Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth did emerge in London a decade later than first reported for New York. The...

This paper relates the processes of strategic planning in London during the first decade of an executive Mayoral system to Doug Yates’ thesis about the ungovernability of major cities and London’s long history of conflict around metropolitan governance issues. Yates’ thesis only partially...

This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by Fielding (1989). It argues that occupational progression in such places particularly depends on concentrations both of...

This report considers the potential/appropriate role for local authorities (LAs) in relation to the downturn phase of the current recession. It focuses on the most valuable functions which they can fulfil in this context, and takes a cautious view about the potential for extending any boost to...

This paper uses evidence from the (British) Longitudinal Study to examine the influence on occupational advancement of the city-region of residence (an escalator effect) and of relocation between city-regions (an elevator effect). It shows both effects to be substantively important, though less...

The growth of “global cities” in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarization, including the increase in low-paid service jobs. Although held to be untrue for European cities at the time, some such growth did emerge in London a decade later than first reported for New...

In the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second-order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially greater agglomeration economies. The view that any city can make itself...

The transition process that started in the Balkans some twenty years ago, and the European association process to which it has been inexorably connected, has led to a radical transformation of the Balkan economic space across local, regional, national and trans-national levels. Amongst the other...

Despite significant progress in its path towards Europeanisation over the last two decades, Greece’s reform record remains highly problematic. Persistent reform failures and a continuum of half-way reforms have characterised much of the country’s recent history. In this paper we depart form...