2025 RSA Regional Futures Conference

Speakers:
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, London School of Economics, UK
Rachel Franklin, Harvard University, USA

Chair: Luisa Corrado, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy & Deputy Editor-in-Chief Spatial Economic Analysis

Amid evolving geopolitical dynamics and shifting trade relationships, the transition toward Green Global Value Chains (GGVCs) raises important questions about the balance between sustainability goals and increasing global fragmentation. As firms and regions respond to emerging carbon regulations, due diligence requirements, and green industrial policies, the uneven capacity to adapt risks reinforcing existing disparities. This panel explores how the green transition is reshaping value chain governance and the possibilities for sustainable regional development. Drawing on perspectives from global value chain analysis, innovation studies, and regional political economy, the discussion will examine how the tensions between fragmentation and sustainability shape new opportunities and risks for regions across both advanced and emerging economies. This panel discussion is the inaugural event of the RSA Network Green Global Value Chains for Sustainable Regional Development.

Panellists
Stefano Ponte, Centre for Business and Development Studies (CBDS), Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Roberta Rabellotti, Department of Political and Social Science, University of Pavia, Italy

Session organisers/Discussants
Riccardo Crescenzi, Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, UK
Valentina De Marchi, ESADE Business School, Spain
Oliver Harman, Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, UK
Carolin Hulke, Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, UK

Among the advanced OECD economies, the UK has one of the longest histories of regional policies, dating back to the first experiments in 1928.  Despite this long history, present- day regional inequalities in economic performance and prosperity remain substantial, and in some respects are wider than at any time in the post-War period.  This begs the obvious question as to why past policies have had such a limited impact.

The aim of this panel and discussion session will be to interrogate past policies to understand why they have failed to solve the UK’s problem of regional economic inequality, and, crucially, to draw out lessons – both positive and negative – from past policy that might help researchers, and indeed present-day policymakers themselves, to forge policies better capable of resolving the challenges that the UK economy, in common with many other advanced economies, faces today and going forward. The discussion will be framed around a new book to be published in the RSA’s Regions and Cities Series, that examines past UK regional policy, and the lessons that can be drawn from it, as set out in essays written by experts in their respective fields. While the book is focussed on the long history of regional policy in the UK, many of the issues discussed and the lessons learned from this history have a relevance for regional policy in other advanced economies.

The session would be organised in two parts: in the first, short presentations will be given by the contributors on the particular aspect of past policy they discuss in their chapter,  focusing on the lessons to be learned; and in the second, the aim will be to have an open discussion between the  audience and the panel.

The book and the session are timely for two reasons. The first is that UK regional policy arguably currently stands at a crucial crossroads. Since 2010 there has been considerable churn in both regional policy and the institutions created for its delivery (including the Regional Development Agencies, the Local Enterprise Partnerships, various City Deals, Local Investment Funds, the Towns Fund, the Levelling Up Fund, and an initial tranche of devolved Mayoral Combined Authorities.    What was to be a major new approach to regional policy, the Levelling Up Agenda introduced by the Conservative Government in 2022/23, seems to have been dropped by the new Labour Government, which instead is engaged on a variety of disconnected, and in some respects, contradictory, place-targeted schemes aimed at reviving the UK’s faltering economic growth.  Faced with the challenges of the transition to a net-zero carbon economy and one increasingly based on AI technologies, it is critical that all parts of the UK contribute to, and share equally in, the benefits these historical transformations could bring. While the book is focussed on the long history of regional policy in the UK, many of the issues discussed and the lessons learned from this history have a relevance for regional policy in other advanced economies.

The second reason the book and discussion is timely is the issue of regional policy chimes closely with this, in 2025, the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the Regional Studies Association. The RSA, first formed in the UK, but now truly global in scope, membership and influence, has long championed the study of regional and urban development and policy and the transfer of research and ideas to the policymaking community. The book is intended to contribute to the celebration of this aspect of the RSA’s leadership in the field of regional studies.

The Book and its Contributors

The Evolution of UK Regional Policy
Learning from the Past to Build Better Policies for the Future

 1 Introduction – A Century of UK Regional Policy
Professor Ron Martin FBA, Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge

2 The Governance of Regional Policy
Professor Andy Pike, Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development Studies, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University
Professor John Tomaney, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London

3 Hard Won Lessons from the Coalfields
Professor Steve Fothergill, Professor of Regional Development Studies, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University

4 Nations as Regions: the Scottish Case
Dr Valerie Wright, Lecturer in Modern Scottish History, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Professor Jim Tomlinson, Professor of Economic and Social History, Centre for Business History in Scotland, University of Glasgow

5 Labour Market Policies and the Regions
Professor Anne Green, Professor of Regional Economic Development, City-REDI, University of Birmingham

6 Regional Policy and the Promotion of Regional Innovation Systems
Professor Elvira Uyarra, Professor of Innovation Studies, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
Professor David Charles, Professor of Enterprise and Innovation, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University Newcastle.

