Category Archives: Regeneration, Renewal And Resilience
‘How Do They Do It?’ – A Way To Broaden Horizons?
Liverpool’s physical location and economic situation make it difficult for some local people to know much about what’s happening elsewhere. This is turn results in difficulties in determining locally which new ideas for the city are good, and which less so. The proposed ‘How Do They Do It?’ programme could help here… but only if those who are able to do so actively support the idea.
There was a letter in the Liverpool Daily Post of 10 February, in which local commentator John Elcock writes of his concern that we in Liverpool should not reject everything that’s new in the city. He refers to his sadness about the ‘growing culture of parochialism in a city that used to trade ideas with the world.’
John’s letter is specifically about proposed new architectural designs in Liverpool; but I fear his remarks might also apply to other parts of our cultural and civic life.
Liverpool pride
I came to live in Liverpool 35 years ago this week, having never before had the opportunity to visit this city. There was plenty to be proud of for Liverpool’s citizens – its University, its Royal Orchestra, its fine Cathedrals, Theatres and Museums, its wonderful architecture; and of course the conviction of those who lived here that there could never be a better place to be.
Pride in one’s city is a fine thing, and fundamentally necessary for well-being and future success. But, unexamined, it can also be an obstacle to progress. Despite the ravages of the 1980s, we still have our flagship centres of learning and culture and our wonderful buildings; but somehow their backdrop is now more self-defensive, more openly unaccommodating of new ideas and of the give-and-take of modern life.
And Liverpool parochialism?
Many people in Liverpool do not even know about the lives of their neighbours at the other end of their own city, let alone those down the road in Manchester, Birmingham, London or perhaps further afield. Perhaps in previous times this knowledge was less essential; but now, when our young people do know about the opportunities elsewhere, many decide to leave Liverpool for pastures new.
This is a serious issue of opportunity and of cost. It is a legacy of comfort zone living, being unable to move beyond one’s own boundaries because of lack of money, lack of knowledge of what to do or where to go to find out new things, small opportunity to see why comparing our own and others’ experience might be useful. The cost of such tight horizons is sometimes difficulty, as John Elcock suggests, in being able to judge which new ideas for Liverpool are ‘right’, and which ‘wrong’.
Opportunities to compare and learn
I don’t write these observations to criticise, but rather to suggest a new opportunity and a way forward. For several years there have been proposals for a civic and educational programme based in Liverpool and called ‘How Do They Do It?’.
The idea would be to support small groups of young and older people together, as they visit other places, as guests of that town or city, to see what has been achieved (public service, enterprise, architecture and culture, whatever…) and how it was done. This would then be reported back in whatever way to our own people in Liverpool. Likewise, citizens of other places could – and indeed through the European Capital of Culture programme will – come as our guests to see what we in Liverpool do exceptionally well, and to report it back to their own neighbours and fellow townspeople.
Travel these days is easy, few towns and cities, whether in Britain or in continental Europe, cannot find a way to welcome guests who come in goodwill to learn together. Which businesses, schools and colleges, residents associations, religious organisations, individuals or whoever, can join us in making this ambition to share experience, with all the benefits it would bring to ourselves and others, a reality?
The IPR Of Community Enterprise
Intellectual property rights seem only to apply to business ideas. What would be effect of a similar way of ensuring encouragement for community-engendered ideas?
Intellectual Property Rights are the Big Thing these days. Almost everyone in business and commerce who has a new idea now realises that they would be best protecting it and making sure it’s understood to be theirs. After all, who knows what riches an idea might lead to?
But how does this fit with social enterprise? Or with capacity building in the community? How are people who ‘lead’ commuities going to benefit from their ideas, when these are by their very nature communally ‘owned’ once they gain credence?
What sort of reward or encouragement is there for individuals in communities to put heart and soul into bringing constructive ideas forward, when, because there is no ‘protection’ for these ideas, they will simply end up being part of the paid employment tasks of officialdom?
Can we ‘protect’ bottom-up ideas?
At present I’m not sure what the answer to this question is. I pose it simply to see what others may think. But I’m pretty sure it’s an important aspect of developing a genuinely ‘bottom up’ stakehold in our communities and society at large.
What, I wonder, is the mechanism which would allow effective ‘top down’ support for social and community enterprise and engagement, without it becoming the ‘property’ of the officials and bureaucrats who so often dominate the subsequent development of good community-based ideas? How can we encourage people in their own communities to believe that good ideas really are worth having?
