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Review of Scotland's Cities - The Analysis

3.6 PROPERTY AND PLACE

3.6.1 Location Matters

Improved skills and better use of science are necessary but not in themselves sufficient to ensure future economic success for Scotland and the cities. We have already highlighted the importance of transport and accessibility. Academic research and market reports both emphasise the importance of property quality and availability, as well as the design and quality of more broadly defined business locations. Property and place can impact on whether or not firms choose to locate within the city-region as well as where they locate within it. Effective land and property markets are therefore critical in shaping successful places to work. Scottish Enterprise has broadly addressed such issues through its Competitive Place theme. In 1996 their baseline study of 827 businesses in Scotland found that suitable property was the most common influence on location choice. Indeed, for firms already in Scotland, the rank ordering of factors influencing location choices were property costs, property availability, road access and then skilled labour. The University of Glasgow survey for 2001, cited earlier, rated property costs and availability as important influences on competitiveness, along with macro-economic conditions, management quality available and (poor) infrastructure.

These property and infrastructure factors may be shaping the micro rather than regional choices of firms, but the net outcome of surveys suggests that firms were as much concerned about the quality, availability of and price of property as of labour. Given these observations, and indeed the business perspective on transport, it is arguable that property, location and access have been given less attention in city, and Scottish, economic development policy in recent years than was required. The factors that Begg, cited earlier, labelled as the 'business environment' (transport, facilities, premises, city quality) continue to be seen as important by Scottish Enterprise.

There are difficulties in identifying precisely public sector expenditures on property and environment over the last decade, as programme definitions and headings have changed. However, it appears direct spending fell towards the end of the 1990's. This fall in spending can be attributed to a number of factors including a changing approach to working with the private sector property market. However, other agents in city development have come to see 'property' as being lower on Enterprise agendas and in consequence they perceive funding and policy gaps in city-region economic regeneration, though this perception may now be less fair than at the end of the 1990's.

This difficulty is exacerbated because the private sector of the property development, financing and management sectors have had considerable difficulty in interfacing effectively with the Executive. In general, economic policy thinking for Scotland has paid less attention to the structure, stability and effectiveness of the property sector, either at Scottish or city-region levels, than the labour market. The Framework for Economic Development in Scotland did recognise the issues of the geographic structure of the economy and 'A Smart, Successful Scotland' did emphasise the importance of reducing inter-area differences in economic performance. But it is recent Executive work on strategic planning and this document on cities which has built on earlier thinking to relate labour and land issues. Too often the main interaction between the property sector and the Executive is via planning challenges. This marginalisation of the sector is unfortunate in that ideas for city change, of course often self interested, abound in the sector, as does much tacit knowledge about how Scottish cities are changing. There is space for a much more constructive dialogue in the future. The issue of better future organisation of policy is discussed in the concluding paragraphs of this section. The prime purposes of this section are to identify key patterns of the property market, whether some of the outcomes are problematic and what are the major policy challenges the Executive faces.

3.6.2 Developing Patterns

City-region labour markets are not a single market but a connected mosaic of sectors defined by geography and occupational sectors. City-region property markets equally comprise a multiplicity of sub-markets. Clearly location is important in whether one site is a substitute for or competitive with another, and of course land is differentiated by its quality/contamination and planning status whilst existing property is defined by size and broad use class, such as retailing, industrial, offices and residential. What matters for city economic development is that the systems that plan, finance, build, sell, manage and renew property in our cities are responsive to the changing demands emerging from corporate and consumer spending patterns. Slow and limited response is likely to retard economic development with rising property prices. Truly competitive cities require, however, that the property development sector has not just an efficient response capacity (its flexibility) but also the ability to envision how to use places and locations in competitive ways (its creativity).

