Spatial imaginaries and the politics of inter-regional transport infrastructure development in Northern England

ABSTRACT

This article explores how relationships between policy actors at different scales, and their changing character over time, shape the production of spatial imaginaries and their use in transport infrastructure planning. Based on research on the planning of a major rail project in Northern England between 2011 and 2022, the article illustrates how spatial imaginaries reflect interactions between national, sub-national, regional and local institutions. Drawing on a programme of interviews with policy actors, the research highlights the tensions manifested in planning for transport infrastructure about which places are prioritized in policy, and the institutional influences shaping these decisions. The article develops understanding of how inter-scalar politics influences the production of spatial imaginaries and how these imaginaries are in turn utilized in support of transport infrastructure plans by policy actors at different spatial scales.

KEYWORDS:

• Transport infrastructure
• policy
• spatial imaginaries
• region
• England

1. Introduction

There is longstanding research interest in the ways in which actors and institutions employ spatial imaginaries (SIs) to articulate particular policy agendas. As socially constructed depictions of space and place, SIs are illustrated, performed, popularized and reproduced through maps, images, texts, data and stories (Davoudi 2018), providing mechanisms for actors seeking to promote specific visions of territorial governance, policy intervention or future patterns of economic development. How SIs are produced and deployed are important considerations in infrastructure planning as they can be used to frame projects as solutions to specific urban and regional socio-economic problems, thereby securing legitimacy and helping to procure the required resources (Dodson 2009; Olesen 2020; Sykes 2018).

This article explores how relationships between actors across spatial scales, and their changing nature over time, shape and are shaped by the production of SIs. To achieve this, we undertake a temporal exploration of four SIs produced between 2011 and 2022 as part of the planning of Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), a strategic rail project for Northern England that has evolved since the turn of the millennium. In common with many proposals for major transport infrastructure across Europe (Marshall 2014), plans for NPR have been developed in tandem with a wider series of sub-national institutional reforms, including the establishment of a pan-regional transport body for Northern England (Transport for the North) and the creation of statutory combined authorities with elected ‘metro’ mayors in England’s largest city-regions.

Before introducing the study methodology, the next section discusses the concept of SIs, the multi-scalar influences on their production and their deployment in the planning of transport infrastructure. The fourth section discusses the four SIs developed in support of plans for NPR, and the changing character of the inter-scalar institutional relationships underpinning their production. The penultimate section discusses how the key findings and research contribute to a deeper understanding of the interactive relationship between SIs and multi-level governance in shaping planning policies and institutional structures. The article concludes by highlighting three main lessons from the research for future policymaking.

2. Spatial imaginaries and infrastructure planning

SIs have long been used by planners and policymakers seeking to articulate ‘idealised visions’ of current and future economic, institutional and policy geographies (Pham 2020, 104). SIs refer to collectively held ideas about spaces and places and how they interact with each other (Watkins 2015). As Davoudi (2018, 101) notes, SIs are often ‘produced through political struggles … [They are] infused by relations of power in which contestation and resistance are ever-present’. As such, SIs are inherently selective in their representation of space, embodying particular decisions over which territories should be included and excluded, representing competing substantive policy agendas, and reflecting the variable capacities and priorities of different actors and institutions (Jessop 2012; O’Brien 2019; Pike et al. 2024).

SIs have been identified at numerous spatial scales ranging from the global to hyperlocal, conveying how past and present characteristics of places and spaces are interpreted by actors advocating a future vision (Watkins 2015). Often accompanied by stories expressed verbally and textually (see Said 1978), the images, maps and plans that comprise SIs provide a visual articulation of the sometimes contested process by which they have been agreed, as well as conveying ‘visions’ of future governance and policy arrangements and the attendant relationships between spaces and places (O’Brien 2019).

Policymakers operationalize SIs to highlight the claimed potential of specific policy interventions, to (de)legitimise particular approaches (Hoole and Hincks 2020), and to promote ideas about the spatial scope of development (e.g. through concepts such as city-regions) (Granqvist, Sarjamo, and Mäntysalo 2019). Whether produced by formal institutions such as government agencies or advocacy groups from the private or voluntary sector, SIs can shape policy thinking and influence the direction of policy and governance reform (Hincks, Deas, and Haughton 2017).

This role of SIs in planning is captured by Neuman’s (2012) lifecycle theory of planning institutions. First, planners use imaginaries to promote the development of new institutions or the reform of existing ones. Second, political actors harness spatial images (e.g. maps and plans) to frame and justify the proposed creation or reform of institutions to attain policy goals and fulfil wider political objectives. Finally, following political agreement, SIs can be used in the practical process of designing and establishing new institutions. Across all three stages, imaginaries – particularly in visual form – can depict political, administrative or economic geographies that transcend established institutional boundaries, as with the establishment or expansion of metropolitan regions over time. As Neuman (2012, 150) observes of institution-building in Madrid, ‘images were a cohesive force around which plans and policies were shaped through consensus building and deliberation’.

