Transport and urban regeneration

Transport is frequently seen as the key to regeneration, for it provides businesses and employers with access to resources that they need to operate, and indeed where transport is a constraint on such access, investment may be crucial. Even where existing transport is not evidently a constraint on activity, it may still be outperformed by transport in competing localities. Some of the resources employers need — such as a good workforce — may be in limited supply and, if employers in one area have good access to them, this may imply that employers elsewhere do not. A consequence of this can be that some forms of well-intentioned investment can have unexpected distributional effects, even if their contribution to the national economy is positive. This paper discusses how and why this might happen, illustrating the argument with a model developed to explore how the balance of advantage and disadvantage can play out among competing locations over time. This model — the Urban Dynamic Model — has been used to support work being done for the Northern Way regeneration initiative, where it has shown how strategic approaches to transport can shape patterns of employment activity, sometimes to the gain of one area and the loss of another, depending on the patterns of connectivity provided. Following a brief discussion of the key issues, the paper provides an outline description of the model and how it was used to test two contrasting transport strategies in northern England. The summary indicates lessons that can apply in the case study and more widely.