Research project
MetroCentral Capacity for Growth
- Start date: 1 September 2025
- End date: 1 May 2026
- Principal investigator: Professor Iain Docherty, University of Stirling
- Co-investigators: Professor Alice Owen, School of Earth and Environment; Professor Gary Dymski, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds
- Postgraduate researcher: Chris Burnett, University of Stirling
Description
Successive UK governments have identified a resilient economic performance gap between major regional metropolitan areas and international competitor regions. This gap is a major component of the underperformance of the UK economy as a whole in terms of GDP per capita, productivity, innovation diffusion and so on.
This project seeks to interrogate the degree to which central government and ‘metropolitan’ (i.e. major/2nd tier city regions outside London) economic development understandings, priorities and tools are in alignment, and what might be done to make metropolitan-central policy action more effective.
It will combine desk research and targeted interviews with senior policymakers to understand how central and metropolitan strategies and policies support each other, and where they are in tension.
The objective is to better understand how the UK’s evolving system of multilevel governance is supporting efforts to improve economic performance of the country as a whole, and what might be done to maximise the impact of metropolitan growth efforts to raise national economic performance.
This project is funded by the UK Innovation Caucus.