Let’s begin the reinvention of city economies

The title of this new report is provocative. The questions of ‘good’ city economies should not only be taken as a measure of whether economic policy can be effective in producing growth. The deeper question to grapple with is, is there a kind of local economics that can be built on values and, in the way it works and what it produces, does good?

This report is yet another contribution to the vital service the New Economics Foundation, CLES and New Start provide: questioning and challenging the received wisdoms and easy assumptions around economic development that have given the traditional consumption-driven, trickle-down model its resilience.

This resilience stands in the face of the old wisdoms and modern evidence that warn us of consumption’s very limited ability to deliver individual, collective and environmental wellbeing. In fact, our over- reliance on this limited tool actually begins to harm us.

‘The scale of the economic reinvention should be commensurate with the extent to which we

believe the dominant model is either unable to meet the challenges of the world, or is actually harming us’

A head teacher once talked me through the approach he’d taken to dramatically turning around the fortunes of the failing inner city school he’d rescued. In his earliest days he’d taken a very authoritarian approach, clamping down on standards and behaviour with little room for conversation or negotiation. The challenge was to make the children feel safe and raise expectations. The measures worked and the school moved forward. But he didn’t simply do more of the same in subsequent years. Success meant the context had changed, and with it, the nature of the challenges facing the students and staff. This meant that the old approach was less relevant at best, and at worst, would become a liability. So he reinvented his approach accordingly, the first of a series of redefinitions and reinventions. His core warning was that the things that made us successful yesterday can become a liability today.

We can apply this to the challenge we face today. The prevailing capitalist model has had its uses. But as we confront the fact that our political economic challenge must from move from merely getting us ‘stuff’ to delivering individual health, social cohesion, and environmentally sustainable development, it is vital that we revisit the dominant model. And the scale of the economic reinvention we should pursue should be commensurate with the extent to which we believe the dominant model is either unable to meet the challenges of the world as it is, or is actually harming us.

But, writing as an elected politician, the challenge of this report is not only aimed at politicians, policymakers and the elites. It should also be taken as posing a series of challenges to those who want to make meaningful movement toward good local economies.

First, those who want change should not only ask for change, but set out how that change can be made possible. It’s not enough to demand ‘good’ from the sidelines without a thought to implementation. That’s not to take account of the very real restrictions that can surround people in leadership positions.

Secondly, it’s for those who want change to seek real positional power. It’s not enough to ask people in power to do things we want them to do. We have to become the people in power. We need to diversify the range of people holding decision- making positions within the systems we want to change.

Thirdly, it’s important that those who want to change the power hierarchies the present system gives us do not merely replicate them in their own movements. Poor people, people of African and Asian decent, women, these voices must be held at the forefront. Too often people pursuing ‘good’ aims lose the ability to recognise or appreciate the significant role that power and privilege play in their movements and so enforce the very social ills they profess to be fighting.

There is a brutal proverb that warns: ‘As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to their folly.’

We must confront the very likely reality that we have reached the end of what growth can do for us as a policy tool. The proverb captures the urgency of the challenge. Let’s not be fools. Let’s take seriously the model and challenges set out in this report and use them as a platform to begin the reinvention of local economics people so urgently need.

•  Read Ten Steps to a Good City Economy here.