When referring to a regions such as London and the South East (London is regarded as the largest metropolis in Britain and also a premier global city, the South East is regarded as its hinterland), a number of problems arise in context of definition since there are in essence two opposing views regarding whether ‘territory’ is objective or subjective. The objective view sees regions as rigid, calculated and mapped-out entities, while the subjective approach
regards such entities as concepts (Glasson, 1992, p.36). Increasingly, economic regions and sub-regions are defined by their role, function, activity and influence rather than in terms of political or administrative boundaries (Mogridge and Parr, 1997, p.98).1 Trying to find a coherent framework which best identifies regional boundaries is often a difficult task, since increasingly 'You can’t see a region, because it is an interpretation of events' (Jensen and Leijon, 1996, p.29).2 Further, uncertainty surrounding the concept of a region is underlined by the changing concept of space itself. Subjectively:
the significance of borders was derived from the importance of territory as an organising principle of political and social life. The functions and meaning of borders have always been inherently ambiguous and contradictory; and these characteristics seem to take on a new salience with claims about the ‘borderless world’ and the ‘space of places’ giving way to the ‘space of flows’.
(Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999, p.594)
Ultimately, the notion of a region is never precise, but means different things to different people, enterprises, organisations or institutions, and thus ultimately is dependent upon context. In addition, regional boundaries can vary significantly over time due to socio- economic change such as population variance, political reform, social circumstances and so on. In this regard regions are identified as territories large enough internally to enable substantial change in the distribution of population and employment to take place, yet small enough for planning problems to be seen as a whole (Glasson, 1992).3
The establishment of planning regions in the post-war period was seen as a midway point for both local and national government in defining not only sub-regional control, but also in focusing upon geographic socio-economic problems. At the European planning level the concept of regions varies significantly across nations. Eurostat (the statistical arm of the European Commission) in the early 1980s developed the concept of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), to enable cross-regional comparative data to be gathered.4 NUTS are primarily used to compile and study national and regional data across the European Union and are divided into four main scales. NUTS 1 is the largest, based upon
standard planning administrative regions such as London or the South East for example in England. This aggregate level can be subdivided into four spatial levels NUTS 2 (such as Inner and Outer London), NUTS 3 (such as Inner East or West London), NUTS 4 (individual local boroughs) and NUTS 5 (electoral ward level data); the latter is the smallest of the administrative units.
A key problem with using NUTS in relation to England is that it is based upon administrative regional planning boundaries, these however have changed over time leading to a level of inconsistency. The boundary changes initiated in the late 1990s in particular for many seem to have been illogically devised. The East of England encapsulates the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, for a town such as Watford for example which lies at the southern end of Hertfordshire, it has more in common (both socially and economically) with other parts of London than Norwich or Chelmsford. Such differences however were not reflected in the arbitrary regional boundaries pursued by central government. Whilst, London for example can be described as a business service related cluster (see Allen, 1992), Coe and Townsend (1998, p.400) suggest that the appropriate unit for study in terms of linkage 'is nothing less than the "Greater South-East" as a whole'. Further:
the existence of business service firms in outer southern England, even as far away from London as two or three hundred kilometres, might be conceptualized as ‘dispersed clustering’, if they are found to be functionally integrated into a region-wide production system focused on the metropolis and hence in reality part of a ‘Greater South-East’ regional cluster.
(Keeble and Nachum, 2001, p.71)
The London and South East Regional Planning Conference (SERPLAN), which as a regional organisation came to an end after the establishment of the regional assemblies (i.e. Greater London, South East and East of England) highlighted this problem.5 It suggested that in
drawing up the Regional Planning Guidance for the South East (RPG 9) which excluded for instance London, Hertfordshire and Essex, that:
The essential core of the South East is the area which supports London, which we interpret as the area within a roughly 50 mile radius of London in which at least 5% of the economically active population travel to work in London. These considerations … embrace most, but by no means all, of the present area of this RPG. In this core area, (lie what) SERPLAN rightly describe as “the London interrelationships, which cannot and must not be ignored in any future administrative and governmental dispositions for the region”.
(Crow and Whittaker, 1999, paragraph 13.31)
O’Donoghue and Gleave (2004) identify an economic form of integration for instance, with regard to a significant business service agglomeration that spans London and the South East as shown in Figure 4.1. The agglomeration is identified using a ‘standard location quotient’, this highlights statistically significant (rather than as they suggest arbitrarily defined) location quotation values or exceptional concentration of particular business service activities. O’Donoghue and Gleave using the Standard Industrial Classification index target those business services involved in computer, legal, accountancy, business management, advertising, and labour recruitment activities. The result of this analysis provides a useful insight into concentration of business service sector agglomerations within Britain, the research also reveals that individual sub-sectors do not share identical location attributes. Legal services for example are often non-regional and commonly city based such as in London, Edinburgh and Leeds, in contrast concentration of business management service providers are primarily located in areas such as Aylesbury, Milton Keynes, Salisbury or Guildford. As a result, O’Donoghue and Gleave suggest that a variety of spatial specialisation exist with regards to the sub-sectors associated with business services.
Figure 4.1 Business service agglomerations. Source: O’Donoghue and Gleave, 2004.
Given the nature of things, any regional division will be a compromise allied to particular aims, for the practical purposes and objectives of this study, the South East Region (SER) is an area associated with the now defunct SERPLAN regional boundary outline (see Figure 4.2).
SER is selected, because it is economically assumed to be inter-linked as stated previously including in terms of business service concentration, further, it includes the current planning regions of the South East, Greater London and areas related to the East of England.
Figure 4.2 A graphical representation of the South East (SERPLAN) Region.