Evidence, policy and the politics of regional development: the case of high speed rail in the United Kingdom

Tomaney, John and Marques, Pedro 2013. Evidence, policy and the politics of regional development: the case of high speed rail in the United Kingdom. Environment and Planning C 31 (3) , pp. 414-427. 10.1068/c11249r

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Abstract

Geographers have often reflected on the impact of their research on policy making. Contributions usually focus on the (ir)relevance of research topics or on the pressures to ‘publish or perish’ that discourage academics from engaging with applied work. In this paper we will focus instead on the difficulty in engaging with the political process, even when the evidence appears robust and if policy implications are relatively clear. We use the example of high-speed rail and its impacts on territorial inequalities to reflect on the decision-making process in the UK, where the government is currently considering building a new high-speed line. We argue that, despite fairly strong evidence suggesting that high-speed rail is likely to deepen inequalities between the regions in the UK, currently this project is still being hailed as a strategy to spread economic activity and ‘rebalance’ the British economy. We identify some of the reasons for this perverse outcome.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Uncontrolled Keywords:	regional inequalities, high-speed rail, transport infrastructure, policy, politics
Publisher:	Pion
ISSN:	0263-774X
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2019 09:05
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/72055

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