Centre for Cities' response to the National Equality Panel's Findings

Date: 28/01/2010

Our Cities Outlook report echoes the findings of yesterday's report from the National Equality Panel. As the rich poor-gap has widened across the country it has alsowidened between prosperous and struggling cities.

The chart below shows the estimated path of GDP for Edinburgh, Reading, Mansfield and Burnley since the beginning of the recession. It shows that more prosperous cities such as Reading have not been impacted as badly by the recession as places like Burnley,so re-enforcing the gap between these cities.

Source: Gavurin

And the pattern of the recovery is likely to follow the pattern of the recession. The recovery will be uneven - those places that have strong business bases, such as Milton Keynes and Brighton, are likely to bounce back quicker, while cities with weak fundamentals such as Stoke and Barnsley will feel like they are still in a recession in the next year.

The gap between poor and prosperous cities is set to widen in the coming years. The next Government needs to address this gap by giving cities the power to strengthen their fundamentals, such as skills and business base. But not all cities will be successful in doing this, and these places should focus on linking people to jobs in more prosperous places. Not everyone will choose to take advantage of this. But increased labour mobility could help to improve social mobility, and so allow greater equality of opportunity.