Although there has been a recent development, at the instigation of Scottish Enterprise, of better, policy-relevant databases regarding land and property in Scottish cities, much of what is known is still only available at the Scottish level. Over the decade to 2001 the Investment Property Database (IPD) shows that the key features of the Scottish property market, which is primarily located in the city-regions, were that:

• Scottish retail outlets had produced annual returns above the UK (at 12% versus 11%), with more stable retail growth over the decade;
• Scotland, in 2000, was one of the few UK regions where institutional investors were increasing the value of their investment in retail, continuing an increase in the share of UK retailing portfolios held in Scotland since 1994 (to 9% of the UK total);
• Office rental values declined in Scotland from 1990 to 1996 and then recovered through 2000, largely reflecting the dynamism of the financial sector in the cities;
• Rental growth, for offices, was led by Lothian until 1999 and then Strathclyde;
• Institutional investors appear to have treated Scotland similarly to an English growth region over the decade;
• In the industrial rentals sector (with manufacturing a minority activity and largely comprising distribution/wholesale etc.), rental growth was strong and showed little variation across the city-regions; and
• Industrial sector returns in Scotland have been both high and stable, and over the decade the total return of 14% averaged some 2% above the UK. However, unlike offices and retailing, the share of industrial property within institutional investors' portfolios remained steady after 1994.

The Scottish Enterprise funded SPM Report provides more detailed geographic analysis but only for more recent years. ²⁵ In 2000-2001 they reported significant levels of industrial property market activity in all of the cities; in Glasgow they reported a sharp increase in the take-up of smaller, modern spaces suitable for telecomms and high-tech uses and they cite even stronger activity and pressures in Edinburgh, especially near the next generation of cabling routes. Edinburgh pressures were reported as driving demand out into the Lothians and into Fife. Aberdeen was recovering from the 1990's oil slowdown and in Dundee there was significant take-up from local firms looking for larger properties.

In other sectors they note significant signs of pressure in three of the four largest cities, with more local issues in all of them. There was a general shortage of office accommodation in Edinburgh, especially of larger, open plan and city centre spaces. Glasgow had less obvious general shortages but a shortage of grade 'A' office space with a larger foot-plate. Interestingly agents reported that investors were reluctant to fund major new investments because of the high levels of vacant land in the city, but they are attracted by relatively high yields on existing products. In Aberdeen there was a shortage of modern, flexible office space. In Dundee there is an apparent over-supply of larger non-central offices, but a shortage of smaller city centre suites. Clearly property market outcomes and issues vary markedly from place to place (and they also shift over time as markets respond). Prime office rental costs, per sq. foot in 2001, were 30 in Edinburgh, 23 in Glasgow and 17 in Aberdeen. Yields, for investors, appear to be broadly similar across the different cities.

3.6.3 Problems and Potentials

Are these property outcomes adequate to support a smart, successful Scotland? The ESRC study of Glasgow and Edinburgh indicates quite high satisfaction levels with business space. Property costs, when London and Paris are taken out of the analysis, across north European cities are rather similar. Weatherall, Green and Smith report in 2000 that Edinburgh lay second behind Stockholm and Glasgow lay fifth, behind Amsterdam and Dublin but ahead of Brussels and Copenhagen. So whilst there is little empirical Scottish support for the argument that London-based market failures disadvantage regional centres within the UK, a number of concerns emerge from this analysis. Our major cities are not low cost property locations vis-à-vis major European competitors and we should understand better why this is the case.

There are persistent shortages that cause firms concern and they differ across our cities; Aberdeen cites a shortage of business parks; Glasgow reports excess demand on developed brownfield sites and, in conjunction with others, a need for customised and high tech spaces. In Aberdeen and Edinburgh there is a perception that the amount of land zoned for development is too restrictive and limits development and in all there is a perception that the accessibility of brownfield and greenfield sites to public transport is neglected in decision taking. The observed rental differences between East and West Central Scotland, allied to Gibb's ²⁶ argument that rental growth rates in Glasgow have exceeded Edinburgh over the period since 1972 (expected rental growth is the key trigger to development activity), should have induced more east to west adjustment. The reported developers' fear that any investment they might make would be undermined by more activity on the abundance of vacant sites, could constitute a significant market failure in the regeneration of Glasgow. In all of the cities there was a concern that some central city areas required better services and environmental improvement to raise their attractiveness.

Gibb's review of the property factors in city competitiveness for the ESRC Cities Programme identified two general issues about how we think about property policy. First, regardless of whether brownfield or greenfield development is taking place, he argues that there should be a much better integrated approach to providing places to work. Property provision, if the site is to attract business, needs to be accompanied with modern infrastructure (often electronic infrastructure), appropriate roads and public transport access (including a much greater willingness to create new rail stations near to major new zones), and to provide and maintain good landscaping. Secondly, if the emphasis for the future is upon economic flexibility then thought needs to be given to how our property systems could be more flexible. For the future, firms need more flexible properties, more flexible leases, intelligent buildings, better ICT etc. There is an argument that too much of our city centre office space in our key cities is constrained by history, not just in Edinburgh's New Town but in the small office footplates induced by the grid-iron streets of central Glasgow.

