Quantitative Analysis of Service Business Connections

South East England has historically been the main focus of economic activity and wealth production in the UK. From about 1730 to 1930, this pattern was temporarily modified by the Industrial Revolution which generated new industries in the Midlands and North of England, Wales and Scotland. But since then London and the South East have reasserted their primacy, first through new manufacturing industries and latterly through advanced business services for global markets, making this the UK's most productive and prosperous region in terms of GDP per head. As already explained in the Introduction to the Action 1.1 report, however, the UK's official regional boundaries fail to serve as an accurate unit for analysing this region. The South East England Mega-City-Region, as defined for Polynet, actually extends across five UK Standard Regions, to include all or most of the Greater London, South East and East of England regions, and smaller parts of the East Midlands and South West regions. The MCR, thus defined, extends up to 160 km from central London and has an area of 29,184 km2. At the 2001 Census it had a population of 18,984,298 and a total employment of 9,040,000. As the Action 1.1 report also explains, viewed more closely it consists of no less than 51 FURs dominated by London, which – extending for an average of 60 km from the centre – has a total population of 9,025,960 people, nearly half the total MCR population, and overlaps six of the other 50, sometimes completely surrounding them. a distribution that confirms the picture of the MCR as dominated by small to medium-sized towns and their spheres of influence. as with population, employment was distributed quite evenly among the other, medium-sized, FURs. The largest single employment centre outside London was Oxford with 307,000 jobs, followed by Southampton with 286,000; almost exactly half the non-London FURs, 26 out of 50, had between 50,000 and 100,000 jobs. Thus, while London remains the dominantcentre in the region, with by far the greatest concentration of business service firms, these other centres have grown and attracted a range of business service industries which form a substantial part of their economic activity. As set out in the original research proposal, Action 1.2 has been designed to apply methods and techniques, successfully developed by the GaWC (Globalisation and World Cities) team at Loughborough University, within a new regional spatial context. The GaWC methodology sets …