Gerrard Kidd 2018) . However, urban politics include heavy private investment. Company called Peel Holdings haunts Manchester in charge of most new developments . Peel Holdings are on course to build The Oceanic Gateway as they own other properties and say they will provide land - company vision becomes a spatial vision, basically aiming to create a large city region including both Liverpool and Manchester, Trafford centre, airports, Liverpool waters etc · Political as cities joined for sharing of resources but over riding feeling of private investment