foothills must enhance Manchester’s capacity to attract inward investment in advanced producer services and cultural industries. Such positive synergies must play a key strategic role at sub-regional and at regional level. Coming back to that starting question, whether or not Central Lancashire is a natural city-region, it was indeed necessary to invent it. For experience has shown that city-region status has helped produce an evidence base, enabling partners to understand for the first time how their regional economy works and can be made to work better. And, just because the region lacks a single dominant city, the difficult process of generating a development plan has goaded partners to prioritise effectively - an outcome few could have predicted. For the future, the key lies in strengthening and deepening this process through some form of written contract – an idea already being explored. But, however the city-region debate is framed elsewhere, whether or not there is a case somewhere for city-region-wide governance in the form of a mayor and executive, such a concept makes no geographical sense here. If there is scope for reorganisation, it must recognise the reality: that each of the four major urban places has a natural hinterland, going outside its boundaries to encompass a wider local sub-region. Central Lancashire’s enduring characteristic is that it is and will remain polycentric.
REFERENCES Hall, P., Thomas, R., Gracey, H., Drewett, R. (1973), The Containment of Urban England, London: George Allen and Unwin. Harding, A., Robson, B. (2006), A Framework for City-Regions, London: ODPM.
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