Conceptualizing SIs as a constitutive, and not purely illustrative, part of plan development can provide a lens to explore the socially constructed nature of institutional and policy relationships across geographical scales (Gregory et al. 2009), highlighting how power shifts across and between spatial hierarchies as plans evolve. For example, they can help to understand relationships between actors and institutions in multi-city or multi-regional plans, typically involving complex cross-scalar and cross-sector coalitions of stakeholders (Feiertag, Harrison, and Fedeli 2020). SIs can also inform understanding of institutional relationships because they may embody scalar conflicts, for example between national and sub-national bodies regarding the geography of infrastructure investment (Crouch and Le Galès 2012; Jessop, Brenner, and Jones 2008; Olesen and Hansen 2020). Equally, SIs may reflect underlying efforts to resolve central-local tensions, not least in the context of fragmented policy and institutional environments such as spatial planning in England, where they have accompanied attempts to instil cross-agency coherence and foster policy coordination (Wong 2022).

The need for horizontal and vertical co-ordination between institutions and policies is particularly apparent for major rail and road projects that extend across multiple local and regional territories, while also requiring a high degree of vertical intergovernmental co-ordination between national government and local and regional institutions. Large infrastructure projects therefore represent a fruitful way of assessing how interactions between different institutions linked to different territories and scales shape, and are shaped by, SIs (Szabó and Jelinek 2023). Major transport infrastructure projects usually take many years or even decades to design, implement and build. As a result, projects can shift in their spatial or substantive focus, reflected in the justificatory narratives and SIs that accompany them, and in turn influencing plan-making processes.

Infrastructure projects are often justified on the assumed future economic benefits accruing to the ‘under-performing’, ‘lagging’ or ‘constrained’ spaces which feature in SIs and on which national spatial policy agendas often focus (Addie, Glass, and Nelles 2020; Olesen 2020). Infrastructure proposals linked to the rejuvenation of ‘left behind’ places are also often coordinated with the rescaling of planning institutions (Andersson and Hermelin 2024). This is evident in Northern England, where large-scale transport infrastructure proposals, and high-speed rail in particular, have been promoted by policymakers as part of wider visions for revitalizing ailing urban and regional economies (Chen and Vickerman 2017; Tomaney and Marques 2013). To support these visions, SIs have focused on both infrastructure and spatial policy and sub-national governance reforms aimed at addressing inter-regional economic inequalities and promoting national growth.

SIs have played a pivotal role in legitimizing the spatial policy choices of governments at different levels (Haughton et al. 2009). Davoudi and Brooks (2021) highlight the role played by actors such as think tanks and consultancies in developing and advocating different SIs in the establishment of England’s regional structures in the 1990s and city-regional institutions in the mid-2000s. The emergence of new larger-than-regional territories such as the Northern Powerhouse and the ‘Midlands Engine’ in the 2010s also constitute examples of spatial imaginaries designed to promulgate specific political and policy objectives (Hincks, Deas, and Haughton 2017; Lee 2017; Tomaney 2016). The latter represent examples of the kinds of soft space governance on which research has long focused (e.g. Haughton et al. 2009), but which has only recently started to attract attention regarding the role of place branding in propagating and validating new institutions and policies (Zimmerbauer and Terlouw 2024).

Devolution of powers and responsibilities to combined authorities and cross-regional transport bodies in England over recent years has prompted further interest in how SIs are contested and shaped by competing intra-regional political narratives, as well as relations between central, regional and local institutions. For example, Hincks, Deas, and Haughton (2017) examine how intra-regional contestation over several decades saw competing SIs emerge around rival proposals for a ‘more than Manchester’ region. Similarly, Hoole and Hincks (2020) and Gherhes, Hoole, and Vorley (2023) highlight competing SIs in South Yorkshire combined authority area in Northern England, reflecting identity-based tensions between the city core and periphery, and raising questions over the legitimacy and durability of new city-regional institutions.

Existing research highlights the ways SIs are used by policy actors to vindicate particular choices regarding the substance of infrastructural development policy, the distribution of investment, and the shape and form of associated institutions and policy initiatives. However, the research literature devotes only limited attention to the temporal dynamic of SIs, and the related opportunity to shed light on broader trajectories of governance and policy reform (Hincks, Deas, and Haughton 2017; Jones 2009). As Neuman’s (2012) work on institution-building demonstrates, undertaking long-term analysis of a single space can aid understanding of how SIs shape and reshape plan, polices and institutions. Informed by this approach, the remainder of article aims to develop an understanding of how the production and use of SIs shifts over time in a single transregional space with a complex and evolving institutional and policy geography.

3. Research design

The research involved a single case study of transport infrastructure planning in Northern England between 2011 and 2022, the purpose of which was to examine the dynamic relationship between SIs and accompanying efforts to promote territorial governance reform. Northern England comprises three International Territorial Level 1 (ITL1) regions (North West, North East and Yorkshire & the Humber, see Figure 1), with a combined population of 15.7 million in 2022. The relative economic underperformance of the three regions has attracted public and policy attention for at least a century (Martin et al. 2021). Despite improved productivity in some city-regions outside London in the 2010s (Wong and Zheng 2023), the gap in economic performance at the ITL1 level between the two highest-performing regions (London and the South East) and the rest of England has widened substantially since the 1980s (McCann 2020).

Figure 1. The three Northern England ITL1 regions and core cities.