3.6.4 Policy Concerns and Key Challenges

The Executive, in recent statements about planning policy, has made clear that it is not enough to have exciting visions and extensive plans, for either statutory or non-statutory plans. It is also imperative to have an action plan: setting out targets, key dates, resources needs and key actions. In that approach, both to statutory structure plans or specific project masterplans, delivery will depend on the demands, beliefs, resources and competencies of the development industry. A delivery oriented approach in planning will require us to have a new and more detailed sense about the city-region property development sector, and arguably a property forum could contribute insight to local community and city-region structure planning. But it will also require the Executive to examine its conception of the roles of and priorities for the property sectors in our city-regions. It will be important to lay to rest Gibb's criticism that 'Property policy has had a lower priority in the past, policies seem incoherent and disconnected from economic development policies and greater clarity is needed in national/regional planning signals'.

Within the established frameworks of planning policies, the essential thrust of 'property policy' is that markets should lead change and that policy action should be to reduce or remove market failures, largely induced by poor information and perceived risks. In that respect key dimensions of policy should be to deliver the remediation of contaminated land, to provide significant amounts of local market information and to provide types of property or developments in locations where latent demands exist, but market developers do not provide (because of poor information).

However this is a limited view of policy. Where multiple users of land exist, and indeed multiple owners, there may be an uncertainty about actions which leads to either no development or sub-optimal change. In this context it is important for the Executive or other agencies, or local government or communities to provide the impetus to establish a new vision for land and property, for places, and often to provide the co-ordination frameworks to stimulate development. These issues, regarding land, property and regeneration more generally, are discussed in Chapter 8 which discusses governance and vehicles for action.

The key policies which affect the development of land and property in our cities stem from different levels of government (EU structure funds and state aid policy, UK tax policies, Executive spending and regeneration programmes, local authority spending etc.). In recent years the potential for tax reliefs has increased though it is arguable that local policy within Scotland has failed to develop appropriate vehicles to depend less on Enterprise spending and benefit more from UK wide tax reliefs. The 2001 Budget unleashed a potential for 1 billion of tax expenditures for 'inner city areas' over the period to 2004/5. In broad terms, Scotland could expect around 100 million of benefit. There is a case for examination of how these measures are impacting Scotland, indeed whether the general set of property support measures is achieving objectives effectively.

Gibb and others ²⁷ have posed critical questions about the efficacy of this fiscal effort in our cities. He asks whether much of the aid is simply capitalised into land or rundown property prices. He stresses that local policy projects, or even private projects, usually have to access multiple funding sources and different tax schemes and this involves overcoming complex bureaucratic hurdles. He suggests that something simpler is needed. Business wants fewer bodies and clearer leadership. He also argues that much of the aid is not to redress market failures but simply to defray higher costs that arise in dealing with bureaucratic decision lags and to deliver higher subsidy to the user.

A range of policy and property agents in the course of the Review put these points to us. We believe that they are valid questions but we are not convinced that the evidence currently exists in any systematic or coherent form to answer the questions posed. This must change and we must be able to explicate and defend the property supporting policies which do exist, for the sums involved are considerable. We also need to know much more about the attitudes and aspirations of the property sector within our cities and to understand the importance of local expertise and interest.

This section has, so far, highlighted three main challenges for the Executive in relation to the functioning of property markets in our cities:

• How to build on recent developments in planning and this review and to find a new forum for discussion with the property sector
• How to set local property initiatives and policies in the appropriate planning framework and to encourage effective delivery vehicles (see below)
• To examine the value, impact and organisation of the wide range of property subsidies now available to developers

Before concluding this discussion it is important to consider how to deal more effectively with vacant and derelict land in the city-regions. The issue of improving services and environments for business within selected districts of our cities is discussed in Chapter 5.

3.6.5 Vacant and Derelict Land

The processes of urban change, and regeneration, largely revolve around the effective functioning of labour, property and land markets. The outcomes of these processes do have social and environmental justice implications that raise policy questions, but the actual market processes themselves may involve market failures, spillovers and externalities which may require policy intervention. It is important to separate these economic efficiency and social justice questions, though this has rarely been done in debating brownfield land issues in Scotland.