Human Geographers Take The Lead In Social Policy
Human geographers have offered many insights into equality and the effects of socio-economic policy in recent years, but social processes require a different research perspective to understand fully what is happening. In the 1950s and 60s sociologists such as Willmott and Young told us about the dynamics of communities, for instance, in the East End of London; and this perspective is now beginning once more to illuminate these changes and their challenges. There is nonetheless still little general understanding of how difficult it is to ‘get things right’ in such complex settings.
Professor Danny Dorling is, in the words of Mary O’Hara (The Guardian, 8 February 2006), ‘the man who maps the social reality behind raw data’. His work has, we are told, demonstrated that where a person is born remains the primary determinant of their status, health and wealth in later life.
This is important work, though hardly a new finding. What marks it out is the directness of the communication of these critical facts of life, of, again in Mary O’Hara’s words, ‘publicising important findings beyond the pages of academic journals…. of humanising abstract facts’.
Processing data, explaining process
For Danny Dorling, the ‘key thing’ if we want to make the world a better place is that we ‘recognise what’s happening’. He’s been very effective in helping policy makers and politicians to do this, one way or another. And his latest project is an even bigger picture: www.worldmapper.org seeks to show what’s up across the whole of the world.
This is excellent stuff. Nobody could deny that the facts and figures are critical … and here, along with some other geographers such as those at the Local Futures Group, Professor Dorling serves us well. The relentless pursuit of empirical data by which to examine the outcomes of political and other developments is essential to learning how to do it better.
But there is another aspect to all this. We have considered before in this weblog the work of Willmott and Young, begun almost a half-century ago in the East End of London.
During the Thatcher years of the Conservative Government (1980s especially) there was little appetite for studying social process. Margaret Thatcher may or may not have actually pronounced that ‘There is no such thing as society’, but few failed to grasp the idea that looking at social issues like equality was not the thing to do. This had severe effects on social science in the UK, – one result of which, it could be argued, is that geography had to step in where sociologists then feared to tread.
The ‘facts’ can take us to the actions
There has been for some while a shortage of social statisticians in the UK, and this is recognised to be a continuing problem. Nonetheless, the analysis of social trends is, as specialists in all disciplines would readily acknowledge, an issue to be addressed from many different persepctives.
In this sense, it is especially interesting that the very same edition of The Guardian which carries the article about Professor Dorling also carries one about a current follow-up to the original Willmott and Young studies in the East End of London. Professor Geoff Dench and Kate Gavron, both Fellows of the Young Foundation, have produced a book co-authored by the late (Lord) Michael Young entitled The New East End – Kinship, Race and Conflict.
Geoff Dench and Kate Gavron discuss in their Guardian article the unanticipated consequences of ‘well intentioned welfare policy’. They suggest, for instance, that supporting newcomers (in this case, from the Bangladeshi community) who experience racial discrimination must go hand in hand with addressing the exclusion and hostility faced by poor white communities. If we do not examine how well-intentioned policies apply across the board we will, they argue with some reason, find that things don’t work out as we’d all like.
Multi-disciplinary is best
At some level it feels as though the wheel has now turned full circle. There are many social and policy researchers who strive to examine and support the extension of ‘what works’ (see e.g. the ODPM and Civil Service positions on diversity and disadvantage). The more that human geographers, social scientists, economists and others can collaborate on all this, the more hope there is that we can get it right.
But in the meantime it might be helpful just occasionally if certain parts of our society – for such it is – recognised that the aims of social cohesion, sustainability and the rest are at best challeging and at worst almost unachievable in our imperfect world.
Why can’t we think of the journey as one where inevitably mistakes will be made, and where it’s OK for policy makers and politicians to change tack when the evidence that we need to do so is compelling? Change is fundamental to progress, as much in social policy as anywhere else.
‘Permission’ for decision-makers to listen, learn and act
Giving politicians ‘permission’ to listen and learn is essential in the drive to change the circumstances of people who really need support, encouragement and new opportunities. This is positive social engineering with the very best of intentions. It must succeed, in the interests of us all – disadvantaged or not.
Flexible but determined policy making is not easily achieved when the evidence for policy change becomes instead, in the hands of the media, ‘evidence’ that politicians always get it wrong, and maybe nothing should be done at all.
Read more articles on Social Science
Look Back With…. Relief
There is a nostalgia in the cultural calendar at present. Memories of the 50s and 60s are to be found in both drama (The Liverpool Playhouse) and museums (the national Theatre Museum). Interesting to look at, without doubt. But perhaps much less fun to have had to live in.
We’ve been to two very striking performing arts events in the past week or so. The first was the national Theatre Museum’s Unleashing Britain: 10 Years that Shaped the Nation 1955-1964 and the other one was the Liverpool Playhouse’s Billy Liar.