7 The Recurring Attempt to Promote Clusters
Professor Peter Sunley, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton

8 A Missing Dimension: Regional Health Inequalities
Professor Clare Bambra, Professor of Public Health, Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University

9 The Urban Dimension of Regional Policy
Professor Peter Tyler, Emeritus Professor of Regional and Urban Economics, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge

10 The Role and Impact of EU Regional Funding
Professor John Bachtler, European Policy Research Centre, University of Strathclyde

11 Regional Policy and the Fostering of Local Enterprise
Professor Stephen Roper, Enterprise Research Centre, University of Warwick Business School

12  Privatisation – a Counter Regional Policy?
Professor Franziska Paul, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow

13 Alternative Policy Models for Local Economic Regeneration
Professor Matthew Thomson, Bartlett School, University College London

14 Towards a New Regionally-Based Political Economy
Professor Ron Martin FBA, Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge

Appendix: A Timeline of Regional Policy in the UK
Professor Peter Tyler, Emeritus Professor of Regional and Urban Economics, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge

Speaker: Patricia Daley, University of Oxford, UK

Chair: Zack Taylor, University of Western Ontario, Canada & Editor-in-Chief Territory, Politics, Governance

Session Organisers
Nikos Kapitsinis, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Esteban Fernandez Vazquez, University of Oviedo, Spain
Jeisson Cardenas Rubio, University of Warwick, UK

Macro drivers of change, including technological change, globalisation, and green transition, as well as extraordinary phenomena, such as the 2008 global economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, have restructured contemporary labour. The green transition transforms European labour markets, though its effects vary significantly across regions. This occurs alongside the digital transition that promotes more sustainable production methods, including automation and autonomy. Vulnerable groups—such as migrants, NEETs (young people not in education, employment, or training), and low-skilled workers—are especially at risk, as they are overrepresented in high-risk sectors and face greater challenges when seeking re-employment. Existing views on the process of job creation and destruction (JCD) have provided crucial insights for the transformation of labour markets in the current transitionary period, although focusing on the demand side, particularly related to skills needed. Moreover, the largest part of literatures on JCD and its effects focuses on the national level, particular sectors, predominantly approaching them from a quantitative perspective, thus relatively overlooking working conditions in the jobs created. Thus, there is room for improvement of our knowledge on regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition. In this session, we invite interventions that offer conceptual, methodological and empirical papers of regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition. Potential contributions may focus on:

• Conceptualisation of job creation and destruction and its geographically and socially uneven effects
• How transitions materialize as localised processes that occur in multi-actor, multi-scalar and multi-dimensional environments
• What sectors, jobs and skills are under the greatest risk of being affected by the green and digital transition and what this means for regional labour markets and regional development
• What are the socially and geographically uneven effects of job creation and destruction in context of the green and digital transition
• What policies should be recommended to address the geographically and socially uneven implications of regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition

Session Organisers
Anna Growe, Kassel University, Germany
Eva Purkarthofer, Aalto University, Finland

This special session marks the inaugural event of a newly established RSA Research Network (RSA Research Network on Bridging Governance Gaps in City-Regions: Addressing Land Take and City-Region Building Through Comparative Research) and offers a unique opportunity to engage in a broader collaborative agenda over the next three years.

While global policy goals like SDG 11 emphasize sustainable urban development, the most tangible indicator of these ambitions—land take—extends far beyond core cities. It is deeply embedded in the socio-economic dynamics of functionally integrated city-regions, reaching into their suburban and even peripheral areas. Consequently, the realization of “no net land take” as a planning and policy goal is not a challenge for individual municipalities but for city-regions as a whole. Yet, institutional fragmentation and conceptual limitations continue to weaken city-regions as coherent spaces for action. These mismatches between functional interdependencies, planning frameworks, and political geographies undermine sustainability ambitions and call for renewed academic attention.

