From Regeneration To Sustainability: A Northern Take On Knowledge (& Knowledge Ecology)

This is a version of a Keynote Lecture delivered at the NUREC 2008 conference, in Liverpool on 28 July 2008. In it we explore the connections between Knowledge Economies and Ecologies, and Big Science and Regeneration (especially in regional and sub-regional settings such as the Daresbury Laboratories) and in respect of Sustainability. My thesis is that Knowledge is not yet recognised for the fundamental resource it surely is.

A similarly focused paper – ‘Knowledge: The new currency in regeneration’ – exploring further the ideas developed here, was published in the Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal in September 2009.

I’d like to begin with some thoughts on what Urban Regeneration in ‘the North’ might be about.

I shall assume two things in doing this:

* first, that we are orientated towards a positive and stable future, and

* second, that ‘the North’ means, from beyond Birmingham up to Stornoway, and all parts East and West between.

Regional regeneration
I know more about regeneration in the North of England than I do about that in Scotland, or indeed Wales or Ulster, but I hope it’s useful to acknowledge that we are all in this together.
I hope too that you will forgive me if I refer from now on to ‘Northern Britain’, as a shorthand for all these locations.

So…
There is ‘the South’, that Golden Triangle of perceived opportunity between London, Oxbridge and Bristol. And then there are, at least in some respects, The Rest Of Us: the periphery, perhaps including the far South West of England, and certainly comprising all of us ‘up North’.

Knowledge and sub-national agendas
My specific theme today is Knowledge, how it infuses complex contemporary society, and how it relates to U.K. sub-national agendas in Regeneration.

To use the emerging terminology, we are about to take a look at the KNOWLEDGE ECOLOGY of Northern Britain.

The idea of ‘Knowledge Ecologies’ allows a wider appreciation of the interrelationships of various factors which affect and influence Knowledge in its various contexts, be they economic, social or environmental.

What is Knowledge?
For our purposes I’d suggest ‘Knowledge’ is a pragmatic notion with a number of different aspects, which can be likened to some of the different states in which we encounter water:
* Social understandings and culture are like the mist or dew which maintains all living things.
* Civic and community rules are like rain, which falls whether we want it to or not.
* Our formal education can be compared to the streams and rivers which criss-cross our terrain, sometimes preventing us from travelling and sometimes moving us along.
* Expertise is a lake in which we can immerse ourselves, or indeed where we can go fishing, if we are well-placed to do so.
* And research tools and methods are to knowledge what a hydro-electric dam is to water at the end of a reservoir, not without risk, but hopefully unleashing its power to good use.

Knowledge can be wasted.
Knowledge, like water, can be wasted when
* the commodity is not perceived to be a resource, or of value
* it is not used properly
* it is allowed to stagnate, or not maintained in a good condition
* nit is not conserved
* it is allowed to go its own way or run its own course.

And we do also sometimes hit ‘unintended negatives’ – so-called ‘beaver dams’ – which are blocks to the flow of knowledge but intended by those who created them actually to assist constructive development.

One example might be the rules around Objective 1 funding, which is blocked to enterprises physically outside the Objective 1 area, such as Science and Technology Parks just outside Merseyside.

I hope by now you are beginning to see where the parallel between water and Knowledge lies…..

Knowledge centres move over time
The question is how can we, as Regeneration practitioners, use Knowledge, in the same way as conservationists would use water?

It’s interesting to recall that the Industrial Revolution, that precursor of the Knowledge Economy, began in the North.

But we are all aware that somehow things slipped Southwards thereafter, to the magical land of the M4 / M5 corridor, otherwise known as the Golden Triangle.

In more recent times this Southward flow of wealth-making has been accompanied by
* the globalisation of markets and products, by-passing almost every geographical and political boundary;
* very easily accessed information and networks, via the internet; and
* intensification of activity in fields related to information and other technologies, often to the exclusion of other more traditional industries and economies.

Fundamental changes in the Ecology of Knowledge have brought about big shifts in our experience in every aspect of our lives, whether social, economic or environmental.

Knowledge in Regeneration
In what ways do Knowledge, Regeneration and Sustainability interface and how can we best gear each into the other? How should we approach them in the new climate of devolved decision-making?

At first it might seem silly to consider the whole Knowledge Economy or Ecology in terms of Local Area Agreements and the like; after all, modern Knowledge investments are a very expensive and large-scale enterprise.

But attention to Knowledge at every level presents an opportunity to get things right in a way that the broad sweep alone cannot.

Conserving Knowledge
To extend our analogy, we are learning fast that conservation of water, like that of energy, has to be a collective effort.

And so too does the ‘conservation’ of Knowledge.

If we want to keep and get the best out of Knowledge in Northern Britain, we need to make sure we look after and invest in it just as our Southern cousins do.

Finding the right criteria
So where might we start? Perhaps by looking for good criteria by which to evaluate proposals for Regeneration….?

These criteria need to be transparent, meaningful and coherent for everyone concerned – be they planners, politicians, policy makers or indeed the general public and those most directly concerned in ‘communities’.

I do not however believe that currently this happens with any frequency.

If it does happen, why is the cry from stakeholders – whether community activists, service providers, businesses or others – so often for ‘more consultation’?

In terms of major misunderstandings, criteria tend to be more contested, the further we move away from the location of national government – especially when it comes to things such as large-scale investment in Knowledge.

