Good Local Economics

It’s a truism, but no place is an island.  As citizens we move between places.  We may work in one, shop in another, but socialise in yet another.  So, we have different relationship with places, with some places offering us different things.

Post-Kerslake there’s a real scent of change in Birmingham. A braver, less bureaucratic council might be capable of a genuine strategic partnership: civic to civil society. Paul Slatter outlines some of the signs of a shift

The Kerslake Report made an oddly liberating – but depressing – read for many in Birmingham. Not much of what was said about civic mis-management was news. Citizens who took part in Birmingham’s ‘Summer of Dialogue’ events the preceding year, facilitated by Chamberlain Forum, identified many of the same failings. These were reported to the council’s now disbanded (and widely unmourned) strategic partnership BeBirmingham and – like many reports before – they disappeared. Kerslake, therefore, represented something like a moment of unavoidable truth. Like when the boy exclaims what the rest of us have been thinking for ages – the Emperor really is wearing no clothes!