Introduction

Today, competitiveness involves leveraging numerous different assets to give firms and support institutions for local areas advantage in a global not merely national contest. Thus, what was once relatively marginal to firm competitiveness, like the land-use planning system, moves on to the radar of competing firms in new ways. In an era when markets have been liberalised and state interventions are judged in terms of their market-friendliness, regulating market failures is something of a terra incognita for firms and policy makers alike. One such area concerns negative ‘spillovers’ or diseconomies of agglomeration that arise from rapid growth of economic activity in new places or old places where it has not previously been particularly pronounced. One such kind of location is the university town. Now that the value of scientific and other creative knowledge has been revalued upwards as global competitiveness entails more knowledge-intensive production for more discerning markets, university towns with global knowledge-competitiveness can be growth nodes. If they are blessed with medieval townscapes set in heritage landscapes such growth is both a source of political conflict and a lightning-rod for urban containment policy. New solutions to the sensitive issue of growth versus environment will be required in future. This chapter explores one candidate solution, which is to encourage controlled growth in urban networks.

The chapter involves exploring the validity of ‘urban networks’, meaning enhanced communications and facilities linkage between neighbouring towns and cities in furthering new economic growth without excessive negative externalities and sustainability implications. The focus is on ‘Areas of Economic Pressure’ in South and East England. In London and in smaller, knowledge-intensive urban economies like Cambridge and Oxford, there are intense economic growth pressures concerning politically strongly defended land and townscape heritages. In these ‘knowledge economies’ where indices of high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-based services (OECD, 1999) are high, quality of life is a major asset for firms seeking to recruit and retain highly qualified intellectual labour. Widespread shortages of software engineers, in particular, cause inflationary income-bidding, which raises costs of living and lowers the supply of intermediate skills in industry and public services due to the lack of affordable housing and inadequate transportation.