Competing with the continent How UK cities compare with their European counterparts Hugo Bessis September 2016 About Centre for Cities Centre for Cities is a research and policy institute, dedicated to improving the economic success of UK cities. We are a charity that works with cities, business and Whitehall to develop and implement policy that supports the performance of urban economies. We do this through impartial research and knowledge exchange. For more information, please visit www.centreforcities.org/about About the author Hugo Bessis is a Researcher at Centre for Cities
[email protected] / 020 7803 4323 Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Hayley Holgate from the Office of National Statistics and Barbara Jeanneret from the Swiss Federal Statistics Office for their help with the report. The report uses data from Eurostat. © EuroGeographics for the administrative boundaries. All views expressed in this report are those of Centre for Cities. All mistakes are the author’s own. Picture credits Cover top left, page 10 and page 24 by Paul Swinney. Cover centre, cover bottom right and page 3 by Hugo Bessis. Page 1 and page 6 by Ben Harrison. Competing with the continent • September 2016 Executive Summary Cities play an important role, not only in the UK economy, but the European one too. They account for just 3 per cent of the land area of Europe1 but 42 per cent of European gross value added (GVA). Europe’s economy is particularly concentrated in its largest cities, with the continent’s 50 largest cities producing a quarter of European output.