How many mayors say they wish their city had a SXSW? And how many mayors actually make such a festival happen? Andy Burnham is one of the mayors who did make it happen for Manchester. This October Beyond the Music will launch as a \u201cchange making conference and new music festival.\u201d One interesting facet of the conference: You can buy a membership<\/a> with various levels of participation rights in shaping the conference.<\/p>\n But the music festival is just one of the latest things that caught my attention about Manchester. Andy Burnham is another mayor to follow on Instagram \u2014 in fact you can (could) follow his regular mayor account<\/a> or his night mayor account, which basically collects photos of him having beer with people.<\/p>\n Burnham has a vision for Manchester \u2014 cultural, carbon neutral, tech-forward. Ever since Brexit, the U.S. and the U.K. have yet to create a comprehensive trade agreement, but Burnham went ahead and made his own trade mission between his city and North Carolina. He wants to make Manchester the fastest growing tech and life sciences hub of Europe with the motto of \u201clook beyond London.\u201d<\/p>\n After the emergency pedestrianization<\/a> of parts of Manchester during COVID, the city has continued to focus on pedestrianization and increasing transportation alternatives, building upon the legacy of a 1980s pedestrianization of Market Street.<\/p>\n Lastly, the city will be home to a stunning new OMA-designed cultural center opening this October. Look beyond London? Definitely sold on that one.<\/p>\n Now Burnham is in contention to be the next Prime Minister of the U.K. (And perhaps not surprisingly, his old Night Mayor Instagram handle has been deleted.) Critics are wondering if he is just a less gray, smart-casual Keir Starmer, but Burnham is already distinguishing himself with a key idea: devolution.<\/p>\n What is devolution? <\/p>\n It\u2019s a word that hasn\u2019t become commonplace in the U.S., but it\u2019s one that comes up rather regularly across the pond.<\/p>\n What does devolution mean? In the simplest words: giving localities more control. Frankly, I wish the word were \u201cdecentralization\u201d \u2014 it sounds less like devolving.<\/p>\n Back in 2024, the government issued a white paper,<\/a> \u201cPower and Partnership: Foundations for Growth,\u201d explaining how devolution could restore growth to U.K. cities beyond London.<\/p>\n That lines up with Burnham\u2019s recent speech \u2014 considered the \u201csoft launch\u201d of his premiership \u2014 where he pledged growth in every locality in Britain and promised to make the power shift visible by creating a No. 10 North, a satellite office of the prime minister, in Manchester.<\/p>\n The crucial thing to understand about Burnham\u2019s argument is that it\u2019s not only about political power \u2014 it\u2019s about economic growth, too. The remedy isn\u2019t just to let other places govern themselves differently. It\u2019s to actively move the country\u2019s economic center of gravity beyond the capital.<\/p>\n That distinction matters, because the closest U.S. analogue is something quite different. We don\u2019t really have a movement to put more control in the hands of mayors and county executives. What we have is a longstanding conservative wish to reduce the role of the federal government in favor of states\u2019 rights. But states\u2019 rights is about autonomy \u2014 lessening distant federal control so states can differentiate their policies for their own populations. Devolution is about redistribution \u2014 moving infrastructure, capacity, and growth out of the dominant center and into the regions. One wants the freedom to differ; the other wants the resources to catch up.<\/p>\n These ideas have real support in urbanist think tanks. The Centre for Cities argues that devolution is essential to addressing the longstanding economic underperformance of places outside London:<\/a> Give city-regions more powers and resources to improve their local economies, and those economies will in turn contribute more to the national one. They point out that UK cities lag their European counterparts, that Britain is the least fiscally devolved economy<\/a> of the G7 and that closing the gap means devolving political and fiscal powers down to the level of \u201ceconomic geography\u201d \u2014 areas that match how local economies actually function \u2014 for planning, housing, transport, and skills.<\/p>\n Other sources agree.<\/a> A Bloomberg article cites OECD research on the topic:<\/p>\n The share of UK tax revenue raised at a subnational level was less than 5 percent in 2023, compared with 14 percent for France, 24 percent for Spain and close to a third for Germany\u2026The country also has far higher levels of geographical inequality than its peers. International experience suggests regions tend to do better when they raise more of their own revenue. Increasing tax decentralization by 10 percent is associated with a 1.75 percent long-run increase in gross domestic product per capita, a 2018 OECD study<\/a> found.<\/p>\n What is unitarisation? <\/p>\n At the same time as Burnham has people talking about devolution, there\u2019s another complementary but distinct government idea that\u2019s been much discussed lately: unitarisation.<\/a> This is the idea of replacing local and county authorities with a single tier of government.<\/p>\n It\u2019s nothing short of a major restructuring of local government, and one Americans should watch closely. A movement to create more city-county mergers here would be brutally hard to pull off, but it would help defuse the zero-sum competition between city and suburb over population, tax base, and infrastructure in nearly every metro region. If the U.K. does it, I wonder if the concept of unitarisation will catch on here.<\/p>\n Will this work? <\/p>\n We have a chance to watch another country grapple with the question: What is the right level of government for which kind of policy? I really like Andy Burnham, but the American experience doesn\u2019t exactly confirm his ideas.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s problem is too much centralization. The States\u2019 problem can sometimes be too much localization. On housing, we\u2019ve spent years discovering that local control is precisely where things break down \u2014 it\u2019s the level where a handful of NIMBYs can block the homes a whole region needs. So the reform movement here is pushing in the opposite direction from devolution: States like California are pulling zoning authority up, out of the hands of municipalities, to override local obstruction. In Pennsylvania, we\u2019ve yet to achieve any major statewide housing legislation. Harrisburg has largely left zoning to the municipalities, and the Philadelphia region\u2019s separate governments each guard their own land-use rules. The result is exactly the fragmentation Burnham wants to fix.<\/p>\n The same logic applies to transit, where raising capital at the local level is nearly impossible and the interconnected nature of the system often demands federal money.<\/p>\n Britain has lodged too much at the top and is trying to push it down. America has lodged housing too far down and is trying to lift it up. Neither \u201cmore local\u201d nor \u201cmore central\u201d is the answer on its own. The answer is matching each policy to the tier that can actually deliver it \u2014 and being willing to move power when the match is wrong.<\/p>\n That\u2019s also why I\u2019m of two minds about Burnham\u2019s plan. The instinct is right; the execution is daunting. Critics of Burnham\u2019s speech were quick to point out that Scotland devolved years ago without the transformation<\/a> its champions promised, a reminder that handing power down doesn\u2019t automatically produce growth if the capacity to use it isn\u2019t there too.<\/p>\n I also worry that restructuring the size and scope of regional government is the kind of renovation that can destabilize a country. After the debacle of Brexit, is this really a good idea?<\/p>\n But Britain\u2019s struggles are real<\/a> \u2014 the country has faced stagnation and widening inequality for nearly 20 years. No wonder people are willing to consider drastic measures. I wish Andy Burnham the best of luck!<\/p>\n Diana Lind is a writer and urban policy specialist. This article was also published as part of her Substack newsletter,\u00a0The New Urban Order.<\/a>\u00a0Sign up for the newsletter\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n Andy Burnham poses in a spot outside the Salford Lads Club, made famous by The Smiths who were photographed there for their ‘The Queen Is Dead’ album, after speaking at the launch of his campaign for re-election as Mayor of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, at the club in Salford. Picture date: Wednesday April 3, 2024. (Photo by Danny Lawson\/PA Images via Getty Images) <\/a><\/p>\n
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