Local Dimensions of Closure

Abstract

In recent years the gap between levels of unemployment in the North and South of Great Britain has widened very considerably. Not all of the South is prosperous; the London conurbation contains many areas that are desperately deprived and there are pockets of high unemployment outside the capital as well as in it. Equally, not all of the North is poor; some places, most notably market towns in the better off agricultural and tourist areas have flourished economically over the last decade. In part, this unevenness within regions is a product of a second related trend, whereby unemployment has increased much more rapidly in the larger towns and cities than it has in predominantly rural areas. These two processes together have led to a growing geographical and social polarisation between north and south on the one hand, and between the larger towns and cities and the rest of the country on the other.