This session initiates the thematic exploration of a research triangle:

1. Identifying city-regions as functionally integrated spaces
2. Governance and planning to increase sustainable land use strategies in city-regions
3. Perceptions of city-regions as political-planning spaces for action

Session 1 – Focus on Governance and Imaginaries
Planning with extended urbanization: Elements of a strategic spatial planning vocabulary
Nicholas A. Phelps (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Roger Keil (York University, Canada)
Paul Maginn, (University of Western Australia, Australia)
Tony Matthews (Griffith University, Australia)
David C. Valler (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

City-Regional Transformation Through Cohesion, Canvas, and Constructs: A Comparative Analysis of Inter-Municipal Adaptation Processes in Germany
Lukas Häfner (Kassel University, Germany)
Anna Growe (Kassel University, Germany)

‘Nine dragons rule the regions’: the challenge of integrated regional development in China
John Harrison (Loughborough University, UK
Dongxin Lian (South China University of Technology, China)
Hao Gu (Hunan University, China)
Shifu Wang (South China University of Technology, China)

From Flexibility to Formality: Rethinking Planning Governance for Managing Land Take in Polish City-Regions
Łukasz Mikuła (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

Between suburb and city: conceptualising interplaces’
Wander Demuynck (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Ben Derudder (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Evert Meijers (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Michiel Van Meeteren (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Session 2 – Focus on Net-Land-Take and Urban-Rural Interrelations

Regional planning for no net land take: Designing strategic planning processes in peri-urban Austria
Philip Krassnitzer (University of Vienna, Austria)

Urban-rural coordination in local planning: Comparing multi-level planning governance in the Brescia and Kassel city-regions
Theresia Morandell (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Rural transformation and multi-scalar livelihood strategies under city-regional environmental governance: Evidence from 43 villages in the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan region, China
Simin Yan (Kassel University, Germany)
Chen Chen (Tongji University, China)

No net loss policies for biodiversity and land: synergies and trade-offs
Bernadeta Baroková (Charles University, Czechia)

Greening at the Margins: Cross-Border Mangrove Governance in the Greater Bay Area
Yunjie Zhang (Harvard University, USA): yunjie_zhang@gsd.harvard.edu

Session Organisers
Oliver Harman,

As the green transition gathers pace—but also shows signs of faltering under political, economic, and institutional pressures—regions are being drawn into a complex set of transformations with uncertain outcomes. The rules of global production and trade are being rapidly rewritten. These vary from the EU Green Deal and carbon border adjustments to due diligence laws and voluntary carbon markets. Yet how these shifts are playing out through Green Global Value Chains (GGVCs), and with what consequences for regions, workers, and institutions, remains an urgent but underexplored question.

This special session, convened as part of the inaugural meeting of the RSA-funded Green Global Value Chains for Sustainable Regional Development (GGVC4SRD) Research Network, examines the critical roles that actors within GGVCs—particularly multinational lead firms, suppliers, and labourers—play in shaping sustainable development outcomes. It will explore how these actors respond to new green governance mechanisms, how their decisions shape patterns of regional upgrading or exclusion, and how subnational institutions can engage more effectively to promote just and place-sensitive transitions. At the same time, the session will consider how green global value chains can be aligned with the protection of natural capital—ensuring that expanded global linkages through trade and investment do not intensify pressures on local ecosystems or planetary boundaries.

We invite papers that analyse value chain dynamics from the bottom up and the top down: interrogating how local workers, producers, and governments are navigating changing demands; how lead firms are reconfiguring production and sourcing in response to climate imperatives; and how these interactions contribute to (or hinder) regional resilience and equity.

This session supports the aims of RSA’s Regional Futures Conference 2025 to foster collaborative, international, and policy-relevant scholarship. It contributes directly to Theme J: The role of regions in mitigating climate change, fostering sustainable development, and addressing environmental inequities.

Organised by Andy Pike, CURDS, Newcastle University, as part of the RSA Network MuniFisc led by Paul Gilbert, University of Sussex, and Calvin Chung, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

From austerity to bankruptcy: Tracing the impact of austerity on English local government
Hannah Hasenberger (Cambridge University), Hulya Dagdeviren (Hertfordshire University), and Mia Gray (Cambridge University)

This paper investigates the growing financial distress among local councils in England, linking it to the long-term impacts of austerity policies introduced since 2010. In recent years, a notable number of councils have issued Section 114 notices – formal declarations of an inability to balance budgets – highlighting a deepening crisis in local governance. While public commentary tends to attribute these to mismanagement or excessive financial risk-taking, this study argues that a central, overlooked driver is the sustained pressure of austerity. We build on literature in economic geography and heterodox economics to develop a conceptual framework arguing that austerity has severely constrained council revenues and put pressure on local spending. We provide empirical evidence in support of this framework using a two-stage approach to examine how cuts to central government funding and welfare reforms have contributed to widening funding gaps in local councils. First, we estimate a cross-sectional model to assess the relationship between current council funding gaps and exposure to different forms of austerity. We find that councils more heavily affected by welfare cuts face greater financial distress, though we do not observe a direct link with central government cuts to local budgets. Second, employing a difference-in-differences approach with panel data from 2007–2023, we explore the mechanisms through which these policies have shaped local finances. Our findings show that welfare reforms have simultaneously increased demand for essential services, such as homelessness support, and reduced local tax revenues. Moreover, central government funding cuts have led councils to reduce spending on key services, including social care, housing, planning, and transport. Although this strategy may have helped councils delay financial distress and bankruptcy, it raises questions about the long-term sustainability of such a strategy and its effects on local state capacity to navigate the intensifying climate and cost-of-living crises.