Both these cultural offerings remind us of how very much things have changed over the past fifty years.
Cultural change as well as economic
The period which followed World War II (and yes, my recollections before the swinging sixties are hazy) was stultifying for most people. There were many painful adaptations to be made in peacetime, alongside the relief that it was all over. Most people were simply intent on establishing a ‘proper’ homelife and on getting a civilian job. There was little scope for imagination and flair in the daily struggle to earn a crust and keep a roof over one’s head.
And of course there were all those children – the ‘bulge’ – who arrived as the soldiers came back home. The Welfare State could not have been more timely, but it was also pretty thinly spread.
So how did the shift to the so-called Swinging Sixties happen? Whilst for most of us this era was nowhere near as exciting as it’s now made out to be (living in Birmingham probably didn’t help…) it was certainly a time when great cultural shifts occurred.
More money, more young people, more education
By the mid-fifties rationing had finished, and schools and health systems were fully in place, as the peace-time economy settled down; and this meant that a decade later, by the mid-sixties, there were quite significant numbers of young people (though only a few percent of them all – maybe 5% maximum) who were relishing the freedom of student life.
For first generation grammar school children going to university was a huge breakthrough (just as, we must always remember, not going to grammar school and univesity was for some of their siblings and friends a huge heartbreak). I doubt many young people now could understand how important it was to save up for the big striped university scarf which denoted you a Proper Student.
Along with this came a new freedom – to do one’s own thing, to find new ways to be artistic, literary, creative. It isn’t surprising therefore that the ‘new reality’, the kitchen sink drama, came into being. For the first time there were significant numbers of young people with higher education who knew for themselves what working class life was like… and who produced, through theatre and writing and film, a record of realities which is now a legacy for us all.
A legacy we remember but didn’t enjoy
It’s salutory to look back, through the cultural events on offer now, and remember just how constraining and difficult those years were. Given the freedoms of today, or the restrictions of then, I don’t think many would turn the clock back.
Life isn’t easy for everyone even now, but the numbers of families where the frost has to be scraped off the inside of the bedroom window every chilly Winter morning is without doubt lower – and could indeed with proper organisation of support be reduced to none.
There’s not much nostalgia in my mind for the good old days… they are a fascinating time to examine and learn about, but they weren’t I suspect that much fun for most folk to live in.
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
‘School Trips Change Lives’ Says The National Trust
School trips to look at local ecology seem to be very successful in encouraging children to appreciate their environment. If this works for local eco-issues, surely it can work also for wider social ones? The ‘How Do They Do It?’ scheme has been very slow to get off the ground, but perhaps its time has some. Who will help to make it happen?
Tha National Trust has been running a Guardianship Scheme for some fifteen years, with almost one hundred schools in its programme. The idea, now evaluated by Dr Alan Peacock of Exeter University, is that ‘trips’ out of school make a difference to the way children understand their world… and the evidence, reported in Dr Peacock’s evaluation (Changing Minds: The Lasting Impact of School Trips), is that such trips do exactly that.
Environments are social as well as ecological
The benefits of ‘nature walks’ and the rest, confirmed by Dr Peacock and his colleagues, will come as no surprise to those of us who have been lucky enough to experience these as part of growing up. Nature walks amount almost to an entitlement for all chidlren, wherever they live – the city has an environment and ecology just as much as did the village of my early years.
If even a passing aquaintance with the world immediately around us is of long term benefit, how much more can it benefit us to know something of our neightbours – the other side of our town, the other end of our country, or indeed the other side of Europe and beyond?
Preparation and support are the keys
But it’s not enough simply to ‘do a school trip’ – where teachers are still brave enough to undertake this daunting exercise. To maximise the positive impact chidlren must firstly have a real idea before they depart of what they are likely to encounter; and they must have opportunities to meet and get to know local people when they get there.
Such demands are a tall order. They require a genuinely integrated approach to the curriculum, and a degree of planning which goes well beyond that of the time table.
So why not start more simply? By all means carry on with the ‘holiday’ style visits which some schools try hard to provide for their students. But what about also looking at ways of integrating the ‘widening horizons’ agenda for both children and adults?
It’s part of the regeneration and renewal agenda, too
Provision of opportunities for learning about how other people do things is a recurrent theme on this website.
Those who would perhaps find the sharing of experience most useful are often those who can least afford and / or organise it. There’s a real need to do this… and if it starts by simply going to the other side of one’s own city with the intention of meeting new people and seeing new things, that’s great.
The professional challenge
This is a challenge for teachers, regeneration specialists, community development workers and many others. Can people be encouraged to move beyond their own experience in ways which are comfortable and positive, so that they are better equipped to make genuine choices for their own communities?