Urban change often involves changes in land use. That change process will usually involve some degree of market churning in which there is an ever changing, small stock of vacant land. The concern in this paper is with land that remains unused in the longer term. Where a city is in decline then it is probable that some land previously used for some intensive land use purpose, such as retailing or even residential provision, may revert to unused space. In that instance unused land may reflect the operation of an efficient market and as long as the unused land does not have adverse effects on neighbours and other urban residents, then it does not constitute a policy problem. The policy cases arise when:

• the vacant land has visual or environmental characteristics or attracts informal uses (dumping, petty crime, vandalism, drugs abuse) which have negative effects on neighbours, imposing on them what have been labelled environmental injustices
• the vacant land persists whilst there are shortages of generally similar land within the city, implying some market failure (for instance potential developers have extreme uncertainties about the costs of remediation and/or about the likelihood of attracting users for property developed). Vacant land acts as a deterrent to property development generally within the urban area
• The vacant land in the city persists whilst greenfield development occurs. This compromises the benefits of a compact city, incurring environmental losses, increased commuting and travel costs.

There are then, complex economic, social and environmental arguments involved. NPPGs, and a variety of Scottish Executive strategies have largely accepted the compact city view and stress the importance and desirability of redeveloping 'brownfield' sites. This approach is intended to ensure not only an adequate supply of appropriate land for development, but also to contribute to sustainability targets, whilst minimising the negative impact of abandoned sites.

There is, unsurprisingly, brownfield land in all of Scotland's Unitary Authorities. Within the cities, the amount of brownfield land in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Inverness is limited enough to constitute a reasonable rate of 'churn'. However, Dundee and especially Glasgow (and the adjacent area of North Lanarkshire) have extensive areas of brownfield land. The intensity of the problem is an issue in both of the cities. 8% ²⁸ and 4.2% ²⁹ of the land area in Glasgow and Dundee respectively is either vacant or derelict - the first and second highest concentrations of any Scottish Unitary - however it is scale of the problem in Glasgow which constitutes the most demanding challenge. Although Dundee contributes just 3% of the total Scottish brownfield stock, Glasgow accounts for 13%. Only North Lanarkshire, with 18%, contributes more significantly to the national scale of the problem.

The nature of the problem in Glasgow is also qualitatively more compelling. Whilst some of the land classified as vacant in Dundee is actually clean open space (in active recreational use), both levels of contamination and visual blight are more significant in Glasgow. Brownfield land is not only apparent close to the city centre, detracting from the increasingly vibrant core, but spreads along the river and throughout some of the most deprived residential neighbourhoods. Although there has been a recent fall in the stock of vacant land in the city, the intended demolition of up to a further 15,000 council houses over the next decade is likely to both raise and disperse this total.

During the Review, it was acknowledged that there was a need to address the brownfield land issue in both cities. There is a range of evidence, some of it rather patchy, which confirms the policy arguments for intervention:

• There is clear and longstanding evidence that vacant and derelict land is close to poorer households and that they do see it as a major negative influence on their wellbeing, constituting an environmental injustice
• There is evidence that more affluent households locate elsewhere to avoid derelict land and property
• There is evidence that some of the households who leave the city for the suburbs would locate within the city, indeed on former brownfield sites, if new developments were large enough to constitute neighbourhoods with good schooling and a sense of security (a market failure in residential provision, frustrating compact city objectives)
• There is clear market evidence that developers fear the risks of high costs of decontamination. As discussed above, recent survey evidence from the ESRC cities research also suggests that the plenitude of vacant sites simply provoke concern amongst developers that profits will be threatened by future similar developments on the many alternative nearby sites
• A number of evaluation studies in the city, from the GEAR assessment onwards, have revealed that small and medium sized businesses place great value on the modern property and better, more secure environments produced by brownfield redevelopment; recent evidence is that the end-user demand for such sites has out-stripped the developer's propensity for risk in renewal.

