In a new report, as part of the Centripetal Cities project, Dr Richard Goulding, Professor Adam Leaver and Professor Jonathan Silver critically examine the supply-side, property-led urban development model. They use Manchester as a case study to highlight its dynamics, impacts and implications for urban policymaking in the UK.
The report questions the property-led development model, arguing that it encourages the view that attracting private real estate investment in city centres is an end in itself. Goulding, Leaver and Silver argue that this exclusive focus on ‘investment-in’, obscures the money taken out of a region; and that ‘money-out’ matters because it raises questions about how money circulates within a region and whether extraction imposes excessive charges on the living standards and consumptive possibilities of residents.
To highlight ‘money-out’ issues, a conceptual shift is made away from the discourse of markets and towards different idealised forms of economic circulation: centripetal and centrifugal cities. The report contrasts the 'centripetal city', which concentrates wealth and resources in urban cores for extraction, with the 'centrifugal city' that embeds and redistributes wealth across broader city-regions. Our findings raise important questions about equity, public value, and sustainability in urban development.
The report outlines a range of key findings in relation to a number of topics including economic growth and inequality, housing costs and displacement, public value capture and investment dynamics, gentrification and extraction and policy gaps.
Moving from a property-led growth model which measures success by ‘investment-in’ and ‘buildings-up’ to one that asks questions about where the money goes once its come in, where it circulates and how we get more money to stick locally. There is an urgent need for a more embedded, equitable resource distribution across city-regions
Professor Adam Leaver
Based on their research, in the report Goulding, Leaver and Silver call for a re-evaluation of urban development policies to consider policy changes which address issues of economic circulation and the presence or absence of centrifugal processes. They call for an urban development model that balances a need for productivity growth with social equity to ensure more sustainable urban outcomes. The report also advocates for strengthening public value capture mechanisms, such as stricter enforcement of affordable housing targets, and for developing inclusive urban planning strategies that embed wealth in local communities.
Download the report (PDF, 2.2MB)