And, critically, are we as practitioners up to this ‘challenge’ ourselves? Do we agree, as the Peacock evaluation indicates, that direct experience is good, provided it is properly structured and supported?
How do they do it?
Are we ready to give time to a programme such as How Do They Do It? where, as I have suggested on many occasions, small groups of young and older people together go to new places and ask just that of something which seems to be working well? How can this idea be improved? Who will join forces to help it along?
Liverpool’s Princes Park Has Friends
The Friends of Princes Park is amongst an encouraging number of similar groups who are demanding that our green space be nurtured. Liverpool has a historical legacy of wonderful parks; and now its citizens are insisting more voluably that these are fit for the twenty first century city.
Today’s Liverpool Daily Post supplement has a long article by Peter Elson on the work of the Friends of Princes Park. The Friends have resurrected themselves after a fallow decade or three, and are making the same case for attention to their treasured space as are other groups in and around Liverpool. All power to Jean Grant, the Chair and leader of the developments! This is a park in Liverpol 8, adjacent to some of the least advantaged communities in the city. It needs nurturing.
Promising developments
There’s talk of involving local schools and of linking Hope Street to Sefton Park… a long discussed but so far not actioned development (but a route some of us take by way of a constitutional when time permits). There is an encouraging acknowledgement of the part the Park can play in sustaining social inclusion, health and an understanding of the history of our city.
Where’s the support?
One possible snag in all this however seems to be the continuing reluctance by the City Council to support, quietly and constructively, the citizens who care about this fabulous amenity. There are encouraging noises from that direction now – but the track record often isn’t good. Here’s an opportunity for the Council to play what (in my view) is its proper role…
Councils clearly have a formal duty to balance competing demands for support by citizens around the city; but they could also become facilitators, socially, financially and strategically of the people who want to see things improve. Now, that would be a new way to do things.
Big Science, Technology And The New Localism
Big Science is a central part of the U.K. economy. The Knowledge Economy, with science and technology as the tangible drivers, is critical to economic success. But for many involved in regeneration Big Science remains a mystery, especially at the level of the ‘new localism’. This paper offers real examples of regeneration strategies, science policy and how science has synergy with, and impact on, economies at regional and local level.
The Golden Triangle and the Holy Grail of the Triple Helix…….
Big Science, Technology and the New Localism
Hilary Burrage
[This is a longer version of the CLES Local Work: Voice paper of February 2006, entitled Knowledge Economies and Big Science: A challenge for governance]
Knowledge-Led Regeneration, Regions, Sub-Regions & City Regions and Science Policy.
Modern science is massive. That’s why it’s often referred to as Big Science. The costs (and sometimes the rewards), the numbers of people involved, the management and resource levels and the skills required – all are very, very high. And yet… to most of us, science remains effectively invisible.
Away from the public eye
The invisibility of science is curious; it probably arises from a number of different factors:
· Big Science, like (say) public motorways, is paid for by money from very high up the funding chain. Decisions on funding are made at national (and international) level by people of whom almost no-one outside their particular sphere of influence has heard. But unlike motorways, which we can at least see, we rarely encounter Big Science directly in our daily lives. It therefore remains off our radar.
· Most of us know very little about what science is ‘for’ and how it works. The numbers of school children studying science in their later, elective years is still falling, as are numbers of degree students. We are not therefore conscious of the ways in which science gives rise to things with which we are familiar, from shampoo to plastics to machines.
· Whilst information technology and health are of interest to many people, they do not see these matters as ‘scientific’. (Nor, incidentally, do many practitioners in the health and IT fields themselves see this connection very clearly.)
· Whether science and science-related practitioners see themselves as having a linked core interest or not, they nonetheless usually believe that their work has little or nothing to do with the wider worlds of public involvement and politics. There may be issues arising from science and technology (which I shall refer to from now on as SciTech) for others to address around economics or ethics, but what happens in the labs is the main concern – and this is observed by very few.
· Science is likewise not a vote-catcher. It is unusual for the electorate to invest much time and energy pursuing issues around this theme; which means that in general neither the media nor politicians spend much time considering it either.
Returning then to the comparison with motorways, both may be very expensive, but Big Science is almost always off limits for the public at large – it is often located within universities or on special campuses of some sort, very much less visible than a large road.
Does Big Science need to be visible?
But why should invisibility matter? After all, we may well not think about science very much, but every region of the United Kingdom has its own science and technology parks, where scientists and technologists rub shoulders with business and commercial people. These parks may not be in our thoughts a great deal, but they create jobs and inward investment and are often key parts of regeneration strategies.
In general we do not see the vaccine research laboratories, the synchrotrons, or the materials science analysts at work. But so what if they’re not ‘visible’? Does it really matter?
Answers to this question can be given at a number of levels; but in all cases the answer is Yes, invisibility does indeed matter.
The invisibility of Big Science reduces:
· public interest and involvement;
· the number of young people who will have an interest in SciTech as a career;
· engagement with industry and business;
· influence in matters of planning and infrastructure;
· opportunities to procure regeneration, at both practical and strategic levels.
Some of the follow-on repercussions of this invisibility are obvious; others are less so.
And the consequences are likewise different for different terrains. The ‘hothouse’ of the Golden Triangle [roughly, that area covering London, Oxbridge and the M4 / 5 corridors] is probably less directly vulnerable than, say, a Science Park in Northern England.
But it is at least possible that every part of the high level Knowledge Economy is disadvantaged by the inequity and uneven distribution of synergies between ‘hothouse’ and more isolated facilities. The former is becoming stressed, the latter need more support and development of capacity.
The Triple Helix of Innovation
It is now accepted that it is the synthesis of Universities, Industry and Government – the ‘Triple Helix’ – which brings about serious SciTech innovation. This Triple Helix, as we shall see, is in effect the Holy Grail to a vibrant knowledge-led twenty first century economy.
The world wide web may keep researchers and others in touch, but there is nothing like direct involvement from the big investment players to secure scientific progress in a given location. In other words, ad hoc development of SciTech facilities will take a local economy so far, but not far enough. Only strategic planning on a grand scale, and by with all parties working together, will however produce the sort of results which make a significant difference. And that means involvement at the highest levels of decision-making.
A corollary of this scenario is that people at all points on the decision-making ‘chain’ need to be aware of the complexities of SciTech. Again, this is more likely to be the case in the Golden Triangle, than in our off-the-map Northern Science Park. When a lot of local people are employed in SciTech jobs at the highest levels, as in the Golden Triangle, awareness of science and technology will be far greater than when this is not the case. Dispersed discreet locations without significant business links are on their own unlikely to change the local business or political perspective about what is important. – what does this mean for us and our knowledge economies?
The Daresbury Connection
A case in point here is the Daresbury Laboratory near Warrington, in the North West of England. This establishment, much of the work of which is as a world leader in the field of high energy physics, had been in existence for some decades, collaborating with the University of Liverpool and several other higher education and research laboratories.
By the mid-nineteen nineties, however, Daresbury had become something of an island unto itself, still conducting worthy international research but effectively disconnected from its locality, the local business / industrial base, and, critically, the political and administrative decision-making process.
The result of this disconnection was that the warning flags were not hoisted around the North West when the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, based in the Golden Triangle, decided to bid against Daresbury to the CCLRC (Central Council of the Laboratories of the Research Councils) to construct and operate DIAMOND, the planned third generation synchrotron – an intense light source which propels sub-atomic particles at extraordinary speeds in order to effect particle collisions for academic research and industrial / medical purposes.
By the approach of the Millennium it was becoming clear that Daresbury’s initial understanding about where the new light source would be placed were at best optimistic, although by then numbers of local and national politicians and others had also become involved in Daresbury’s attempt to secure the research funds which it had assumed were coming to the North West.
Similarly, and too late in the day, the North West Development Agency recognised that this was not simply a matter of ruffled feathers in academia, bur rather a matter of serious consequence for the whole of the region. Conferences were held, industrial and business liaisons established, plans proposed for collaboration with a number of the North West’s leading universities and hospitals – from which was later to be developed a proposal for a much more broadly-based programme of academic and applied science (CASIM). It was however too late to secure DIAMOND, and the contract went to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, taking with it some of Daresbury’s most highly skilled technicians.
An emerging perception of how Big Science fits the national economy.
It slowly transpired, however, that all was not lost when Daresbury had to concede DIAMOND (and thus much of its future funding) to Rutherford Appleton. The North West campaign to retain support for the Laboratory had by then gained considerable momentum. Regeneration and strategic planners across the region had begun to realise that here was a facility which no-one could afford to see as an ivory tower. The science and technology might be extremely complex, but it was not simply a toy for boffins; it was potentially an enormous asset to the North West region and beyond. (And besides, for many local people, the campaign had become a matter of civic pride – a factor which politicians and planners ignore at their peril!)
Interestingly, the collapse of Daresbury’s expectations at this time also proved to be a watershed for national governmental understandings of the interaction between Big Science and the economy, nationally and regionally. The model in use at the time of the DIAMOND decision was essentially that of straightforward competition.
It had hitherto been accepted – though perhaps largely on face-value – that the physical location of Big Science facilities should be brokered only on the basis of the preferences of direct partners and funders (the Wellcome Foundation, a massive funding body, was particularly vociferous about supporting only Rutherford Appleton – already, through long-standing connections between key Oxbridge players, a Wellcome partner in a number of activities).
Media outcry
The North West media outcry about losing DIAMOND also coincided with the beginnings of a repositioning nationally about how Big Science was to be taken forward. It was slowly dawning on national decision-makers that, whilst the quality of the science itself had to be (by a very long way) the lead criterion for the allocation of funding at this level, the project evaluation playing field was nonetheless not entirely even.
For instance, whilst it might perhaps be valid to suggest that more immediate business and industrial benefit might accrue from investment in the South East, the ultimate benefit of funding to the North West might be greater in terms of its impact on the regional economy.
Similarly, scientists of the very highest order might in general have been found in greater numbers in the Golden Triangle, this was not an excuse for failing to invest in research and development in the universities of the North West. As has subsequently been demonstrated, top scientists are willing in significant numbers to follow the most challenging science, wherever it is located – especially if the costs of housing etc are lower, as well.
And so we come to the present day story of Daresbury Laboratory. Daresbury has attracted a number of new and very senior staff to support outstanding colleagues based in North West universities, it has connected with business, industrial, strategic and political interests throughout the region, and it has established a fast-growing SciTech park led by major NW companies. Not every part of CASIM proved to be deliverable (the medical applications especially proved difficult, perhaps of the way that hospital-based research is supported); but Daresbury most importantly has secured the Fourth Generation Light Source programme, which will make it the world leader in this field.
The lessons of Daresbury
The Daresbury saga is salutary in a number of respects.
First, it demonstrates the increasingly competitive nature of SciTech, and especially Big Science, in modern economies.
Second, it shows that all parts of the Triple Helix – collaboration between universities, industries and the state – are essential in order to secure the sort of funding required for present day Big Science programmes.
And third, it illustrates very well the need for scientists, politicians and other public and private sector decision-makers at regional and sub-regional / local levels to remain alert, if they are to ensure adequate funding and other strategic support for prestigious and regenerationally effective SciTech enterprises.
There are therefore important lessons to be learned at regional and sub-regional levels.
Regionalism and the New Localism
One of the most defining aspects of Big Science is its internationalism. In the U.K. almost all Big Science projects will have a European aspect, probably under one of the European Union Frameworks for Science (we are currently on our 6th, and the 7th is under negotiation); and most projects will also be attached in some respects to laboratories such as, for instance, those at M.I.T. or CalTech in the United States.
This huge span of expertise and personnel arises largely organically in the first instance. Most serious scientists and technologists barely recognise national boundaries in their academic and applied work. Venture capital and the very high level knowledge economy have an operational syntax all of their own.
These facts of scientific life put notions of the ‘New Localism’ and of City Regions in a different light. They are, to be blunt, too small as areas and populations on their own to be realistic players in the battle for Big Science.
To illustrate this, the European Union recognises a number of population bases – NUTS, or Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics – of which the most commonly used in NUTS 1, or areas containing 3 – 7 million people. NUTS 1 areas are the size of major administrative units in most European countries; in fact, about the size of each of the English regions, and of Scotland and Wales respectively. City Regions are usually NUTS 2 size – 0.8 – 3 million people, and outside capital cities do not generally in most of Europe have autonomous governance.
Given that the annual budget of connected major Big Science programmes can approach that of the government of a small European country it is obviously not possible for them to operate at, say, the city region level . They require massive financial backing in terms of regional infrastructural support and they require equally massive buy-in from business and industry. And of course they need very significant numbers of available in-house expertise from local universities and other research institutions.
No non-capital town or city on its own is likely to be able to provide the levels of support required to secure significant Big Science onto its patch. The North West Development Agency and / or the Northern Way, for instance, can take full part as lead players; individual sub-regional cities, however otherwise important, can only be bit players on the Big Science stage.
The challenge for the New Localism
The message of Big Science is not entirely encouraging for those who eschew regionalism and seek preeminence for city-regions – not least because in reality most major cities simply don’t have the actual physical space, let alone the budget, to secure Big Science for themselves alone.
This is one scenario where, whatever applies elsewhere, only a shared and regional approach, or more, will do. For the U.K. at least this means that, if Big Science growth is to occur outside the Golden Triangle, the Holy Grail of the Triple Helix must be pursued by everyone, regardless of inter-city or inter-university rivalries or of otherwise competing interests between industries and businesses.
National Government must develop a policy on regional science, and regions and sub-regions must likewise respond to the opportunities such a policy would bring.
Read more about Knowledge-Led Regeneration, Regions, Sub-Regions & City Regions and Science Policy.
How Do We Cope When Someone’s Without Email?
The debate about social exclusion and e-technology continues. But there’s one issue which is rarely addressed: Is there an emerging protocol for when some people in a social or work grouping have email, and some don’t? And is the onus always on the email users to contact the rest? Or does it depend on who the people are and on the specific situation?
Have we become a ‘society’ completely dependent on e-technology? And are those who don’t have it ‘excluded’?
This isn’t a new question – it’s even cropped up on this very website before now – but it’s still a difficult one to crack. How, for instance, can geographically spread groups of people operate effectively, when some of them have email and some don’t?
There is more than one way to see this question; and maybe the hardest part of the problem is unpicking the ‘reasons’ people may or may not use e-technology. Have we reached the point where it’s as reasonable to expect people to have access to email, as it is to expect them to have access to a telephone?
Techno-avoidance, lack of skills, or lack of resources?
Does it ‘matter’ why a person won’t / can’t use email? Does protocol dictate a different response (from an email user) to the person who just doesn’t want email, than from the one who genuinely can’t easily obtain or use it?
Is it equitable to expect email users to telephone people who don’t use it, or should non-email people (generally, and assuming they are comfortably able) be expected to phone those who do use it? And how will they kow when to do so?
Email is so much more precise, and usually less obtrusive. Telephone conversations demand real-time connection and permit greater immediate flexibility, but are much more expensive (per item of contact) and intrusive.
Developing the protocol
I suspect that a protocol is beginning to emerge on these matters. But it is situation-specific.
In essence, the consensus seems to be that younger, and professional, people will use the www and email, or they won’t even be eligible to apply for jobs. Likewise, they use texting.
Others however still expect, and to some extent are expected, to use the telephone or ‘proper letters’.
Democracy and inclusion in action?
The problem arises when people in either ‘grouping’ want to be sure to include those in the other. Does anyone have good examples of how it’s done?
From where I sit, it looks like nearly all the work has to be done by the email users – printing out hard paper copies to post, phoning other people to tell them that emails are being circulated etc.
No doubt like many co-users of the internet, I got email to save time, energy and trouble. When I seek to be socially inclusive as a member of a group where most use email and a few don’t, it actually makes me into an unpaid secretary in the name of democracy. But I’m not sure everyone finds the energy to do the same.
Maybe the next big thing will be a technology which ‘translates’ emails and the like to voicemail – at the receiving end?
Modern Cities Need History And Style – So Let’s All Find Out How It’s Done
The strongly held views on Liverpool’s World Heritage Site and the Museum of Liverpool proposals have something to tell us about how we sometimes need to look beyond our own patch, to see what could or should be done. Perhaps ‘cultural exchange’ programmes within our own shores might be a start, so helping citizens to know each other’s towns and cities across the nation?
Lots of debate as usual about architecture and design, following the Heritage Lottery decision not to fund the Museum of Liverpool…. The views about the World Heritage Site and so forth have been interesting – as ever!
The last few days I’ve been in London with my family and, as it happens, doing the ‘visitor’ bit around the Tate Modern, the City, Covent Garden and Westminster. What strikes me so strongly is that most people in London don’t seem to have a huge problem about Big Buildings and Little Buildings, old ones and new.
The mix of old and new
Of course, ‘new’ buildings adjacent to ‘old’ ones (and they don’t get much more historic than some in the parts of London I was seeing) are often designed very well in a style which merges… but then you get the Gherkin. What an amazing construction! There’s St. Paul’s being done up, and behind it what you can only term a huge conical mirror. But I really don’t think it looks ‘wrong’.
In fact, one of the things that strikes me is how vibrant this miscellany of buildings, mile upon mile of them, is. Some young people I know who have moved to the Capital have actually chosen large drawings and (v dramatic) photographs of the Foster building and similar as the artwork for their own home…. and they’re exactly the sort of young professionals Liverpool would dearly have liked to keep here. But London offers so much more.
I definitely don’t think that all ‘modern’ architecture is appropriate wherever it’s put. It has to be excellent and well-positioned to earn its footprint. But I’d guess the folk in London are lucky in being (literally) more cosmopolitan in their approach; they’ve seen more of the world – in general, not all of them of course – than folk in Liverpool (again, in general). Expecting exciting and perhaps controversial architecture alongside a proper respect for the historic, and off-set by wide-open green spaces, probably goes with that wider mindset.
