The power of language to tell the story of place

I was struck by @mcinroy’s blog last week on pre-distribution, and the role that it could play in tackling poverty and inequality, even in places where growth is difficult. For me, what we do about places that find growth difficult is a key issue for UK regeneration and economic development, and the focus for my PhD.

Currently, the UK has no plan, no strategy and no ideas about how policy should support places where economic growth can be difficult, and sometimes darn-near impossible, other than to say that they should try and grow.

There has been some murmuring about managed decline – or ‘smartdecline’ as I’ve also heard it described – and certainly there is a lot of interesting commentary on this from the shrinking cities debate which New Start commented on recently. I’ve also been reading some work this week on depopulation in Japan, which suggests that some regions are thinking beyond growth. This report suggests that ‘many institutional and social and environmental entrepreneurs are instead working towards achieving community stability and sustainability’.

What these examples show very clearly is that place-success is all too quickly and easily aligned with place-growth. A successful  and dynamic place is also a place whose economy grows.

But, what is a good place? Can a place be good, even if it doesn’t have economic growth? We can start to answer that question by taking a look at the type of language we typically use to describe places where economic growth is difficult:

Lags behind
Weak labour pools
Uncompetitive
Peripheral
Undynamic
Vulnerable
Weak

Then in contrast – look at the language we use to describe the places we think are growing!

Driving forward
Innovative
Competitive
Central and core
Dynamic
Dominant
Strong

Could the contrast be any sharper, and is it any wonder that regeneration and economic development initiatives often fail to have the desired impact? This type of language not only has the effect over time of problematising place and the people who live there, but it also undermines the very efforts being made to support and encourage new growth and regeneration.

While the economic realities of a place impact greatly on the people who live and work there, the words we use to describe a place may be just as powerful. I’d argue that the dominant discourse in spatial and economic planning has the power not only to blight communities, but also to trap our imaginations in a Weberian ‘iron cage’, which stifles debate and creativity about the nature of a ‘good place’.

I’ll be exploring the challenge and ideas surrounding discourse and place with an exciting group of likeminded professionals at a #popupseminar later in February. The #popupseminar is the brainchild of @salfordgareth and taking part will be @jennacondie @lovestoke @odobob @yasminah_b @annkol and @pbm_ab. You can find out more here.