ABSTRACT
The governance and policy development capacities of the GMCA has been addressed in this chapter in two different terms: the former as it functions deploying ‘soft power’ and narrative-building for the purposes of institutional innovation, which sees a trail-blazing set of governance experimentations garnering plaudits from central government and the private sector; the latter, on the other hand, explores local innovation in housing and labour market policies to find a more mixed picture of the proceeds of governance innovation in a conurbation characterised by a north-south divide in terms of prosperity both in housing and neighbourhood quality and skills leading to employment. It is possible to argue, as its architects do, that the institutional innovation is a prelude to a more thoroughgoing attack on the pernicious inequalities scarring the conurbation, and that a more advantageous settlement in Greater Manchester’s favour would lead to the potential for further policy differentiation at the Greater Manchester scale in favour of those policies of social protection and welfare benefiting the deprived communities of the city-region. In short, an impressive record on the institutional response to austerity has been in the making for many years in Greater Manchester. However, the deployment of these institutions in terms of their policy innovation in the fields of skills and housing, whose adverse conditions crystallise in the boroughs of the north of the conurbation, is yet to emerge, demonstrating a disconnect between the dual roles of local government in framing economic development and in containing and mitigating social issues. A focus on either side of this complex equation, it may be argued, is also a problem inherent to the centralised governance structure of the United Kingdom, which can be resolved through the devolution of further levers to the city and regional level.
