Our perception of space and place are famously subject to cognitive bias; the same sorts of bias that affect the way we interpret all information. Much of it influenced by Media representations, what is thought in school, stigmata, family history and personal experience.
Our mental maps tell us how the world looks like to us. These sets of maps are unique to each of us and impact how we make life decisions.
For example, in the hard-hit areas, some people might not even think of going to the next town for work because it is simply not on their mental maps. The distances seem to stretch impossibly and commutes become a non-starter.
Similarly, many young professionals from magnet-cities have their own blind spots that might be a reason why they might not even consider alternative places; Even though many of these options might provide for a more prosperous and happier lifestyle.
To test this hypothesis, we asked 20 professionals in London to draw a map of the UK and put all the places that could think of in one minute. The patterns were quite clear: You always start with the area you know, you’ve been, you connect to.
Many ex-industrial and hard-hit places often spend valuable resources trying to “put themselves back on the map” and attract external wealth creators. However, people’s mental maps centre on places they have a personal connection with and are difficult to change. Hard hit-places can maximise their ROI by focusing their initial efforts on attracting people who already have a relationship with that place.
Let’s look a more into these questions:
- Would people be interested in moving out of major metropolitan cities?
- Would other cities be receptive to young professionals?
- Would these young professionals, infamously referred to as wealth creators by politicians, be able to make a positive impact in places they move to?
Who is looking for a new start?
In the UK at least, we are starting to see the trend of people moving out of metropolitans. According to the most recent official figures, analysed by the Guardian, 292,000 people left London from mid-2015 to mid-2016, driven by rising numbers of people in their early 30s moving out. This figure is up 14% on a decade earlier and the highest level since 2006.
“I wanted a complete break and a complete change of scenery. I needed the peace and the quiet. Looking back I think I was probably classed as depressed. Reluctantly, I am now working from home in Devon after some very happy years in London. I am hoping to start a family and was worried about affording rent and childcare on one salary in London. But starting a family is incompatible with London life. I can afford a four-bedroom house with a garden in a safe area here for the price of a one-bed flat in London.”
Overall London is losing more people than ever, suffering a net loss of 106,620 people to other parts of the UK in 2017.
Stephen Clarke, senior economic analyst for Resolution Foundation, living standards think tank, said: “London is a net exporter of people to the rest of the UK. This is likely due to high housing costs with figures suggesting that people are leaving London when they have children and want to put down roots, a struggle given property prices in the capital.”
To give you a sense of difference, homes in East Midlands are 61.5 % cheaper than in London.It is not that London has lost its draw, according to an aspiring London leaver, Nick Christian, 39, but that the provinces now offer equal opportunities. As a sales director, Nick used to worry that he wouldn’t be able to earn a comparable salary if he left London, but now, if he got a job at one of the many tech start-ups around cities such as Bristol, Bath and Reading, he would not necessarily face a pay cut.
“It’s not just us, there’s a massive shift in people’s mindsets, people realise that there are more important and meaningful things to life than earning money. It’s a proper community, not just a place for second homers and commuters.”
As new tech clusters grow, we are starting to see more boomerangs, those who are returning to their home cities.
In total across all age groups, Manchester attracted 4,150 people specifically from London in 2016, while Birmingham took in almost 6,500 Londoners.
London’s other unique challenge is inequality. Income inequality is around 25 per cent higher in London, and wealth inequalities are even starker. London is now the only part of the country where the typical family has no net property wealth.
Are cities looking to welcome newcomers?
Typically Place-transforming has four steps:1. the recognition/diagnosis of decline and identification of the most pressing challenges2. formulation of a vision for the city based on a rethinking of its economic function3. long-term strategic plan and tailored programme4. engagement, mobilisation and coordination of stakeholders
Hence encouraging people to move must start after a strategy and plan is in place. Looking at examples of cities who have managed to flip their fortunes, they have all focused on attracting new young wealth creators (according to Magnet cities report those in their 20s and early 30s). Their strategies ranged from beautifying the town all the way to offering incentives. But central to all this is the effort to develop distinct clusters, many linked to the history of the place (but not always).
For example, Bilbao formed a specific organisation “Bilbao Metropolis-30”, an alliance of business and private institutions with a vested interest in the regeneration of the city. One of their steps was to attract DigiPen Institute for Technology, a private provider in degrees in video game creation to develop a new cluster.
There has been a less obvious push to convince young professionals to move to the UK. Most cities have focused on their glorious past (buildings), cheap real estate, slower pace of life and countryside. Almost all forums mention how new movers need to have a job before they move to many of these cities.
Homesteading schemes, as a strategy, were pioneered in North Benwell, Newcastle (where homes cost 50p in 1999 and are now in six figures), as well as Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield; even in London in the late 1970s. Stoke on Trent tried the £1 house back in 2015, with these conditions, first-time buyer, in full employment, taking a £30k loan to renovate and to live in the house for 5 years. In Liverpool, a similar scheme was piloted, putting 21 £1 homes on the market, followed for plans for another 150.
Despite many examples of why and how cities try to attract young professionals, very little has been captured on how the original citizens feel about this. Following the popularity of moving out of London, we are starting to see warnings that incomes from the capital are causing social tensions in some areas. Londoners dubbed DFL, are seen to be creating raising house prices in local areas and gentrification.
In the US, Detroit has been offering financial incentive to get the young wealth generators to move to the city. Their strategy has been to focus on their existing assets of a relatively cheap real estate market, creativity and amble local business support. Many of those moving back already have a link, perhaps through their grandparents to the city.The federal Dollar Homes project, under the aegis of the Federal Housing Administration, whereby family homes are made available for $1 if they’ve languished on the market for more than six months, post the crisis mostly within post-industrial cities.What comes through is that the city (and especially the citizens) don’t want people to move there thinking they would be saving the city. They are generally more welcoming to those with a positive, community-minded attitude. The interesting contradiction is that the move to the city has been positioned as how rebuilding a new city is/should be fun.
According to a local publication, some longtime residents, both black and white, resent the attention the newcomers attract. For instance, there’s been a lot of hype about the new bars and restaurants opening in an area. But “Hipsters go home!” read one piece of fence graffiti in the same area, and some people who’ve toughed out decades in the city refer contemptuously to the newcomers as “slum tourists.”
Are spatial policies impactful?
Most large-scale place-oriented policies have had a little discernible impact. Some targeted policies such as Empowerment Zones seem to have an effect but are expensive relative to their achievements. The most significant promise for a national place-based strategy lies in impeding the tendency of highly productive areas to restrict their own growth through restrictions on land use. (Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gotlieb)
According to a report by JRF, in general, evaluation evidence on the effects and impact of specific interventions in declining cities is limited and partial. This evidence gap is widely acknowledged within the international literature and recent reviews (e.g. Green et al., 2015; Lee et al.. 2014) and hampers efforts to answer questions of what works — or not — where, when and under what conditions. Typically larger cities recover stronger. Outcomes are not inherent features of the programme itself, but a reflection of the quality of local governance, particularly in terms of local civic capacity, community participation and programme integrity. In fact, matching the type of employment created to the skills of local residents is crucial. Which might suggest importing talent is not the most effective strategy.
Growth and Poverty programme research is revealing (Lee et al., 2014; Stott and Campbell, 42 2014), city economic growth, of course, is necessary but it is not sufficient as trickle-down economics does not work. Most of these cities are struggling with highly unequal, with low-quality and low-paid work doing little to ameliorate poverty (Green et al., 2015).
Thanks to Irina Agafovona and Ed Lepedus for their collaboration on this work.