Local government and the ‘becoming of crisis’: advancing conjunctural analysis through process philosophy
Crispian Fuller (Cardiff University)

Urban local government has for some time been subject to permanent austerity in the UK, while at the same time experiencing growing public service demands through a cost of living crisis. The culmination of this is a growing concern that urban local governments are entering a period of sustained crisis, characterised by crises of ‘institutional Integration’, ‘rationality’ and ‘legitimacy’. The actual experiences of crisis episodes are subjective and socially constructed, resulting in a need to examine the extent to which people believe, experience and are affected by crisis. This paper consequently examines: To what extent are the politics and practices of urban crisis part of everyday taken for granted routines, or is there conscious awareness of crisis? A case study English city is examined, focusing on economic development and regeneration services. A further aim of the paper is to critically engage and advance recent conjunctural analysis, notably in relation to the ontological basis of the ‘events’ of conjunctural crisis, how reality is perceived and performed by human actors, and the role of space and time. The paper utilises the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as a valuable conceptual framework for advancing conjunctural analysis. Examining how agents perceive crisis, that events are constantly ‘becoming’, and how this takes place through ‘spacetime’ are all areas where process philosophy can contribute to conjunctural analysis. The paper finds that crisis is constantly becoming in the spacetime events of state personnel, but they are normalised as ‘everyday’ rather than exceptional events.

Claiming Social Housing Futures: Value, Risk and the Temporal Politics of Income-Strip Financing in London
Aretousa Bloom (LSE) and Joe Penny (UCL)

Asset managers, private equity firms, and other institutional investors have taken on a central role in the ownership and management of housing and infrastructure since the Global Financial Crisis. This article analyses how social housing in London has been transformed into a financial asset through an analysis of ‘income strips’, long-term contractual arrangements between institutional investors and local authorities. Building on critical urban scholarship, we draw on interdisciplinary insights from sociology, anthropology, and political economy to explore the moral politics, temporal logics, and forms of obligation embedded in these financial arrangements. We situate the rise of income strips within a longer arc of (local) state-market entanglements and argue that they exemplify a recursive and cyclical tendency in the local state’s experimentation with private finance. At the level of the contract and the asset, we show how value and risk are distributed and negotiated, and how income strips produce particular hierarchies of obligation and indebtedness. While institutional investment into social housing is often narrated as ‘common sense’, promising to fill the ‘housing gap’ and secure returns for workers’ retirement savings, we argue that income strips deepen long-standing logics of extraction and control, further foreclosing its potential as a site of collective possibility.

The paradox of persistence: crisis, taxation and English urban government
Professor Crispian Fuller (Cardiff University), Professor Mia Gray (Cambridge University), Theo Temple (Cardiff University) and Dr Alexander Baker (Cardiff University)

Urban local government in England has faced intensifying financial pressures since the 1980s, exacerbated by neoliberal reforms and a recent regime of permanent austerity. A key shift since 2010/11 has been the growing reliance on Council Tax, a regressive property-based tax embedded within 1991 residential property valuations, and now constituting over 50% of local authority budgets. Despite its structural flaws (e.g. regressive form of taxation), Council Tax persists as a cornerstone of local finance. This paper examines how and why does England’s Council Tax system persists despite crisis tendencies? Drawing on Jessop’s (2015) theory of crisis and Jaeggi’s (2018) concept of ‘forms of life’, the paper conceptualises crisis tendencies as conjunctural moments, produced through disparate spatially and historically constituted political, social and institutional processes. The analysis reveals how state actors mediate and normalise these crisis tendencies through superficial interventions, displacing systemic tensions onto local authorities and citizens. Ultimately, the endurance of Council Tax is sustained by ideological, institutional, and scalar practices by central and local government that inhibit transformative change. The paper concludes that this persistence reflects a broader pattern of ‘blocked social learning’ within the UK state, where crisis tendencies are tolerated and routinised rather than resolved.

