City infrastructure planning faults threaten Scottish cities with economic stagnation

AN ECONOMIC boom enjoyed by Glasgow and Edinburgh in recent years will stagnate unless the Scottish Executive and local authorities address a raft of historic concerns, academics claimed yesterday.

ANDREW DENHOLM HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT NEWS.Scotsman.com

A joint report by Glasgow and Heriot-Watt universities found that unless chronic problems of transport infrastructure, derelict land and rising house prices are addressed, growth in both cities in key sectors such as financial services and tourism will grind to a halt.

Professor Ivan Turok, from Glasgow University’s department of urban studies, went on to call the Executive’s plans to address the future development of Scotland’s cities "derisory".

He said the Executive’s Cities Review, announced in January, was a "modest response" to the range and intensity of the challenges facing the cities, with "surprisingly few concrete recommendations and proposals".

The joint report – Twin Track Cities? – was written after a four-year study into urban economic and social dynamics in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

It found that both cities had enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in recent years, with key advances in the financial services industry, which has grown by 46 per cent in Glasgow over the past decade and by 26 per cent in Edinburgh over the same time span.

These burgeoning markets have seen a corresponding improvement in employment prospects, with Glasgow in particular seeing unemployment falling for the first time in decades.

However, the report’s authors conclude that planners at both central and local government level have not kept up to date with changing conditions and point to a raft of weaknesses which could upset the progress made.

These include an over-reliance on certain economic sectors and an ongoing failure to provide a cross-section of job opportunities across the social spectrum.

Over the past decade, Glasgow has seen an increase of nearly 40,000 non-manual jobs, but fewer than 10,000 new manual jobs.

The report’s authors blamed the failures on "confusion" over whose role it was to address problems as well as the inability of the many partnerships involved with leading progress, such as the Glasgow Alliance, to make quick decisions.

Prof Turok said: "Edinburgh and Glasgow are crucial to Scotland’s economic prosperity and social progress and both cities have seen something of an economic boom and employment in both cities has grown more strongly over the last five years than in the rest of Scotland.

"We are suggesting that growth in both cities may be held back in future by a raft of issues including transport problems and property constraints."

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=122202003