Balancing London? A Preliminary Investigation of the “Core Cities” and “Northern Way” Spatial Policy Initiatives Using Multi-City Corporate and Commercial Law Firms

Abstract

This paper reports a preliminary investigation into the economic efficacy of two spatial frameworks—English Core Cities and the Northern Way—recently promoted by national policy makers. We ask whether they are consistent with contemporary economic process in the UK space economy through analyses of commercial multi-city law firms. The latter are treated as an “indicator sector” to define the contemporary UK space economy as practised by law firms. Within this new space of flows, the location strategies of the law firms do confirm the salience of the Northern Way (as trans-Pennine corridor) and Core Cities as part of a larger UK metropolitan space of flows. Conflating the two spatial frameworks leads us to identify hints of a rebalancing of London within a metropolitan UK space. A Manchester polycentric mega-city region is found to be the likely candidate for this role. This finding in no way impinges on London's dominant global role, and we conclude that perhaps mutuality between London and provincial cities is beginning to replace past negative dependency relations.

Notes

Note that our method is to “indicate” a space of flows. Directly measuring such flows for a large number of firms across a large number of cities would be an immense task relying on the cooperation of firms in what might be considered a commercially sensitive area. As is usual with such difficult measurement situations, we use indirect measurement; we find information that is readily available—office locations—and interpret these as “office networks” in the sense of an enabling infrastructure for multi-office projects. In the case of service firms and their knowledge products, brand maintenance is vital and this is a key reason for expanding offices beyond the “home city”. Keeping work “in-house” means that there will be flows of information, knowledge, instruction, planning, advice, etc., between a firm's offices across cities. The office network reflects this space of flows and we use this to indicate potential flows between cities.

Unlike at the global level (Taylor, 2004), at the national scale it is necessary to restrict choice in this way in order to ensure the focus is upon law as an advanced producer service and thereby eliminating non-commercial consumer services (Sassen, 1991/2001).

These are derived from the “overview” lists for the 10 English regions and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In addition, firms listed under Corporate and Commercial subheadings for Corporate Tax (all except Northern Ireland) and for EU and Competition (all except East Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland) are included. London is treated as a separate entity by Legal 500; as well as firms listed in the “overview”, we include all firms under Corporate and Commercial subheadings: Corporate Tax, Customs & Excise, EU and Competition, Financial Services, Flotations: small and mid-cap, Mergers and Acquisitions, M&A: smaller deals, M&A: US law capability, Partnership, Private equity, VAT and indirect tax, and Venture capital.

73 of these firms have at least one office in London, 62 do not have a London office.

The cities are: 73 MCLFs, London; 25, Edinburgh; 23, Manchester; 21, Birmingham; 19, Glasgow; 16, Leeds; 11, Bristol; 9, Cardiff, Milton Keynes; 8, Reading; 7, Aberdeen, Leicester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Oxford, Southampton; 6, Cambridge, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Sheffield; 5, Derby, Exeter; 4, Belfast, Guildford, Plymouth.