Half the major cities in the United Kingdom are in the fourth division in an economic league table compiled for the European Commission.(*) The assessment is based on a complicated formula of population changes, unemployment and gross domestic product per head.
European cities with the worst problems had declining populations. By far the worst cases of the urban decline syndrome were in the UK and southern Belgium.
There were less serious cases in the old industrial regions of Germany, northern France and northern Italy. Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast were the worst of these declining cities. The most serious continental European example was Charleroi in the French-speaking region of Belgium. Generally, “urban decline” affected the old industrial cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries most intensely.
In many parts of Europe there were City regions with declining populations but which were apparently healthy. Most German cities fell into this category, although some, such as Bonn and Munich, were growing. French cities were, on the whole, healthy and growing. In Mediterranean Europe, cities with the worst problems were growing — such as Naples and Cagliari in Italy — not declining.
Effect on ports
Another general pattern to emerge was how relatively badly port cities were doing — even successful ports such as Le Havre or Rotterdam. The report of the study suggests that this probably reflects containerisation and bulk handling which, even where port traffic has grown, has meant less direct employment. More significantly it has also meant that ports have lost most of their particular advantages as places for import/export dependent industries.
The survey shows that French cities improved tremendously in the decade to 1984, with Bordeaux and other cities in the south and west doing spectacularly well. German cities, although they remained absolutely very strong, deteriorated — especially after about 1980. The two major cities of Scotland also did well, with Glasgow apparently justifying its claim that it was “miles better”, although in reality it is still among the most problem-ridden cities in Europe.
If European cities are divided into four divisions, ranked from the healthiest to the least healthy, over the period from the early 1970s to 1984, then at the beginning of the period London was near the top of the first division. But since then, according to the survey, it has performed outstandingly badly compared with its European competitors.
Business increasingly takes a European view of location, the report says. It is not a choice between the City and Canary Wharf but between London and Frankfurt or Brussels, Paris or Rome.
All these major cities improved their standing dramatically. While Paris rose from the foot of the second division to the first, London dropped to the second division. London is falling behind in the European city league. Of British cities, only Norwich is left in the European first division for urban health. Norwich rose strongly during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It behaved rather like similar smaller cities in rural regions, such as Strasbourg and Hanover. Norwich and Hanover both moved against national trends. Other British cities still in the second division are Bristol, Leicester, Brighton, Southampton, Edinburgh and Portsmouth. But all these places, except Edinburgh, lost ground.
The old industrial cities were generally in a poor state during the 1970s, with the British examples among the worst. However, some of the worst deterioration was apparent in cities associated with early and mid-20th century industrialisation, such as Turin in northern Italy, and Coventry. Some of the older industrial cities like New-castle improved, although most, including Manchester and Birmingham, did not. Of the cities that started the 1970s badly and got worse, Dublin did the worst of all.
Overall, the performance of British cities, and particularly English ones, was very bad, the researchers conclude. By the early 1980s, half of all the major cities in the UK were in Europe’s fourth division. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that perceptions of an “urban crisis” are strongest in the UK. In France, in contrast, problems are concentrated in smaller industrial towns and settlements. In Britain they are concentrated in metropolitan areas.
(*) Problems of urban decline and growth in EEC countries: or measuring degrees of elephantness, by Paul Cheshire, Gianni Carbonaro, and Dennis Hay. Article published in Urban Studies, April 1986. The study was undertaken by a team based at the Joint Centre for Land Development Studies at Reading University.
