10 Oct 2018
For the first time in human history more people live in cities than the countryside - by 2050 it could be 70% of the global population.
Scotland's Urban Age is a major research project commissioned by commercial law firm Burness Paull and delivered by Glasgow Urban Laboratory at the Glasgow School of Art to provide businesses and public sector decision-makers with new insights into Scotland's principal cities, and to stimulate debate and discussion on their future roles and prospects.
I recently spoke at the launch of the report – my subject “the future of Glasgow”.
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Good morning everyone and thank you to the team here at Burness Paull for the opportunity to say a few words on the future for Glasgow following the publication of Scotland’s Urban Age. It is for sure a comprehensive and balanced report and I welcome it as a further addition to the debate focusing on the importance of Scotland’s cities.
I also welcome the care it has taken in navigating the inevitable risks that loom over any study comparing the condition of Scotland’s principal cities. Often these studies descend into unhelpful binary statements of good or bad, better or worse with an implicit suggestion that one city is more deserving of investment or attention than another.
Or they suffer from the repetition of an over familiar tale of a city’s past unrelated to the emerging opportunities and often at a moment when accepted trends are breaking down. Urban Age is a more sophisticated and nuanced assessment than that.
I have been asked to say something about what I believe to be the key issues in ensuring Glasgow’s success and let me start by saying that I am an optimist about the future.
Yes, we face enormous issues – like Brexit , like the emergence of trade wars and like the sweeping impacts of technological change and a fourth Industrial Revolution – but since Glasgow Chamber was formed in the late eighteenth century in the aftermath of the American War of Independence, amongst emerging battles over the Corn Laws that set aristocratic land interests against the new industrialists and in the early phases of the first Industrial Revolution there is nothing especially new in that. We simply get on with it.
I have three main points I’d like to make.
First that Glasgow has every reason to be confident:. We have an asset base that is strong and there are recent signs of economic performance that suggest something new is happening. Ever since the Commonwealth Games we have been explaining why we believe that Glasgow is an underappreciated economic centre.
That diversity is almost certainly the reason why we can point to a growth of 70,000 jobs between 2012 and 2016 and a faster recovery in employment in Glasgow and Lanarkshire between 2008 and 2016 than any other part of Scotland.
When the Glasgow Economic Strategy was published in 2016 we had forecasts from Oxford Economics which suggested it would take us until the mid-2030s to recover the jobs lost in the 2007/2008 recession. Well, we had done it by the end of 2017. Rather than many more years debating how to reduce youth unemployment which is now down to almost record lows, Chamber members are consistently reporting skills shortages.
And our company base is also doing something new – up in Glasgow City by 3,000 over the last five years to just over 21,000 after years of relative stagnation. It’s not only Edinburgh that has become a hot spot for digital, creative and scientific enterprise. So we could be in the midst of a very positive inflection point in Glasgow’s economic story.
My second point is that Glasgow is also well placed to play its role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and we are showing some very encouraging signs of responding to the opportunity. One can argue that in the early stages of Glasgow’s mid-nineties renaissance the emphasis was pretty heavily on attracting inward investment – whether from the globally mobile financial corporates like the American and London banks and insurance companies eager to benefit from our skilled workforce and a flexibly defined International Financial Services District or from international conferences, events and visitors to assets like the Scottish Events Campus.
And that emphasis still continues to generate returns as the Barclays investment at Tradeston or Morgan Stanley’s new offices demonstrate. We should also keep investing in the offer at the Scottish Events Campus – that has been a proven success and it should get its next phase money. {You could argue that we are only now seeing the final recommendations of the McKinsey report coming to fruition with its emphasis on attracting visitors, building a software industry and attracting headquarters to the city centre – new HQs emerging from Scottish Power, Edrington and now Clydesdale Bank/Virgin Money. }
But now we must also be asking whether we can grow more of our own new industry. We need to see more SMEs springing from those scientific and technical specialisms that are emerging from within our diverse economy. And we have key evidence of where those specialisms lie – for example, from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Science and Innovation Audits. Enabling technologies is one – with sensors, satellite applications, lasers and quantum engineering all having unusual concentrations in and around Glasgow. Precision medicine is another. So too is fintech where Glasgow has much the strongest presence in Scotland. That is why we have been very keen to support the development of the innovation districts that both Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities are promoting on the back of their campus investment plans. We regard innovation districts as attractive propositions because they are ambitious, adaptable and demonstrable signals of the city’s role in developing new science and technology.
Innovation districts also highlight the importance of supporting investments to make them work – in housing – it’s time to reverse the population decentralisation that Glasgow delivered post war. Bring the population back into the central city. In leisure facilities and public realm – and in public transport – to make the quality of life for the worker on average pay as good as you can find elsewhere in Europe and to attract and retain the talent that will build the new companies. I believe we should be formulating our second City Deal right now – one that is laser- like in it’s focus on engaging with the Fourth Industrial Revolution
And my third and final point is that it is time to change the narrative of Glasgow as a city still struggling with the impact of post-industrialism.
To begin with I’m not that sold on the word ‘post-industrial’ - it subtly implies that we are primarily a city of shopping, of culture and leisure. Somehow a city beyond work, beyond real purpose. As a city that could be right at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution I want us to reclaim the word ‘industrial’ once again. I’d also like to see the words science and engineering firmly in the centre of our story-telling. And let’s not be afraid of manufacturing either – one very senior industrialist said in Glasgow recently – if we want to be more productive why don’t we just increase the share of our economy that comes from manufacturing – that’s where our competitors in Germany and the Netherlands have their edge.
So a National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland at Inchinnan alongside the Airport and an Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District sound like very sensible first steps. Glasgow built its success on industry and I believe we should do so again
If there is one complaint I hear from senior business members more than any other it is that we don’t tell the story of Glasgow’s existing economy at all well. Don’t get me wrong – our friends at Glasgow Life/ Glasgow City Marketing Bureau are fantastic and effective at getting the message out to visitors and to conference organisers but we have to do much more to support our friends in Invest Glasgow to reach the business, trade and investment markets. Changing our appreciation of what is actually happening in our economy and the language we should be using is actually very important
And there is another word I’d like to see the end of – regeneration. Let’s fill all that old land with housing and space for SMEs and new advanced manufacturing facilities. And let’s grasp the most amazing opportunity of all. All the way through the debate on Glasgow’s Economic Strategy we heard about skills shortages – in engineering, in insurance , in catering and most especially by far across all industries in digital. For the first time in 30 years, I really do believe that we have the chance to show to Glasgow’s parents, teachers and children that the jobs are definitely there. Invest in the right skills and you will succeed. And that’s even before we consider the impact of Brexit on maintaining the flow of European talent into our city. One super idea is being hatched down at the Science Centre to show exactly what is happening in Glasgow in all those industry centres of excellence so kids can be excited by science and tech and know that once again they can be involved in the most sophisticated industries right next door.
So that’s my three points – we have every reason to be confident about Glasgow’s success, we should invest in the new industries and in our quality of life and we should change our story and get out into the world to tell it.
