Andy Pike

This book aims to understand the predicaments of ‘left behind places’ and the scale of the policy challenge of ‘levelling up’ their economic prosperity. Drawing out lessons of wider international significance, it examines how places (cities, towns and localities) have grown apart over recent decades amidst deindustrialisation, post-industrial transition and the disruptive shocks of the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Using the UK case to illustrate its arguments, the analysis identifies the different types of ‘left behind places’ and their distinctive economic experiences. The key features of urban and regional institutions and policies are reviewed to understand more about why, despite some successes, geographical inequalities remain an entrenched feature of the UK, blighting the life chances and quality of life of its citizens, and national economic progress as a whole. The weaknesses of past policies are highlighted, and the case is made for a new, mission-oriented policy model, because only a radical shift in economic thinking, governance and management is likely to achieve the ‘levelling up’ that is now a prominent refrain in the political lexicon.

Infrastructure systems provide the services we all rely upon for our day-to-day lives. Through new conceptual work and fresh empirical analysis, this book investigates how financialisation engages with city governance and infrastructure provision, identifying its wider and longer-term implications for urban and regional development, politics and policy. Proposing a more people-oriented approach to answering the question of 'What kind of urban infrastructure, and for whom?', this book addresses the struggles of national and local governments to fund, finance and govern urban infrastructure. It develops new insights to explain the socially and spatially uneven mixing of managerial, entrepreneurial and financialised city governance in austerity and limited decentralisation across England. As urban infrastructure fixes for the London global city-region risk undermining national 'rebalancing' efforts in the UK, city statecraft in the rest of the country is having uneasily to combine speculation, risk-taking and prospective venturing with co-ordination, planning and regulation.This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of business and management, economics, geography, planning, and political science. Its conclusions will be valuable to policymakers and practitioners in both the public and private sectors seeking insights into the intersections of financialisation, decentralisation and austerity in the UK, Europe and globally.

Infrastructure systems provide the services we all rely upon for our day-to-day lives. Through new conceptual work and fresh empirical analysis, this book investigates how financialisation engages with city governance and infrastructure provision, identifying its wider and longer-term implications for urban and regional development, politics and policy. Proposing a more people-oriented approach to answering the question of 'What kind of urban infrastructure, and for whom?', this book addresses the struggles of national and local governments to fund, finance and govern urban infrastructure. It develops new insights to explain the socially and spatially uneven mixing of managerial, entrepreneurial and financialised city governance in austerity and limited decentralisation across England. As urban infrastructure fixes for the London global city-region risk undermining national 'rebalancing' efforts in the UK, city statecraft in the rest of the country is having uneasily to combine speculation, risk-taking and prospective venturing with co-ordination, planning and regulation.This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of business and management, economics, geography, planning, and political science. Its conclusions will be valuable to policymakers and practitioners in both the public and private sectors seeking insights into the intersections of financialisation, decentralisation and austerity in the UK, Europe and globally.

The UK government reduced expenditure and introduced local financial self-sufficiency in pursuing austerity after the 2008 crash, forcing local governments in England to find savings and new income sources to close funding gaps. As new financial strategies and practices were devised, 'councillors at the casino' were characterized as taking risks with local taxpayers' money and jeopardizing local public service provision. Looking beyond the high-profile cases in an internationally resonant local public sector reform laboratory, Financialization and Local Statecraft examines the wider landscape across local government in England since 2010, which comprises a local tier of over 300 governments managing £100bn of revenue expenditure, employing almost 1.5 million people, and providing services to over 56 million people across the country. Andy Pike draws on a new local statecraft theory to explain how local statecrafters act in realms including financial strategies and risks, external advice, borrowing and debt management, and in and out-of-area activities. The framework reveals and accounts for their vanguard, intermediate, and long tail approaches with differing engagements with financialization. While limited within the overall landscape, such relations and UK government policy are rewiring and rescaling local statecraft and relocating risks and uncertainties onto local government and the wider local state. UK government policy and the extension and intensification of financialization expose the local state's financial sustainability and resilience in the longer term. They raise fundamental questions about what local government is for and how it should be funded. The erosion of local accountability of local statecraft in financialization risks creating a de-politicized and post-democratic local governance.

Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the international political economy; state austerity and retrenchment; and, new and reformed approaches to intervention, policy and institutions for local and regional development. Local and Regional Development provides an accessible, critical and integrated examination of local and regional development theory, institutions and policy in this changing context. Amidst its rising importance, the book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, its purposes, principles and values, frameworks of understanding, approaches and interventions, and integrated approaches to local and regional development throughout the world. The approach provides a theoretically informed, critical analysis of contemporary local and regional development in an international and multi-disciplinary context, grounded in concrete empirical analysis from experiences in the global North and South. It concludes by identifying what might constitute holistic, inclusive, progressive and sustainable local and regional development, and reflecting upon its limits and political renewal.

Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the international political economy; state austerity and retrenchment; and, new and reformed approaches to intervention, policy and institutions for local and regional development.Local and Regional Development provides an accessible, critical and integrated examination of local and regional development theory, institutions and policy in this changing context. Amidst its rising importance, the book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, its purposes, principles and values, frameworks of understanding, approaches and interventions, and integrated approaches to local and regional development throughout the world. The approach provides a theoretically informed, critical analysis of contemporary local and regional development in an international and multi-disciplinary context, grounded in concrete empirical analysis from experiences in the global North and South. It concludes by identifying what might constitute holistic, inclusive, progressive and sustainable local and regional development, and reflecting upon its limits and political renewal.

Origination: The Geographies of Brands and Branding offers innovative theoretical and conceptual frameworks relating to the ways that actors create meaning and value in commodity brands and branding through processes of geographical association. Provides innovative conceptualization and theorization to facilitate an understanding of the geographical dimensions of brands and brandingChallenges current interpretations of brands as vehicles of homogenization in globalizationEstablishes the theoretical and conceptual foundations of a more geographically sensitive approach through rigorous empirical examination of the under-researched geographical differentiation of commodity brands and brandingPresents innovative new research and analysis of the socio-spatial biographies of the Newcastle Brown Ale, Burberry and Apple brandsForges strong new connections between political and cultural economy approaches within geographyProvides a distinctive and incisive conceptual and theoretical framework capable of engaging other branded commodities and their branding in other times and places

Origination: The Geographies of Brands and Branding offers innovative theoretical and conceptual frameworks relating to the ways that actors create meaning and value in commodity brands and branding through processes of geographical association. Provides innovative conceptualization and theorization to facilitate an understanding of the geographical dimensions of brands and brandingChallenges current interpretations of brands as vehicles of homogenization in globalizationEstablishes the theoretical and conceptual foundations of a more geographically sensitive approach through rigorous empirical examination of the under-researched geographical differentiation of commodity brands and brandingPresents innovative new research and analysis of the socio-spatial biographies of the Newcastle Brown Ale, Burberry and Apple brandsForges strong new connections between political and cultural economy approaches within geographyProvides a distinctive and incisive conceptual and theoretical framework capable of engaging other branded commodities and their branding in other times and places