The Scottish Government

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Competitive Scottish Cities?
Placing Scotland's cities in the UK and European context

A Well-Educated Workforce?

3.14 Figure 3.7 shows the proportion of the working age population qualified to degree level or above. The Scottish cities perform well here, in line with many of the German cities. And they are ahead of all the English Core Cities except Bristol. However, qualification levels remain highest in the Scandinavian countries.

Figure 3.7: Percentage of working age population with 3rd level education 2001

Source: Eurostat: Region: Statistical Yearbook 2003

How Well Connected?

3.15 Connectivity has been measured in two ways: airport passenger numbers and Internet bandwidth connections. Figure 29 and table 16 show the airport data and a familiar pattern emerges. Among the European Competitive Cities Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Milan perform well. When ranked by passenger numbers Manchester is the best performing English Core City. Glasgow and Edinburgh feature in the European top 50, at 39 and 43 respectively. Passenger numbers at Glasgow increased by 4.2% between 2002 and 2003, during the same period passenger numbers at Edinburgh were up 7.9%.

Figure 3.8: Terminal passenger numbers 2003

Note: Where more than one airport serves a city the data has been combined to give an overall figure
Source: Airports Council International 2002. Civil Aviation Authority

Table 3.3: Terminal passenger numbers at Europe's 50 leading airports 2002

Source: Airports Council International 2003

3.16 Total passenger figures only tell part of the tale, however. Ideally it would useful to distinguish between tourist and business travellers; unfortunately this data is not available. However it is possible to use passenger data for scheduled and charter flights and the final destination of scheduled passengers. The following tables do not change the bigger picture presented above, but they add light and shade to it. Hub and spoke airports such as Frankfurt and Amsterdam have a high proportion of scheduled passengers; these airports are home to national carriers which operate a high proportion of flights across domestic and European borders. Some of the smaller airports also have a high proportion of scheduled passengers; these are dominated by scheduled services run by the low-cost flight operators, and these services are predominately to domestic or EU destinations.

Table 3.4: Proportion of passengers travelling on scheduled services 2003

Source: Airports Council International 2003

Table 3.5: Final destinations of air passengers 2003

Source: Airports Council International 2003

3.17 Table 3.6 shows the pattern of Internet bandwidth. The global cities of London, Paris and New York are best connected. Five of the sample continental cities appear in the top ten, but none of the Scottish or English Core Cities.

Table 3.6: Top 10 International Internet cities for Europe 2002

Figures represent Internet bandwidth connected to European locations across international borders from Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas or equivalents including cities outside Europe
Source: TeleGeography Inc.

Demographic Trends

3.18 Views vary about the impact of sheer population size upon economic performance. It is clearly possible for medium and smaller sized cities to be economically successful. But there are reasons why large complex cities have economic advantages. Figure 3.9 shows the population of the sample cities. These are for cities defined by their local authority boundary rather than the wider conurbation or the functional urban region. But they demonstrate that many of the more successful cities are rather larger than UK cities. With the exception of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Scottish cities are relatively small. If we expanded the boundaries to take in conurbation populations the comparative advantage of many continental cities would still be evident.

Figure 3.9: Residential population 2001

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