UK Urban Futures Commission
The RSA’s UK Urban Futures Commission unlocks the potential of UK cities, to drive economic, social and environmental improvements for residents and the country.
Local Prosperity Plans
Local Prosperity Plans are the RSA’s locally led approach to crafting inclusive economic strategies for people and places.
Local Prosperity Plans bring together the relevant elements of our place-based interventions – ranging from industrial policy and skills development to nurturing social capital and creating sustainable urban spaces – to co-produce a tailored plan for a place (or extend an existing plan) designed to grow opportunities for all.
The guiding principle behind our approach is that an economic growth that only focuses on nurturing specific high-growth ‘superstar’ sectors will always fall short of delivering broad-based economic opportunities., An inclusive strategy must start from the skills people have today and recognise the everyday challenges they face, whether they live in a city, town, rural area, or countryside, to maximise the chances of benefiting from economic development.
The initiative recognises that local leaders and communities are best placed to outline a shared vision for a place’s future. However, local actors may benefit from partnering with the RSA to help leverage the analysis, tools, and regional coalitions to achieve this goal.
Our approach is shaped by insights from the RSA’s rich history of place-based work. Local ownership, clarity of purpose and objectives, alongside a small number of delivery initiatives at scale, are the golden threads running through the strategies of successful places. Consequently, we support places to formulate plans by:
- Using a rigorous, mixed-methods research approach to identify a place’s existing strengths, future opportunities and key challenges across economic, social and natural systems.
- Convening a coalition of local leaders from public, private and third sectors, as well as residents, to co-develop the plan and own it.
- Drive impact through the ‘four Ms’: setting a small suite of missions, milestones and metrics, and mobilising private finance and civil society behind the plan.
Why new local plans are needed
The UK stands at a crossroads. The ‘take back control’ tensions that underlay Brexit have not been resolved. Too often, where you are born and who you happen to know determine people’s life chances.
Stagnant local economies, poor job prospects, poverty, deprivation and lack of trust all interact in vicious, reinforcing cycles with the result that people are increasingly turning to those who offer easy ‘black and white’ answers to complex problems. Where people do acquire the capabilities and connections necessary to thrive, the growing geographical inequality at the heart of our economy means they frequently must move away to fulfil their potential due to the absence of opportunities where they live.
For the areas affected, this cocktail of factors has consequences not only for local people but also for surrounding areas and at the national level. The absence of an adequate response has thrown up key challenges:
- An overreliance on narrow economic growth models that fail to widen opportunities for all residents.
- Low trust in institutions and government to deliver change.
- Demand for local leaders and residents to decide their future
Tailored policies for greater impact
There is growing national recognition that policy choices cannot be one-size-fits-all – they must be able to account for the unique characteristics of a place.
In England, the government is devolving powers to Mayoral Strategic Authorities and reforming local authorities. As part of this, it is placing a legal obligation on places to produce ‘Local Growth Plans’ and a range of related strategic planning documents, including spatial plans, skills plans and transport strategies.
However, devolution and the Local Growth Plans, as currently conceived, will be an inadequate response to the challenges faced by many areas. Recent RSA analysis shows that around 80% of people work outside of the sectors and occupations that the government wants to develop under the new industrial strategy.
Many of the new strategic authorities are not typical city-regions where a plan focused on thriving city centres can serve residents’ needs. There is well-established evidence that economic outcomes are influenced by factors often considered beyond the scope of an economic growth strategy, such as health, housing, and social capital.
A materially different and bolder approach is required to create widespread opportunity and generate inclusive economic growth – a Local Prosperity Plan.
Inclusive growth through social connections
A transformative widening of opportunities, deepening of social connections and improved access to ‘good work’ need to be at the heart of an inclusive local economic strategy.
Being in work is a necessary condition for reaching one’s potential, but this needs to be combined with social connections for community and individual wellbeing. This means taking a broader view of the ingredients necessary to build an economy that works for more people in a region.
We have developed a toolkit that enables plans to be shaped for more complex geographies that lack a single economic centre, and for leaders who understand the importance of combining economic, social, and environmental factors. The RSA has identified four principles for Local Prosperity Plans:
- A top-down approach that nurtures superstar sectors is necessary but not sufficient.
- Creating jobs alone is not enough. For a strategy to be inclusive, it must create jobs that are attainable to people based on their existing capabilities and experience.
- An inclusive growth strategy needs to address the social barriers – such as health, housing, transport and social capital – that prevent people from getting into and progressing in work.
- The strategy must resonate with all parts of the area, including both urban and rural areas. This is not “jam-spreading”; it is taking a place-specific and comprehensive view of the economy we want to build together.
How we want to see places prosper
As part of our Prosperous Places work, we have developed an approach to designing and implementing place-based plans that is at the frontier of best practice.
At the core of Prosperous Places is the belief that economic, social, and natural systems are interdependent and should be considered together when diagnosing problems or developing solutions. The approach combines cutting-edge quantitative analysis with qualitative and participatory methods to develop a plan tailored to an area’s unique economic, social, and natural characteristics.
RSA area of work
Prosperous Places
Prosperous Places is a suite of interventions that respond to the unique ambitions and challenges of places.
We recognise that local leaders and residents know their places best. Further, most places will have elements of existing strategies they want to build upon.
Consequently, by partnering with local organisations, we complement their capabilities, knowledge, and experience with our multidisciplinary team of researchers, designers, and delivery specialists, drawing on specialist expertise and our global network of Fellows. We also leverage our relationships with major investors and social impact investors to mobilise private capital alongside public capital to achieve the vision.
LPPs draws on this unique mix of assets and capabilities to deploy a modular approach that allows us to tailor work to places’ varying starting points:
Mapping
Using a rigorous, mixed-methods research approach to identify a place’s strengths, opportunities and challenges across economic, social and natural systems.
Convening
Draw together a coalition of local leaders from public, private and third sectors, as well as residents, to co-develop the plan and help deliver it.
Driving impact
Set a small suite of goals, develop a few large-scale propositions explicitly aimed at delivering these goals, and mobilise private finance behind the plan.
The result is a single, long-term, integrated strategic approach to delivering inclusive growth for people who live, work, and study in a place, which goes beyond outdated, narrow economic strategies to spread opportunity as widely as possible and create long-lasting systemic change.
Learn about our other Prosperous Places interventions
East Midlands Inclusive Growth Commission
The East Midlands Inclusive Growth Commission is tasked with recommending an ambitious, long term and evidence-based plan to unleash potential and deliver prosperity for communities across the region.
Creative Corridors
We’re bringing together leaders of the UK’s regions to grow the impact of the creative industries and connect existing clusters of activity to unleash potential.
Revealing Social Capital
We want to better understand how social connections between people affect the opportunities they have in their lives. We call this ‘social capital’.
Updates from our Local Prosperity Plans work
Blog
Prosperous Places: creating thriving communities
With regional growth at the top of the agenda, it is vital that we create thriving communities across economic, social and natural perspectives. Prosperous Places is a suite of interventions aimed at responding to the unique ambitions and challenges of places.
Blog
Leading for a brighter urban future
UK Urban Futures Commission Leadership Researcher Joan Munro discusses how long-term government support could help council leaders and their partners move further and faster.
Blog
Regenerating places: redefining prosperity for UK cities
Regenerating cities is at the core of our Design for Life mission. Unlocking cities’ full potential holds the key to building a regenerative future for people, places and planet. Tom Stratton, RSA Chief of Staff, discusses.
