Levelling Up: Using the Complex Adaptive Assemblage to Better Understand Regional Development

Over the past few years there have been many different attempts to address the significant territorial inequalities in the UK. From devolution and regional assemblies, European Union Structural Funding, to the Northern Powerhouse and most recently following the 2019 general election, Levelling Up. However, despite sustained policy emphasis, regional inequalities persist in the UK. Even more so, the disproportionately high Leave vote in regions which received the highest levels of Structural Funds, signals that if Levelling Up is to be successful, we need to do something differently. Whilst this paper directly addresses policy in the UK, it addresses live policy questions throughout Western nations. Using ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the UK and in the USA and drawing on a philosophical heritage of Delueze and Guattari, complex systems theory and evolutionary economic geography, this paper asks what happens if we begin with the starting point of viewing regions as a complex adaptive regional assemblage. Members of the public were asked what they thought and felt about living in their region in an attempt to understand how they understood and engaged with local economies. What becomes clear is that there are many spaces where individuals and economic developments do not connect up, knowledge and physical flows are fragmented, and which makes engagement with newer economic shifts harder or impossibile. These include factors as basic as knowing what kind of new opportunities exist and how to access them, to infrastructural connectivities such as adequate transportation and internet. The paper argues that for levelling up to be best achieved, it needs to pay attention to physical and knowledge connectivities if it is to utilise and amplify the spaces of possibility that it creates.