Commentary: Rethinking Regional Regeneration

The UK’s economic model is broken, stuck as it is in a low-productivity, low-wage and low-growth cycle whence it will not escape by way of disrupting the old orthodoxies alone. Higher levels of public spending and taxation are necessary but not sufficient conditions to address the profound problems that beset Britain, notably the deep disparities of wealth, power and social status across the country (Pabst, 2021a). Among the 38 industrial economies of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the UK has some of the worst spatial inequalities both between and within the regions of the hour home nations, especially England (Carrascal-Incera et al., 2020; Haldane, 2019).