3.6.6 Recent Approaches in Glasgow

In the past the reclamation and regeneration of vacant/derelict land has been a key responsibility of the City Council and the Enterprise Network. Communities Scotland has extensive powers to deal in and improve land but they have never been used. Although recent initiatives to encourage redevelopment have been partially successful, there is concern about whether progress can be sustained, as the least constrained sites have been redeveloped first. ³⁰ More importantly, these efforts have had limited impact on the sheer scale of the problem. There are currently 1,402 hectares of brownfield land in Glasgow. This figure reflects a reduction of just 129 hectares over the last 6 years. Over the period, this equates to a decrease at roughly the same rate as the reduction in Scotland as a whole, but given the intensity and the scale of the problem in Glasgow, it is nowhere near fast enough. Over the 6 year period, between 117 and 134 hectares were brought back into use each year. The reduced amount of total vacant and derelict land has however been achieved, not by bringing sites back into use, but the slowing rate at which new sites were added to the survey. In 2000 and 2001, only 33 and 36 hectares were added respectively, compared to an average of 100 hectares between 1996 and 1999.

The 'stock' of vacant and derelict land therefore remains a significant problem. Of particular concern is the high volume of sites which have remained vacant or derelict for considerable periods of time. Although the scale of brownfield land in Glasgow arguably requires sustained effort over a 10 year period, attempts to tackle the issue have been episodic at best. Levels of GDC/LEC funding have varied with shifting priorities over the years. Nevertheless, there was a significant reduction in the amount of vacant and derelict land in Scotland between 1993 and 2001 - a fall from 15,400 to 10,607 hectares - and it can be argued that the most significant issue is the high concentration of vacant and derelict land in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire.

Funding for 'greening' initiatives is also an issue. The supply of brownfield land far exceeds anticipated demand in the foreseeable future. The Structure Plan and Local Plan identify the Green Network where the treatment of such land is a priority. However, although it is widely accepted that 'greened sites' contribute to environmental justice targets and promote investment on adjacent sites, greening has been given reduced priority in recent years in terms of LEC spending priorities. This has severely impacted the amount of land improved over the period (Chart 3.13). Since 1996/97, data has been collected on the amount of land suitable for greening compared to actual up-take. This figure has typically been less than 5%. ³¹ Currently, total funding for greening is around 10% of funds devoted to greening at the height of GEAR and other initiatives in the early 1980's.

If funding is a key issue, so is the establishment of a shared vision. It was argued by those involved that there has been no strategic approach to land renewal within Glasgow over the last decade, at least. The LEC brownfield sites programme, though successful in its own terms, was essentially opportunistic - and a more integrated approach would have been beneficial, as well as more attention to the 'where' issue in local economic development. There have been major mismatches between intended and actual uses. The proportion developed for home ownership, supported by GRO grants, has been significantly higher than planned for.

Although there is a well regarded Structure Plan and Development Plan for Glasgow and Clyde Valley, there has been no mechanism to fit land renewal projects in Glasgow into the structure plan nor to approach them in master-planning fashion. Crown Street has, until now, been the exception rather than the rule in delivery, though the city council have now espoused a wider use of master-planning. Further consideration could be given to how an agreed land renewal strategy, involving all of the key actors effectively, will be developed and then delivered. Not least of the issues involved will be how wider city developments will be related to proposals for regeneration of the Clyde corridor, where a substantial share of vacant land in the city lies. At the time of writing more work is required to put in place a comprehensive development strategy.

Although Glasgow constitutes the most significant challenge, it also presents a significant opportunity. Increasing employment and growing business sectors have increased the demand for land for commercial development. Concurrently, increasing household numbers and a growing appetite for city-centre living have also created demand for residential development. The availability of land may therefore potentially contribute not only to economic growth, but the creation of socially mixed residential areas, which provide a variety of housing type and tenure, attracting higher earners and families back into the city. Such development would also contribute to sustainability targets, for example, by reducing commuting distances etc. The issue for the Executive in Glasgow, and by implication Dundee, is not whether or not to take action but what to do. In the 2002 Scottish Budget, the Executive acknowledged the importance of this challenge by committing an additional 20 million to tackling vacant and derelict land over the next three years. This represents an important opportunity, not least because the additional funding is very much needed, but also because it provides a fresh chance to galvanise the attention and efforts of the agencies and other players involved in land renewal.

The arguments and evidence presented above are not new but have been recognised for almost a decade. And for more than a decade there have been central government policy mechanisms and levers to deal with this issue, particularly the land renewal and environmental programmes of Scottish Enterprise. But a decade on this problem is no better, there is a widespread view that there is an under-provision of commercial space whilst subsidised residential development plays an end role much greater than often intended and, at the same time, there has been little sign of the renaissance of family housing in the city. The additional 20 million is an important first step.

