A multi polar Britain

[Tyr]

It is often said that in Britain London is our New York, Los Angles and Las Vegas all rolled into one.
Which is a big problem.
The entire country is just so overly London-centric.
This has ebbed and flowed with time with the victorian era being a particular high of balance- though London was still number 1 in most respects it didn't quite utterly dominate the others added together as today.

So...I wonder....how could we get a far more balanced Britain today?
How could we make it so that though London may still be the biggest and richest city it isn't the only focal point of the country?

 

[Rex Mundi]

It's hard. America is a lot bigger than Britain but still faces the same problem to a lesser extent, with a lot of economic and cultural activity being disproportionately centered around New York. The isles don't seem big enough to accommodate the equivalent of a Los Angeles in addition to London. If London was still the biggest and richest city in a multi-polar Britain, then each pole would have to be far less significant than London OTL, so that Britain's individual cities might pale in comparison to America's individual cities. Whereas, for instance, the OTL Britain has London, a highly prestigious location regarded as a world center, the equivalent of New York or Tokyo in terms of its global significance. If you spread the wealth, so to speak, then a bunch of regions would fare better than OTL, but you wouldn't have that one important, distinctive city to showcase.

 

[Meadow]

Manchester with an industrial revolution PoD can be interesting, Birmingham under a souped-up Joe Chamberlain (read Use Your Loaf) can also get involved.

With a sinister enough slave-trade era PoD, Bristol could jostle to the front of the pack.

 

[V-J]

Well, a better transition of the north from an industrial to a post-industrial economy would be the obvious one, but I'm not sure how that could be achieved in precise policy terms. Political economy is not my area of expertise. You are always going to have London as the pre-eminent centre though, by some margin; it always was from early medieval times onwards.

 

[Pikers3]

Maybe in WW2, the fear of German invasion and German bombardment makes the government think that London is too risky to keep all the major government departments there so they move them to Manchester and Liverpool.

Then then advise all major companies and businesses to do the same.

After the end of the war most still move back down to London, however some minor departments stay and many many businesses do too or keep major offices up there.

Then have the government implement restrictive planning laws around London but not around Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield.
Soon you would have a multi-polar but joined up metropolis of 12.5 million people.

When deindustiralisation comes, it is much better managed than OTL and moves to move big government departments to these cities done earlier. With the left-over businesses from the war providing more commercial focus in the Manchester/Liverpool area. This allows the Manchester-Liverpool area to provide a larger counter-weight to London. Although London will always be the most important city.

 

[Tyr]

What brought me to think about this was actually a documentary about Blackpool and how it was once such an entertainment centre.
Wonder if we could avoid it turning utterly uncool and have it as a sort of British Las Vegasy place.
There have frequently been talks about rights to super casinos being built in certain areas...wonder if that could be done early for Blackpool.

Another idea I've had is to somehow reduce inter-city rivalry across the middle of the country; water down the Liverpool-Manchester and Lancashire-Yorkshire rivalries and have them see solidly see London as the opponent, not each other. As a bit of future history I would like to see more concentration on Manchester as Britain's second city with good links to Liverpool tying it more firmly into the same large urban area and Leeds right next door.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Some sort of Home Rule for All/federalisation in the 19th century would help with this - this would at least draw away a lot of the political centralisation that occurred IOTL as competent regional government would most likely deliver much of what a centralised Westminster government does. It might also break / reduce the centre's power over local government.

Say 8-9 English regional entities (including London), 4 Irish, then the Welsh and the Scots (I don't really know how well the latter home nations would take to further subnational units) and all the attendant regional capitals. Then have those Regions appoint members to the Upper House, like in Germany. Giving the regional assemblies/governments a direct stake in the central government may defang the latter?

 

[Thoresby]

One possibility would be with a re-jigging of county boundaries, different suburban growth patterns and a bit of economic hand-waving you could have Manchpool as a single city dominating the North-West with a population of 5 million and economic and social influence to match.

 

[Phalanx]

Somehow have the Scottish central belt built up until Glasgow and Edinburgh have merged into one huge city?