Concern about regional economic inequality has often informed policy debates over successive decades about planning for strategic interregional transport projects across Northern England. In the mid-1990s, the Trans-Pennine Corridor study identified inadequate rail infrastructure as a major barrier to increased labour mobility and intercity economic connectivity (Robson et al. 1995), presaging the Northern Way initiative, established by the Labour government in 2004 as a ‘Northern Growth Corridor’ requiring strategic infrastructure investment (Goodchild and Hickman 2006). Central to the SIs accompanying these putative growth corridors was the vision of a polycentric mega-region comprising the linked city-regions of Greater Manchester (population 2.9 million in 2022), West Yorkshire (2.4 million), Liverpool City Region (1.6 million) and South Yorkshire (1.4 million). Proponents of the new polycentric growth corridors envisaged a potential counterweight to London, with the potential to narrow intractable interregional economic inequalities (Taylor et al. 2010).

The emphasis on inter-city transport infrastructure to facilitate polycentric development and reduce interregional economic disparities was central to the narrative underpinning the proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), a strategic infrastructure project intended to improve connectivity across the three Northern England ITL1 regions. In doing so, NPR was intended to complement High Speed Rail 2 (HS2), a planned high-speed rail network linking London and the cities of England’s North and Midlands. NPR’s planning has involved multiple actors and institutions across spatial scales, reflected in protracted contestation linked to proposed shifts in its alignment and related disputes over funding. As a result, the SIs produced during the period of 2011–2022 reveal not only changes in the material configuration of the NPR network, but also the dynamics of the multi-scalar political landscape underlying it.

Transport governance in Northern England underwent significant reform during the study period, following the delegation of some infrastructure planning powers to city-regional combined authorities in 2014 and the establishment of a new cross-regional structure, Transport for the North (TfN), in 2015. These new bodies have been superimposed on an existing multi-layered institutional landscape (see Table 1). Irrespective of this elaborate multi-level geography, funding for new infrastructure remains highly centralized, with new city-regional and cross-regional structures remaining dependent on the UK government (Muldoon-Smith and Sandford 2023; UK2070 Commission, 2020).

Table 1. Spatial hierarchy of rail infrastructure planning in Northern England.

National	HM Treasury Department for Transport (DfT) Network Rail HS2 (High Speed 2) Ltd National Infrastructure Commission
Cross-regional	Transport for the North (TfN)
Regional	‘Metro’ Mayors Combined Authorities Integrated Transport Authorities Local Enterprise Partnerships (abolished in 2024 – powers integrated into combined authorities)
Local	Local authorities

The case study research involved the assembly and analysis of primary data derived from 32 in-person, semi-structured interviews (Table 2) undertaken in 2018 and 2019. Interviewees from DfT, Network Rail, TfN, combined authorities, local authorities and planning consultancies were either directly involved in the planning of NPR at the time of the interview, or had been involved at some point previously. Interviewees from the regional development organizations had extensive knowledge of NPR and had been involved in planning other rail infrastructure projects in Northern England. All interviewees from the voluntary sector and from academia were selected for their expertise on a particular aspect of the infrastructure planning process relevant to NPR. Interviewees were selected to ensure insight was gained into as many elements of the planning for NPR as possible, with questions inviting them to reflect on the decisions shaping NPR over several years.

Table 2. Interviewees and documents analysed by organization type and spatial level.

Organization/Organization type	Spatial level	Number of interviewees	Number of documents analysed
Department for Transport (DfT)	National	6	9
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)	National		1
HM Government/Treasury			2
Network Rail	National	1
National Infrastructure Commission	National		1
HS2 Ltd	National		1
Transport for the North (TfN)	Cross-regional	4	12
Regional development organization	Cross-regional/Regional	3	1
Combined authorities	Regional	5	9
Local authorities	Local	5	9
Planning consultancies	Sub-national/regional	2
Academia	n/a	1
Voluntary sector	Sub-national/regional/local	5

Interview transcripts were coded thematically using inductive processes. Subsequent analysis was informed by a review of 45 policy documents produced or commissioned by different organizations drawn from the four spatial levels of strategic planning identified in Table 1. The documentary analysis involved thematic coding alongside the interview data (Table 2). The documents were selected due to their contribution to the planning of NPR, and alongside the interviews conducted provided a rich seam of evidence regarding the motivations, strategies and tactics employed by actors involved in developing proposals for NPR.

Thematic coding of the interview and document data was conducted manually using digital PDF software, with initial codes drawn from a conceptual framework developed as part of a wider project. The relationship between SIs and the planning of transport infrastructure was one of these initial codes, and further sub-codes were developed based on the conceptual framework. The differences and connections in SIs drawn from this analysis informed the identification of four episodic SIs over the research period, as described in section four.

4. Four spatial imaginaries in northern England, 2011–2022

Analysis of interview and documentary data revealed the critical role played by SIs in shaping plans for new infrastructure. The research identified four distinct but connected SIs, each of which underpin transport infrastructure proposals and accompanying agendas for future economic and social development in Northern England. The changing relationships between actors and institutions involved in the planning of NPR were central to the evolution of these SIs. This section examines how the four SIs were constructed, exploring the institutional relationships that shaped them and identifying the role played by contestation between actors allied to differently configured governance spaces.

