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> We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities Ironically, this would be aided greatly by i
by hkt 3y ago
> We really need to distribute the economic activity around the UK by properly investing in other towns and cities
Ironically, this would be aided greatly by investing in public transport. Andy Haldane gave a great speech about this at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute in 2019 - the most salient bit is from page 37:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/is-all-economics-local-speech-by-andy-haldane.pdf https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/201...
Excuse the snip, highlighting PDFs is hard, but here's a key-ish quote:
> ..a measure of the “effective” working population. At
peak times, the effective working population of Birmingham is perhaps 50% smaller than its measured
population due to poor transport infrastructure. This helps explain why Birmingham punches below its
demographic weight
Virtually all UK cities suffer from this. The problem, as ever, is a lack of investment and too many cars.