Why is my local council going bust?
Andy Pike (Newcastle University) and Mia Gray (Cambridge University)

The financial plight of local councils in England hit the international headlines following a spate of ‘bankruptcies’ including Birmingham, Nottingham, and Woking since 2018. These local councils had effectively run out of money to provide essential local services including libraries, social care, and specialised education. What caused these financial meltdowns? How are national and local governments responding? What are the impacts on people and places? Explanations divide between blaming austerity cuts and the highly centralised and broken funding system or the local agency of failing leadership, management, and governance. Reproducing the fiscal crisis of the local state, national government policy forced local councils into making savings and generating new income sources with reduced capacity and failed to overhaul a funding system that intensifies their challenges and reduces their margins for error amidst greater risk. It is not local but national government statecraft that is failing properly to resource the vital and democratically accountable role of local councils for people and places.

Session Organisers
Nikos Ntounis, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Steve Millington, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Jenny Kanellopoulou, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Ian Harvey, Institute of Place Management, UK

This session explores how regional policies can more effectively negotiate and support place-based development, particularly addressing the under-explored strategic potential of hyper-local interventions. While regional and sub-regional thinking is well-established, it often overlooks the fine-grained governance structures needed to balance long-term strategic planning with immediate, localized action. The current interscalar disconnect reveals weaknesses in frameworks (such as the now defunct Local Economic Partnerships), highlighting an illusion of localism (Gherges et al., 2020) and a lack of embedded local knowledge. Bridging this gap requires engaged scholarship (Ntounis and Parker, 2017; Steadman and Millington, 2022) to identify appropriate tools and data methods that reveal the realities of place-based challenges.

The session will encompass the following issues, such as:

• Hyper-local data and its scarcity which hinder meaningful place activation
• Tactical place stewardship and its in animating place-specific actions that go beyond conventional urban regeneration and planning narratives
• Participatory branding, supported by micro-brands and inclusive communication tools that reflect the nuanced identities and visions of diverse stakeholders
• Reforms in governance structures— such as community budgeting, commons-led mechanisms, and participatory models must be recognized and supported legally beyond the limited scope of place management models such as Business Improvement Districts.

The session aims to establish the underpinnings for a new place governance paradigm: one that empowers places at all scales through extended devolution and place stewardship.

Session Organisers
Mariachiara Barzotto, University of Bath, UK
Jennifer Clark, Knowlton School, The Ohio State University, USA

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly recognised as a powerful driver of economic, social, and institutional transformation. Yet its development, deployment, and impact are profoundly uneven across regions, raising critical questions for regional studies and policy. This session explores how AI is reshaping regional futures—transforming work, deepening or mitigating spatial inequalities, and generating new forms of place-based governance and sustainable innovation.

This session convenes a diverse cohort of international scholars working across economic geography, sociology, regional studies, urban planning, and law, with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary engagement around three core themes: (1) work and the geographically uneven diffusion and impact of AI; (2) digital twins and regional planning; and (3) innovation and inclusive regional development.

The session is closely linked to the proposal for the Regional Studies Special Issue Section that examines how AI intersects with existing patterns of inequality and regional transformation. Papers will present empirical and conceptual work from different socio-spatial and policy settings, covering topics such as AI governance, urban digital twins, platform labour geographies, regional policy responses, and the integration of AI into urban and rural economies.

By foregrounding spatial and institutional dynamics, this session invites critical reflection on how regions can shape, rather than simply absorb, the impacts of AI. It will also create a platform for engaging with academics, policymakers and practitioners on designing inclusive, context-sensitive strategies for managing digital transformation. Through a mix of conceptual innovation and grounded case analysis, the session will contribute to building a more nuanced, spatially aware understanding of AI’s role in regional futures.

Speakers:
AI Adoption and (Regional) Inequality: A UK Perspective
Aida Garcia-Lazaro, University of Bath
Charles Larkin, University of Bath, Trinity College Dublin

Navigating the Future: Regional and Local Public Policy for Jobs in the AI Era
Wessel Vermeulen, OECD Trento Centre
Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp, OECD Trento Centre
Agustin Basauri, OECD Trento Centre

A Territorial Approach to Urban Digital Twins
Otello Palmini, Trinity College Dublin

Digital Intelligence for Circular Transitions: AI and Regional Social Reconfigurations in (De)Construction
Angeliki Drongiti, IMT Atlantique – Nantes
Sarah Ghaffari, IMT Atlantique

Innovation, Regulatory Sandboxes and AI (Working title)
Luciana Lazzeretti, University of Florence
Filippo Bagni, European Commission

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