4.1. Imaginary one: connecting the core cities (2011–14)

Central to the first SI identified is its focus on connecting Northern England’s core cities by improving rail infrastructure. The main institutional change underpinning this focus was the removal of regional-level planning institutions following the election of a Conservative-led coalition government at the 2010 UK general election. Within a year of taking office, the new government abolished Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), established in 1999 by the previous Labour administration. Operating at the ITL1 scale, the three RDAs covering Northern England had formed a loose coalition as part of the earlier Northern Way initiative, which sought to promote a range of pan-Northern transport infrastructure initiatives. Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) were established to assume some of the economic development responsibilities of the RDAs. However, as noted by one interviewee involved in national transport infrastructure planning during this period, the remit of the new LEPs did not include strategic planning or oversight of transport infrastructure plans:

The LEPs couldn’t do the regional job. They’ve done a very good local growth job … , but they don’t do a regional job. So, on transport we felt [the abolition of RDAs] more than other departments because our roads and railways and networks go across all these boundaries and we needed something else to look at them. (DfT Officer 1)

In the absence of formal institutions at a regional or sub-regional level, two institutions promoted a vision of Northern England as a heavily urbanized mega-region anchored by its constituent cities. The first was the Core Cities group, a lobbying body established in 1995 to represent 11 of the largest cities in the UK outside London and Edinburgh, five of them (Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield) located in the study area. The 2011 Localism Act positioned the core cities as central to the Coalition Government’s devolution agenda, granting ministers the power to transfer functions from central government to local authorities, combined authorities and LEPs (DCLG 2011). In 2014, the five Northern core cities published a report, One North, which advocated a multi-modal pan-Northern transport strategy to facilitate stronger intercity links and promote a functionally integrated polycentric economic space that could compete with London (One North 2014). Drawing on earlier research suggesting that levels of commuting between Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire were disproportionately low in comparison to urban areas in the South East of England (Overman et al. 2009), One North highlights the potential of improved transport infrastructure to maximize agglomerative economic growth. Several interviewees from sub-national and regional institutions identified One North as an important influence shaping the spatial parameters of the government’s Northern transport strategy, as well as reinforcing a wider narrative which held that infrastructure investment was the most effective means of triggering economic growth.

The second institution central to this first Northern England spatial imaginary was the UK Treasury, led by the Chancellor George Osborne. Growing recognition within the government of the potential role of transport infrastructure in narrowing interregional inequalities and ‘rebalancing’ the national economy was evident in a series of high-profile think-tank reports produced by IPPR North’s (2012) Northern Economic Futures Commission and the RSA’s (2014) City Growth Commission, as well as No Stone Unturned, a report by an influential former government minister, Lord Heseltine (2012). A common contention of these reports was the need for investment in inter-regional rail links to improve productivity.

This thinking informed the development of the Northern Powerhouse, a multi-city conceptual soft space extending across Northern England. Osborne (2014, 2015), its principal advocate within government, cited transport as one of the four ‘ingredients’ for improving the economy of the Northern Powerhouse, alongside research and innovation, culture and institutional devolution. To help realize the Northern Powerhouse vision of integrated and complementary urban economies, TfN was established in 2015 as a new pan-regional transport body to oversee improvements to intercity infrastructure. TfN was granted statutory status in 2018, giving it powers to develop a strategic transport plan, coordinate and deliver integrated cross-modal and cross-area ticketing, and jointly oversee the Northern and TransPennine rail franchises (TfN 2018). However, TfN lacked financial independence, relying on central government grant funding for its core operations. The Secretary of State for Transport retained the power to intervene ‘in the event of issues with TfN’ (TfN 2015, 11), further constraining its operational autonomy. TfN’s main role has therefore been to design a strategic transport plan and develop plans for NPR, a proposed mix of new and upgraded rail infrastructure connecting Northern cities. The spatial imaginary developed during this period therefore reflects both the spatial preferences of the UK government’s regional development agenda for England, and the emergence of a new institution with responsibility for transport planning at the pan-Northern level but dominated at this point by leadership of the core cities.

Further confirmation of the centrality of intercity transport infrastructure to this agenda was provided by the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in 2014, which pledged to ‘make the cities of the North a powerhouse for the UK economy’ (HM Treasury 2014). Reinforcing this was Rebalancing Britain, a report by HS2 Ltd which sought to link its HS2 rail project to a broader national transport strategy aimed at spatially rebalancing the UK economy. The report emphasized the need to improve east–west transport connectivity and recommended the establishment of a new cross-regional transport planning body covering the five principal city-regions of Northern England (HS2 Ltd 2014). Intermediate stations were not identified as a priority, with a clear emphasis on providing quicker journey times between the major cities. The importance of the Chancellor and the One North report in framing the spatial focus of infrastructure proposals was reiterated by one central government interviewee:

I think there were a lot of calls … off the back of the One North report … for the North to speak with one voice: that was the talismanic phrase which has been repeated a lot. I think Government-wise the Northern Powerhouse was a George Osborne concept. He got very interested in the North in the summer of 2014. He was very keen to initiate transformational changes in the North and also to consider it as one region. (DfT Officer 2)

Interviews with national and regional actors reveal the institutional vacuum created by the abolition of regional institutions after the change of national government in 2010. Key actors in Northern England’s core cities responded by promoting a spatial imaginary which emphasized inter-city connectivity. The demise of the RDAs and the associated pan-regional Northern Way project encouraged leaders in the core cities to engage directly with a receptive Chancellor. Figure 2 illustrates the centrality of infrastructure connecting core cities to this first Northern England spatial imaginary. This initial concept for Northern Powerhouse Rail, from TfN’s first published policy document, focuses primarily on the benefits of reduced travel times between the five core cities of the study area. This imaginary was used not only to cement TfN’s standing as a new institution, but also to endorse its emphasis on inter-city infrastructure investment as a means of fuelling economic development in the core cities, leading eventually to wider regional and national economic growth.

