National Productivity Week 27th November 2023 | Visit Website

A diverse community of
leading experts, policymakers
and practitioners

The Institute’s key research themes
are led by ten academic partners
spread across the UK.

We’re a UK-wide research
organisation exploring what
productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

Turnaround Cities: Lessons learned for the UK

How have some troubled cities overseas turned themselves around? What did they invest in? How did they organise themselves? Cities are concentrations of economic activity where businesses tend to locate, not just because many of their customers are there, but also because that’s where most of the skilled workers live and where – more broadly – innovation is happening. Economists call this agglomeration effects. But these benefits do not come automatically. Some cities have successfully reinvented themselves, but others struggled in this transformation, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. What lessons can be learned for the UK from successful Turnaround Cities?

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:

  • Philip McCann, Professor of Urban and Regional Economics at Alliance Manchester Business School
  • Susanne Frick, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Blavatnik School of Government
  • Ian Taylor, Research and Policy Associate, Blavatnik School of Government

For more information on the topic: