A new paper by Dr David Waite re-examines the possibility of an Edinburgh-Glasgow economic system and why policy efforts to promote the system have come and gone.

In the paper Dr Waite finds that the notion of two city-regions operating fairly independently continues to ring true.

But for policymaking, even if the Glasgow-Edinburgh system is not highly inter-dependent now, there is a clear sense that the two cities are treated as key for some sectors.

There are questions about how the two cities take each other’s strengths into account, when generating economic development strategies. How we seek to shape an economy achieving different outcomes may also reinvigorate a case for looking at Edinburgh and Glasgow together. For example, can movements toward the greening of transport infrastructure be led by the two major city-regions?

Dr Waite suggests there is a question over whether there is a missing space in policy fora in Scotland, between individual city-regions acting on their own (as required by deal-making) and the broader policy attention given by the Scottish Cities Alliance and others.

Read Agglomeration is in the eye of the beholder: the changing governance of polycentrism in Territory, Politics, Governance (Subscription required).

Image credit: Gordon Dowie on Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 2.0

First published: 10 March 2021

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