Sarah Longlands Director of Policy Centre for Local Economic Strategies Coming out of recession: the place resilience model

About CLES Established Focus – influencing economic development and regeneration policy and practice Membership – local authorities, private, social enterprise Independent research to understand challenges and influence policy Publications – informing policy and effective practice Training and events CLES Consultancy - link to projects and financial independence

CLES Research and policy work Place resilience Economic and social tools Economic policy work Futures work – Future City Game Green economy Financing economies/regeneration Poverty and worklessness

The speed of investment and disinvestment in localities – loss of “local”; Changing nature of society, voter apathy, disengagement; Growing level of population and spatial developments; Demographic change and greater movement of people; ongoing environmental resource constraints, eg impacts of climate change, scarcity of energy and resources, moving away from carbon hungry economy; Growing concern about demands of economic growth versus quality of life and social equity; Recession and public sector budgets “breathing in” The current challenges for city governance

In this context it is even more important that the local economies of places are managed and stewarded effectively Perhaps we need less focus on economic growth as end its self and greater recognition of the need not only for growth but for resilience in our economies Resilience: Resilience is the capacity of a system to deal with negative change without collapsing, to withstand shocks, and to rebuild itself and learn But what factors contribute towards place resilience? How do we need to start looking at places differently in order to understand place resilience? How might our conception of economics in the local territory need to change? CLES thoughts so far Place resilience

Resilience

The place resilience model Public economy Public expenditure on goods and services Footprint of procurement activity on local supply chains Public employment Social economy Contribution of community activities and networks to the local economy including ‘core’ economy Commercial economy Private businesses Investment into development and new enterprise Provides the bulk of employment

Measures of resilience Measures 1-6 = strengths of the relationships within the local economic territory e.g public – commercial, commercial – social, public – social. Measures 7-10 = Awareness of and action taken to deal with the external factors that have an influence on the local economic territory

CLES Research and policy work Place resilience Developed place resilience model internationally, Piloting place resilience model in the UK with 6 different areas Piloting the model in the UK including, Cambridgeshire, Ashfield and Mansfield, Manchester, Cherwell, Northumbria, Gloucester and South Staffordshire Learning process for all the pilots and CLES

Emerging findings Complexity of activity in economic development and regeneration across the UK but headline themes heavily driven by central government priorities Interconnectivity of public, private and social economies, impacts in one area have knock on effects, seen in recession. Strong engagement between the public and private sectors although not always possible to understand how effective relationships contribute to more effective economies Clear lack of understanding of the contribution of the social economy to place resilience. Implicit assumption that it is important but not sure about contribution it makes nor how best to measure Strategic importance of local authorities – “coagulant” or leaders in a locality which broker relationships and often lead by example Resilience is hard to measure and difficult to benchmark

Emerging findings, an example from one of the pilot areas Relationship between commercial and public economy Relationship between social and public economy Relationship between commercial and social economy

How can the model support economic development? In depth qualitative analysis which considers the strength of relationships in an area; Emphasis on resilience rather than on simply growth; Unpacks perceptions, assumptions and myths about a place which may strengthen or weaken place resilience; Encourages participants in the research to think about their area in a different way – think more broadly about their economy; Enables an area to think about their economic role within a particular geography. Prompts more questions, debate and discussion; Useful to help reconceptualise notion of place in a time of recession

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