Figure 2. Initial concept for NPR, focusing on reduced travel times between Northern England’s largest cities (HM Government and TfN 2015, 19).

4.2. Imaginary two: incorporating peripheral towns (2015–16)

Following the establishment of TfN in 2015, shifting relationships between actors and institutions across spatial scales were reflected in the emergence of a second imaginary: a spatially more inclusive vision that extended beyond the major cities and gave greater prominence to smaller towns and peripheral areas. Interview responses identified two catalysts for this shift: the governance arrangements adopted by TfN and the publication in 2016 of the Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review.

TfN (2018, 9) adopted a constitution which stated it will ‘endeavour to reach decisions by consensus’, but that any decisions requiring a vote would be weighted by the population of constituent authorities. This arrangement was important in allowing smaller local authorities outside the core cities a more prominent role in debates about transport infrastructure policy. Among those to benefit from membership of TfN’s Partnership Board were geographically peripheral areas such as Cumbria (a largely rural county in England’s North West ITL1 region with a population of around 500,000) and Tees Valley (a combined authority area in the North East ITL1 region largely comprising coastal towns, with a population of 677,000). Unlike previous looser structures such as the Northern Way, TfN’s statutory status meant it was required to formalize the inclusion of smaller and more peripheral local and combined authorities in its decision-making structures. The result was to give such areas greater power, tempering the focus of the Northern Powerhouse initiative on the core cities and their interconnections. According to a DfT officer who worked with TfN since its inception:

I think another benefit that TfN has given other places is you have a place like Cumbria that gets a seat at the table. So somewhere that doesn’t have a loud voice in the wider North has their voice at that level, gets their point across and is an equal partner. For places like Lancashire, Cumbria and Tees Valley, TfN matters a lot to them because it gives them that stronger voice. Whereas perhaps for Greater Manchester, they don’t want TfN treading on their toes. (DfT Officer 3)

Another catalyst for the development of this second Northern England SI was the publication of the Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review (NPIER). Commissioned by TfN, the report aimed to identify ‘distinctive sectoral strengths and capabilities at the level of the North’ and ‘potentials of pan-Northern significance’ (SQW 2016, 2–3). It set out evidence that poor transport connectivity explains Northern England’s weak productivity performance in comparison to the London and South East ITL1 regions. The report identifies four ‘prime capability’ sectors of potential growth – digital, energy, health innovation and advanced manufacturing – which constitute a ‘complementary and distinctive offer for the North’ (SQW 2016, 11). As part of this process of identifying distinctive regional assets with unrealized potential, TfN’s draft strategic plan mapped the locations of large employers operating in the prime capability sectors (Figure 3), highlighting their separation from the core cities. Whereas the first SI identified in the study period articulated the potential for joining-up agglomerative growth in the core cities, NPIER noted that large employers in the prime capability sectors were disproportionately represented in less urbanized areas like Cumbria and Tees Valley.

Figure 3. Location of prime capabilities in the NPIER (TfN 2019, 19).

Publication of the NPIER was identified by officers at the sub-national and regional level as a turning point in the development of this second imaginary, reinforcing the substantive and spatial changes of emphasis heralded by the designation of TfN as a statutory body. In particular, the NPIER is credited with extending the spatial focus of the Northern Powerhouse agenda beyond the core cities and incorporating geographically peripheral areas that historically tended to play a more marginal role in policy decision-making. TfN officers involved in developing the strategic plan reported how the NPIER provided an evidence base for a pan-Northern approach that focused less narrowly on the major cities. This reinforced the introduction of TfN as a formal, cross-regional institution with a remit to address pan-Northern connectivity, prompting a reorientation of the SI for transport infrastructure development. As one TfN officer explained:

In the early days it was the six big cities and the core cities, absolutely. But I think what the Independent Economic Review and the process of that did, was it made us realise that we don’t want to be another London. You don’t want Manchester to become London Mark Two. Because all we’ll do then is recreate the disparities in earning and productivity that’s between the South East and the North, in the North. (TfN Officer 1)

This shift in emphasis was also echoed by interviewees from local institutions. One local authority officer explained how they were keen to influence the NPIER and reorient NPR’s strategy by stressing the importance of employers outside the core cities:

An example of it is in Keighley, where you’ve got a relatively successful business community as well. They very much rely upon movement of goods, movement of services and the M62 [motorway] and traditional rail corridors. We need to be thinking about alternative ways of travelling between Keighley and East Lancashire and Manchester. So, we’ve really worked hard with TfN and others in making sure that narrative is properly understood. (Local authority officer 1, West Yorkshire)

The new SI developed during this period is evident in the Northern Powerhouse Strategy (HM Government and TfN 2015), which leant less heavily on urban economics arguments about the correlation between city size, connectivity and productivity. The new strategy, by contrast, was based on a more inclusive geographical definition of ‘the North’, with less exclusive emphasis on the core cities. In contrast to George Osborne’s (2014) Northern Powerhouse speech, which focused largely on the role of the service and knowledge economies, the Northern Powerhouse Strategy emphasized the importance of businesses outside the core cities, noting that land and resource intensive sectors may require more space away from large urban centres:

Some knowledge sectors are based outside city centres, though can often be found clustering in manufacturing and science parks, or around universities. Chemical, machinery and technology production, automotive and aerospace industries, life sciences, and pharmaceuticals require more floor space and can avoid the high rents associated with denser areas. These sectors may rely more heavily on roads for people and goods, with reliable time-sensitive freight connections to international gateways. Other growth sectors in the North such as logistics, heavy manufacturing and the visitor economy need different transport interventions. (HM Gov & TfN 2015, 15)

4.3. Imaginary three: selecting winners (2017–19)

The third SI emerged as work began on developing a detailed route for NPR. Whereas the first imaginary reflected the emphasis on transport connectivity between the core cities, and the second gave greater weight to peripheral local areas, the third iteration embodied an array of place rivalries as specific local areas vied for infrastructure investment. As discussions emerged about how to translate initial visions into practical decisions, lobbying by local actors about NPR’s detailed alignment was reflected in further shifts in the accompanying SI.

Although the concept of NPR first emerged in 2014, detailed work on a proposed route did not begin until 2016. NPR was quickly identified by TfN as its flagship project, but also one demanding a large portion of its resources. While local responses to NPR varied, several TfN member authorities identified the initiative’s importance and sought to influence its design from an early stage. In West Yorkshire, the study area’s second most populous combined authority area after Greater Manchester, local leaders identified the potential for Bradford (West Yorkshire’s second largest city) to benefit from the proposals. Local authority officers in West Yorkshire highlighted the opportunity to promote Bradford as a strategic point on the route connecting Leeds and Manchester, emphasizing the size and economic potential of the city. As one local authority officer put it:

Effectively there was a recognition from West Yorkshire that we needed to have some kind of interface with NPR and so that was where the Bradford link came from. If you actually look at the size of Bradford’s economy, it’s on a par with most of the core cities. (Local authority officer 2, West Yorkshire)

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) committed to an ‘NPR Network that radically improves journey times and frequencies without causing a detriment to the existing network’ (WYCA 2016a, 187). A new line would be necessary, it argued, because incremental improvements would not allow the proposed 30-minute journey time between Manchester and Leeds to be met. However, the combined authority also argued that TfN’s remit had been too narrowly focused on links between the core cities and that NPR should instead consider including additional calling points such as Bradford (WYCA 2016b). An independent study was commissioned to inform the response of WYCA and Leeds City Region to the emerging NPR plan. The lack of detail on NPR was at this stage considered advantageous to WYCA, with the independent study highlighting the ‘opportunity to influence the “shape” of NPR’ as ‘no conclusion has yet been drawn regarding the preferred alignments of the new rail network’ (JMP Systra 2016, 6).

This report was used to support WYCA officers and senior politicians in the region in their engagement with TfN. Presenting Bradford as a critical nexus to the proposed NPR network and the Northern Powerhouse concept more broadly, political and civic leaders in the city helped to develop a narrative emphasizing Bradford’s unrealized economic potential and asserted that new investment could enable a more integrated and therefore productive Leeds-Bradford metro area within a wider NPR network of linked cities (BMDC 2018). In response, a Bradford station was included in the emerging vision for NPR in the 2018 draft Strategic Transport Plan and later confirmed in the final published version of the plan in 2019 (see Figure 4). DfT Officers involved in developing NPR confirmed the success of Bradford and WYCA’s lobbying efforts, with the economic arguments presented as central to the inclusion of Bradford in plans for NPR:

I think [the Bradford station proposal] came about because we looked at the economic evidence and we looked at the railway data and I think we made a conclusion that we can draw a lot of economic benefits by serving these intermediate markets. And those economic benefits would exceed the journey time penalties. The inclusion of intermediate markets improves the agglomeration argument because Bradford is very close to Leeds, it’s part of the same combined authority. It’s the same functional economic area. There’s potential to foster agglomeration between those cities. (DfT Officer 4)

Figure 4. Preferred vision for NPR, including a station in Bradford (TfN 2019).

4.4. Imaginary four: ‘levelling up’ (2019–22)

The fourth and final SI identified in the research encapsulated a further broadening in the spatial focus of transport infrastructure planning, involving a pivot away from the totemic pan-regional mega-project of NPR towards smaller projects. This change reflected the advent of the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda, which played an important part in the Conservatives securing a large parliamentary majority at the 2019 General Election. As an electoral slogan targeted primarily at voters living outside large urban centres, Levelling Up responded to what was said to be a growing perception that smaller cities and towns had been overlooked by successive governments (Jennings, McKay, and Stoker 2021). The politics of Levelling Up also built on sensitivities emerging after the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, which held that parts of the UK had been ignored or ‘left behind’ by the policies of previous governments. Reflecting a preoccupation with developing the economies of large metropolitan areas, earlier national spatial policy was said in this reading not only to have widened interregional inequality, but to have accentuated intraregional disparity in economic fortunes between large cities and the smaller towns in their hinterlands (Gray and Broadhurst 2023; Tomaney and Pike 2020).