Where’s the wider experience and context?
When are we going to start to try to ensure that as many Liverpool people as possible have a wider context in which to judge their city? Isn’t it time actively to encourage people, young and older, to visit other places and experience (not just ‘look at’) other contexts, so that they can have a more broadly informed view of what goes on here, as well? It’s difficult to have a positive, balanced position when the basis of it is often so narrow, even perhaps parochial.
And is there something here for everyone? Would it be a good thing if we all tried to experience parts of the country outside our own patch? Never mind ‘foreign’ exchanges, worthy though these can be. What about learning more about where we actually live, as well?
The Friends Of St James’ Cemetery And Gardens, Liverpool
The Friends of St James’, who are restoring the historic cemetery and park next to Liverpool Cathedral, have achieved much in the few years of their formal existence. The inner city becomes, by the hard work of volunteer environmentalists and gardeners, joining with equally committed volunteer lobbyists, a place where green space can thrive to encourage the naturalist in us all.
The Friends of St James Cemetery And Gardens held its third AGM this evening. Reports from the Chair, local resident and sculptor Robin Riley, and the Vice-Chair, Prof. Tony Bradshaw, a noted emeritus researcher from the University of Liverpool, were incredibly encouraging – programmes of volunteer engagement, plans for children’s educational activities, accounts of excellent public engagement events during the past year … all warmed the heart and gave us hope for the future of this unique inner-city environmental resource.
St James’ is a space dug out by the masons of yesteryear (I suspect that blocks of its red stone comprise the wall at the back of my house), and situated right next to Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. It holds about eighty thousand graves, relating in their stony way the history of the city for many decades up to the 1930s.
The cemetery, now also a park or ‘gardens’, hosts the Huskisson Memorial and much other testimony to Liverpool’s history. Amongst the other very interesting things to be found in this hollow scooped from the innrer city are a natural well and many exciting nooks and crannies. But until recently it was a no-go area, somewhere that most of us were rather afraid to explore at any time of day.
Pulling together to reclaim the space
The opportunity to reclaim this large space arose at least in part from the Bishops’ Conference on Social Responsibility which was held at Liverpool Cathedral in 2001. The environmentally aware theme of this conference resonated with the ambitions of many of us at the Cathedral and in HOPES: The Hope Street Association to develop the St. James’ site (which runs along the southern part of Hope Street) as part of our long-awaited Hope Street Millennium Public Realm proposals. In this ambition we found sterling support from David Shreeve of the national organisation the Conservation Foundation, a keen environmentalist who was much involved with Liverpool Cathedral and in this conference.
David worked with HOPES and others to encourage the City Council to see the value of developing the historic site right on our doorstep, and so the Friends of St James was formed. Here is an example of how having someone beyond the local scene to act as a champion can work wonders. What is declared by influential people beyond the locality to be precious may well be similarly perceived also by local decision-makers before too long.
Building for the future
So now we have a very active organisation for St James’ which will soon be a registered charity, and we also have buy-in from the City Council and Liverpool Vision, as well as from many ‘ordinary’ citizens of the city.
We also have big plans, including the imaginative Bridge of Hope, a project for a glass bridge which is intended to take people on a walkway at street level, high above the cemetery, straight into the Cathedral – thereby at last realising a dream which has been part of the Hope Street ambition for many decades.
What prospects for green space in the city?
Liverpool has been very slow to treasure its parks and green space. Sefton Park, for instance, has been left quietly to ‘naturalise’ for many years until very recently; but the Friends of Sefton Park, like those of St James’, have campaigned long and hard to develop these parks a sensibly managed public space once more… And it’s happened, because citizens of the city living around and enjoying these green spaces, cared enough to make a fuss and involve other, generously helpful people.
Let’s hope the same success can now be achieved by people who are campaigning for improvements to Newsham Park and other superb parks and green spaces in Liverpool. Newsham Park, for instance, has hard-working Friends as well. They need support!
The critical thing is, unless people can enjoy green space for themselves, they probably won’t be able to value it as they could, indeed should. It’s become a generational thing. If you haven’t seen it, you probably won’t want it, whether its allotments, parks or simply somewhere nice to walk.
Inevitably we must accept that Liverpool’s parks and open spaces cannot all, and unreservedly, be ‘set in aspic’ (to use a naturalistic metaphor); but I applaud wholeheartedly those who fight to ensure that the children of today have the opportunity, by example of fellow local citizens, to become be the enthusiastic users, and indeed guardians, of inner-city green space in the future.
See also
Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals
Hope Street Quarter, Liverpool and
Camera & Calendar.
Dreaming Realist 