Transcript Critical Reflections on the South East

Allan Cochrane The Open University
Presentation to CEEDR, University of Middlesex,
October 23rd, 2013
 South East as the norm, against
which others are judged
 Capital city – seat of government
 Home Counties
 Englishness (maybe even
Britishness)
 The rest is peripheral – defined as
‘provinces’…. ‘distressed areas’….
‘the regions’
 So…not a ‘real’ region – more of an
accidental region in administrative
terms
 BUT needs to be regionalised – to
be understood as part of set of
socio-spatial relations
 Within and beyond England and
the UK
 And in the end also mobilised as
part of explicit and implicit
national regional policy
 ‘Rethinking the Region’
 Defined as ‘growth region’ and
specifically region of neo-liberal
growth
 But a particular version of neoliberalism which involved a
continual process of state
privileging for the South East
 What’s in and what’s out, not just
an academic debate – feeds into
policy debates
 Activity space stretches across a
huge area of England (Gordon)
 Over half the population of
England included in some versions
(Dorling)
 Polycentric city region (Hall and
Pain)
 Edge city (Garreau)
 Worrying about city regions –
mega region, super-region –
but…beyond the metropolis (8m)
 South East as national champion –
England’s ‘world region’ - England’s
(and so the UK’s) economic success
relies on the success of the South
east
 The SE as (more than a) suburban
heartland
 SEEDA says it’s ‘England’s World
Class region’
 Diamonds and clusters
 London as ‘world city’
 The South East as (explicitly
regionalised) economic driver
under new Labour
 Subject of explicit and active state
strategy in first decade of 21st
century focused on housing growth
to underpin economic growth
(housing as driver)
 ‘Sustainable communities’




Squaring the circle
Economic growth
Social sustainability
Environmental sustainability
 Growth regions identified (our
research focused on one of these)
 Carefully targeted nudges to the
housing market, working with
developers and house builders
 A neo liberal belief in the power of
the market (and house builders in
particular)
 Combined with active state
support through planning and
infrastructural development
 Paid for through rising property
values
 Strategy seems predicated on
inequality and its reinforcement
 Sustainable communities in the SE;
Pathfinders in the North
 Maybe making different claims –
spreading out over the rest of
England (Hall)
 BUT based on ‘growth’: what
happens when growth stops and
the ‘growth region’ stops growing?
 Still at the imaginative core of
public policy – housing growth on
the edge of the South East
 Centre for Cities – focuses on
growth in growth areas (and still
housing)
 City Deals – the case of Milton
Keynes
 From sustainability to viability
(removing perceived constraints of
the planning system)