While the Levelling Up agenda has faced criticism for its ambiguity and failure to extend much beyond superficial political rhetoric (Newman 2021), the aspiration to improve transport infrastructure initially continued to feature as a central part of national spatial policy. Although George Osborne, the key political architect of NPR, departed government in 2016 following the EU referendum, the Conservative Party (2019, 27) officially continued its support for the project. In its 2019 election manifesto, the party committed to develop connections ‘between Leeds and Manchester and then focus on Liverpool, Tees Valley, Sheffield and Newcastle’, as well as improving local transport services and promoting further devolution of transport planning powers. The Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) for the North and Midlands, published in 2021, set out more detailed objectives for infrastructure investment, notably NPR and HS2. Reflecting a wider shift away from large-scale mega-projects and the creation of a comprehensive high-speed rail network, plans for NPR were significantly downgraded, abandoning earlier proposals for a newly constructed line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford. Instead, the primary focus of the IRP shifted to incremental improvements of the established rail network, with NPR comprising some new build high-speed infrastructure and piecemeal upgrades along existing routes.

The advent of Levelling Up, and the modification to NPR as part of the national IRP, were echoed in some contradictory shifts in the narratives guiding and representing spatial policy for Northern England. The downsized NPR signified a move away from the spatially inclusive imaginary of a holistic and integrated Northern England that, to some extent, underpinned the earlier NPIER. In its place was a return to a spatially more selective imaginary which, despite the ostensible focus on smaller urban areas in the Levelling Up agenda, initially viewed infrastructure investment as a means of facilitating connectivity and linking the economies of the North’s core cities to unleash further agglomerative growth. The revised NPR, the IRP argued, should link the ‘three largest economic areas in the North, … unifying labour markets [to] create … new job and business opportunities’ (DfT 2021, 94–95).

Revisions to the NPR also signified a return to a more top-down model of decision-making. NPR had been a ‘co-cliented’ project, led by TfN in collaboration with a dedicated team in DfT, alongside additional partnerships with HS2 Ltd and Network Rail. Following the publication of the IRP, however, it was announced that TfN would relinquish its allotted budget and responsibility for NPR funding would be assumed by central government. Co-ordination for the project would instead be a responsibility of the DfT’s Northern Transport Acceleration Council, a body with no formal governance structures or decision-making powers, and which lacked any direct mechanisms for local stakeholder involvement.

These reforms represented a re-centralisation of transport planning powers in England, at odds with the rhetoric accompanying Levelling Up and the longer-term emphasis on devolution to local areas. The result was to reduce TfN’s autonomy in shaping NPR, and the ability of local actors directly to influence decision-making about strategic infrastructure development. This was evident in the abandonment of TfN’s ambitious plans for a new high-speed line from Manchester to Leeds via Bradford, in effect dismissed by central government on the grounds of poor value for money and replaced by a cheaper ‘Hybrid Core’ option (see Figure 5) of upgrades and some targeted new build (DfT 2022). This new SI for Northern England focused more on infrastructure to support local rather than regional policy, reflecting the commitment of one of the 12 ‘missions’ in the Levelling Up white paper to bring local transport ‘significantly closer to the standards of London, with improved services, simpler fares and integrated ticketing’ (HM Government 2022, 176). While the analysis accompanying the white paper highlighted the importance of inter-city connectivity, there was no mention of either TfN or multi-region subnational transport bodies. This final SI identified in the research discarded the idea of a unified Northern England as the basis for transport investment, instead embodying a strategy of investment in improved connections between and within local areas.

Figure 5. Integrated Rail Plan ‘Core Network’ (DfT 2021).

5. Spatial imaginaries and temporal dimensions of infrastructure politics and policymaking

The four SIs identified provide a valuable lens through which to explore how tensions and conflicts between actors and institutions at different scales influence, and are influenced by, the production of plans for major transport infrastructure. By identifying four connected but distinct imaginaries over time, the research findings reveal the changing factors shaping transport infrastructure strategy in Northern England, demonstrating the role played by local, regional and national political actors in adapting and reconfiguring SIs linked to a series of changing and competing spatial policy priorities. The four episodes and the key institutional influences which shaped them are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. Evolution of SIs in Northern England, 2011–2022.

Spatial imaginary	Period	Spatial focus	Institutional inputs and influences	Policy outputs
Connecting the Core Cities	2011–2014	Northern England’s largest cities: Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield	Abolition of RDAs Influence of Core Cities group George Osborne’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ speech	NPR initial concept in Northern Transport Strategy
Incorporating peripheral towns	2015–2016	Northern England as a spatial whole	NPIER TfN constitution	Northern Powerhouse Strategy
Selecting winners	2017–2019	Urban areas outside the core cities: Bradford, Warrington	Local lobbying	NPR preferred route in TfN Strategic Transport Plan
Levelling Up	2019–2022	Smaller towns and cities, coastal areas, former mining towns	Post-Brexit ‘left behind’ discourse Reduced funding for TfN Removal of TfN ‘co-client’ status	Integrated Rail Plan

The analysis here deepens our understanding of how institutional relationships across different scales influence the production of SIs. The four episodic imaginaries reflect changes in relationships between local, regional, sub-national and national institutions with responsibility for transport planning. A series of persistent conflicts about the purpose of rail infrastructure and its relationship to wider economic objectives, alongside the introduction of new institutions at the cross-regional (TfN) and regional (combined authorities and metro mayors) levels have produced conflicting imaginaries. The first imaginary, stressing the importance of transport connectivity between the core cities of Northern England, emerged from the abolition of regional policy institutions, which allowed the Core Cities group to gain more influence in alliance with the Treasury. The second, spatially more expansive imaginary focused more on smaller cities and towns, reflecting the priorities of the newly established sub-national planning body, TfN, and its subsequent development of NPIER. The third imaginary, emphasizing a select group of infrastructure ‘winners’, was the result of combined authorities exercising their increasing influence at the sub-national level via negotiation with TfN, and at the national level with DfT. The final episode reflects the recentralisation of planning for NPR following the 2019 general election and the political salience of the ‘Levelling-Up’ agenda for national spatial policy, emphasizing local connectivity.

