This section of our resource guide for preparing Local Economic Assessments contains links to information about economic geographies.
With regions no longer the focus of evidence-gathering and policy-making, and increased emphasis on local decision-making, considering functional relationships between places is likely to become more important in policy-making.
Understanding these relationships—which vary depending on which aspect is being considered—is crucial to ensuring policies are locally relevant and delivered in the right way.
The main data sources can be used to determine economic geographies, and a range of guidance explains different approaches to doing this.
A good starting point is the analysis by the Observatory on sub-regional dynamics. Advantage West Midlands are looking at more detailed typologies of the different functional areas identified, which will be added to this guide later in 2010.
Also, it's worth looking at other work on economic geographies in other parts of the UK.
Browse the resources using these links:
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If you have resources you think others would find useful, please submit them to our Resource Catalogue (requires login) or contact stephen.howarth@wmro.org.