3.7 CITIES WORKING BETTER: ISSUES OF BALANCE

There are important new sectoral and geographic patterns emerging in Scotland's economy and if the nation is to maximise growth and raise productivity policies, it will have to evolve to a new balance. This chapter has identified how the damaging legacy of the past is receding in our cities with new products, processes and policies emerging. However there are places within our cities, especially Glasgow and Dundee, where renewed efforts have to be made to transform the problems of unused stocks of land and labour into new potentials that will expand opportunities. There is already much evidence in Scotland's cities that such transformational change is not just a possibility, but for many already a reality.

Recent national economic policies have created a context for cities, and other places, to thrive. The Scottish institutional framework for city economic development, which shows significant differences from the approach in England emerging under the Regional Development Authorities (RDAs), is strong in linking training, and Higher and Further Education to local economic development. Property and land roles may require some revision. However the really important shift of emphasis will be for the framework of thinking for city economic policy to expand beyond the current emphasis on training for the unemployed and new firm formation. Whilst training will continue to be important, it is more likely to be in the context of vacancies and worker shortages and it will be only part of a wider human capital strategy that will involve retaining more graduates and attracting more skilled, mobile human capital as well as providing opportunities for new Scots at all skill levels. Cities will be important in these attraction and education and training processes, and they will have key roles in new science and innovation. But these human capital measures will have to be set in a better informed approach to the modern role of 'land' in economic development. Sites, services, accessibility, transport and other infrastructure are all part of the 'land' offer that makes cities more or less attractive. A more coherent approach in these matters, aligned to a clear economic component in national and city-region spatial planning, could generate a more elastic supply of appropriate property and raise productivity.

Other balances could change. There is a case for more private engagement in the development of the economic vision for each of our cities; public bureaucracies still dominate the discussion. There needs to be a shift from reactive to creative policies for cities. However the most obvious balance issues will revolve around the questions of spatial imbalances that are set to change over the decade ahead. In very general terms we believe that a new landscapes of gaps in wellbeing is becoming apparent. It is well recognised now that East Scotland is growing faster than the West. This review makes it clear that city cores are now doing much better than in the past, though acute inheritance issues cannot be ignored, and that they have positive economic prospects for the decade ahead. A number of spatial balance issues emerge from these two trends. Much greater thought needs to be given to the national and regional accessibility problems and possibilities of Aberdeen and Dundee (and also Inverness) if future prosperity and employment are to be maintained there; Dundee is experiencing difficulties and Aberdeen needs to adjust whilst it is still prosperous.

Some calls have been made to end economic development assistance in Edinburgh and the Lothians and shift resources to the West. Before acting on such claims the Executive has to take a longer and harder look at the costs and benefits of different spatial development patterns. Assistance in the East may be required to deal with the costs of growth, or the problems of success; and this may be growth or success which would, or could occur elsewhere in Scotland. Equally it would be naive to see Glasgow simply as a valve for overheating from the East; it is a large and expanding economy in its own right.

There will have to continue to be a considered judgement on the balance of support between Glasgow and Edinburgh and they will inevitably compete as places for particular firms and activities; however much more explicit consideration needs to be made about when it is best to view Central-Scotland, or indeed an urban functional triangle that runs from Aberdeen to Glasgow and to Newcastle, as the relevant market or planning area. This issue runs through much uncertainty about innovation systems, air routes and the like, and could be better resolved. ^32,33

Cities have been recovering because they have distinctive assets that meet modern requirements of business, especially service industries. Smaller, older towns that are losing their industrial economic bases have less clear futures. A decade from now, if present trends continue, Glasgow will (at least proportionately) no longer be Scotland's great urban problem; rather it will be the smaller towns of the west. From the Clyde, out through East Ayrshire, down into the south-west and across to Argyll there is a wide arc of towns that will be losing some of their economic base, but will be unable to compete with thriving service growth at the core of the city-region. We need a new vision for towns, set in the context of their city-region to deal with these emergent issues. It is always difficult to predict precise patterns of spatial change. However it is clear that the Executive will have to continue to think about how cityness affects national economic potential and to address a shifting pattern of gaps in wellbeing. For we can say with certainty there will be gaps.

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