By exploring the spatial politics of infrastructure development over the study period, the research findings presented in this article provide a dynamic analysis to extend existing static accounts of the role of SIs in institution-building and policymaking. The relative frequency with which SIs for transport planning in Northern England altered was a reflection of multiple local and regional institutional agendas, and their intersection with changes in national government policy. At the same time, the transience of each SI also echoes the experience of earlier efforts to develop new soft spaces of governance (Hincks, Deas, and Haughton 2017), and in particular the struggles of new governance and policy geographies to secure any wider traction or popular buy-in, beyond national, regional and local political actors. Recent work by Pitidis, Coaffee, and Bouikidis (2023) emphasizes the importance of broadly based civic engagement in ensuring that urban and regional plans are collectively developed endeavours underpinned by broad public assent. The absence of such engagement in the case of NPR may have contributed to the frequency with which its spatial focus changed, as reflected in the sequence of imaginaries identified.

Neuman’s (2012) lifecycle approach highlights the role of imaginaries in developing planning policies. Whereas Neuman’s empirical research in Madrid demonstrated the role played by an SI over 20 years in ultimately fostering consensus regarding the contested spatial focus of a new plan, Northern England’s experience was characterized by a more fitful process, involving four competing and overlapping imaginaries over the 11 years assessed. While the plan itself was the nexus for contestation in Neuman’s work, in Northern England the nascent character of TfN (the institution tasked with developing the plan for NPR) meant that conflict related to the organization’s structure and working methods, as well as the spatial and substantive focus of the development proposals it oversaw.

6. Conclusion

This article adopts a dynamic temporal perspective to examine the role of multi-scalar politics in the production of spatial imaginaries associated with competing visions for transport infrastructure development. The findings contribute to an understanding of the role of SIs in transport infrastructure planning, highlighting three principal challenges for planning policymakers.

Firstly, underlying the four episodic imaginaries is a persistent conflict regarding the extent to which transport infrastructure planning should focus on realizing the potential for agglomerative growth in large cities, or alternatively improving economic outcomes in ‘left behind’ places. The persistence of this conflict provides part of the explanation for the shifting emphases of the four SIs, linked in part to the changing priorities of national government, but also to a series of interactions between local areas with competing agendas. The result has been to reinforce uncertainty about the strategic direction of NPR. The emergence of the final SI, constructed primarily within central government and accompanied by reforms to recentralise responsibility for the NPR project, reflects the latest staging post in this continuing tension in national spatial policy between the promotion of agglomerative urban growth and addressing the needs of marginalized local areas.

A second conclusion from the research concerns the limited autonomy afforded to new institutions in respect of infrastructure project planning. Although TfN emerged against the backdrop of a national agenda, developed over successive governments, which promoted devolved governance and policymaking for economic development, the practical reality for a major infrastructure project was that local agreement about future strategy ultimately relied upon central government assent in order to realize aspirational local visions. While local actors embarked on a lengthy and sometimes fractious process of constructing and revising a series of SIs, the extent of devolved decision-making remained limited as the strategic direction of infrastructure investment was dictated by central government. This in turn reinforces the need not only for consistency and long-termism in the national planning of major infrastructure, but also the importance of cities and regions reaching a consensus about transport priorities. To achieve this means that negotiation among local and regional partners needs to be geared towards the substance of spatial development strategies. For Northern England, however, the case study evidence suggests that this proved elusive, as negotiation between local actors focused as much on the desire to procure investment and reinforce the standing of fledgling devolved institutions as it did on the substance of infrastructure strategy or its delivery.

The third conclusion also relates to the need for long-termism in planning for infrastructure. The case study evidence demonstrates that many of the local and regional institutions involved in negotiation around infrastructure development priorities remained in their infancy, emerging in many cases as part of central government’s wider devolution agenda. TfN itself was created as a pan-Northern institution only after a twenty-year campaign for the establishment of a statutory transport body for Northern England. If institutions are to acquire the legitimacy and capacity needed to articulate local priorities and negotiate with central government over resource allocation, there is a need to ensure that there are more fully developed mechanisms for meaningful civic engagement in order that SIs become collectively owned and can therefore play a more meaningful role in structuring transport infrastructure planning decisions.

Ethical approval

This research received all relevant ethical approvals from the University of Manchester School of Environment, Education and Development ethics committee prior to the research being conducted.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all at IPPR North for their valuable support for this research, and the ESRC for the funding which enabled it. The authors also wish to thank colleagues at the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place for helpful feedback on early drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under funding award reference 1771523.