A fascinating report from the Centre for Cities describes the changing economies of British cities over the past 100 years. They find that the key drivers of change have been:
- The spread of electricity and rise of road transport
- Containerisation
- Air travel
- Continually increasing globalisation
- The internet
Those cities that have managed to reinvent their economies, mostly in the south, have created jobs in activities such as IT and digital media. Those that have struggled to adapt have replicated their economies, swapping cotton mills for call centres and dock yards for distribution sheds – with significantly average lower wages than the reinventing cities.