The Golden Triangle
In this respect the Big Science Golden Triangle is significantly advantaged.

To return to our global economy model, the Golden Triangle is close to the corridors of power, it is hugely resourced in both financial and human terms, it has all the right infrastructure and it is well focused on delivery.

There are some outstanding Knowledge centres in the North, not least in the Daresbury Laboratory collaborations, in the Science Cities of Newcastle and Manchester, and in the Edinburgh – St Andrews nexus.

World-class excellence in specific disciplines
Even more locally, we can point to the world-class excellence of work done in Liverpool itself on Infectious Diseases.

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine can stand proud against institutions anywhere in its achievements in this field, and there are alongside the work of the School hugely significant Biomedical developments, both at the University of Liverpool itself and at Speke Liverpool industrial locations near Runcorn.

Knowledge ‘pools’ have big potential
The potential for Merseyside’s economy of these connections – as also of the clustering of skills and facilities in aspects of Information Technology – are enormous, if they can indeed be brought together not just as a pool or pond, but as a river flowing purposively from the tributaries of its component parts to serve a stronger socio-economic ecology.

And similarly we can point to many other Knowledge ‘ponds’ in Northern Britain, bringing together very high skills in professional services such as Law and Accountancy; cultural provision such as Music, Theatre and Museums; or public services such as Health.

Socio-economic contexts
But to be blunt, these facilities sometimes lack the wider socio-economic cogency and contextual enhancement of comparable facilities further South.

We have seen the emergence of the ‘Northern Way‘, an admirable development which seeks to focus the synergies of all our Knowledge and related assets; but these still do not always ‘flow’ to our benefit as they might.

Yes of course there are pockets of disadvantage ‘down South’. But we only have to look at basic measures such as a life expectancy and health to know that overall the Southern half of Britain fares better than the Northern half.

It would be downright wrong to suggest, as some do, that Northern Britain has no Knowledge facilities which stand up against those of the Golden Triangle.

Knowledge contexts and economic outputs
But it would be equally foolish to suggest that all Northern Knowledge centres have the same supportive hinterland as most Southern ones.

Northern Knowledge facilities do not always lever in the economic outputs and other advantages of some Southern facilities of equivalent standing.

The reality is, until all of us are clear about the range of required criteria – not only academic criteria, but also many other sorts – for deciding where and when to invest in Knowledge, we will not have a proper conversation; and opportunities in a range of locations and situations will then be lost.

Knowledge as ‘Science’, and otherwise
But before we go any further, I should make one thing clear: Whilst I would like to be able to discuss the management and nurturing of Knowledge in the UK, we will inevitably find that we need to consider more narrowly defined sorts of Knowledge such as ‘Science’, or ‘Arts and Culture’, or ‘Education’.

‘Knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ as such do not seem to feature in the policy debate at any level. Nonetheless, I hope you will accept that ideally I would encompass all sorts of Knowledge in my analogy with water; as indeed I would urge you as Regeneration practitioners to think of Knowledge in this broader sense. But we must work with what we have, and the nearest to that for Knowledge as we intend to use the term is ‘Science’.

We have ‘Science’ funding councils, which have much larger budgets than funding councils for any other sorts of discipline. But we do not have a ‘Knowledge’ funding council. And so, for much of the rest of our discussion, we shall needs be use the terms ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Science’ almost interchangeably.

Big Science in North West England
So let’s take one topical example, which is Scientists and Big Science facilities in the North West England.

There are in Merseyside perhaps just half the number of scientists and technologists one might expect pro-rata from the UK general demographic. It is hard not to see a connection between this low concentration of high skills in Science, and the alarmingly modest school-leaving results in this City.

Merseyside is a sub-region where outcomes in terms of a low skills economy and its clusters of industry-based technologies are vulnerable to the operational decisions of powerful corporate Boards, often located in entirely different parts of the world.

The New Light Source synchrotron
And Liverpool is also a City within a Region which is still fighting, a decade after the battles started, to keep the world-leading Fourth Generation Light Source (4GLS) at the Daresbury Laboratory, between Manchester and Liverpool.

The proposal is that this spectacular New Light Source will be designed using an energy recovery linear accelerator to yield very short pulses (around a ten million millionth of a second), so that it will ‘freeze’ the motion of molecular vibrations and other microscopic scale processes. It will also combine light beams of different wavelengths (energies) which will put it at the leading edge internationally.

But now the Light Source synchrotron may not be built at Daresbury.

We can, we are told, have a jolly good Science Park there. Indeed, we have even been given special Innovation Centre status to take forward the ‘spin-offs’ from our excellent higher education facilities, as well as an important £8.5 million project for something called EMMA (Electron Machine with Many Applications), a development which will ultimately have applications in e.g. cancer therapy.

EMMA will be connected to, and use, ALICE (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments) designed as a prototype for 4GLS. ALICE is located at Daresbury but has only just been funded for future operations.

A Science Park, not a Synchrotron?
But it has been emphasised that we should not automatically expect to keep 4GLS, one of the most significant Big Science programmes imaginable, in the North West of England – even though scientists at Liverpool and neighbouring Universities devised it.

Indeed, 4GLS has now been renamed the New Light Source (NLS), and the histories around its genesis have been revisited by what some regard as ambitious and perhaps hostile external forces.

The £8m+ for EMMA is obviously a good thing, but this should be seen in the context of the £200 million for other major scientific facilities elsewhere in the UK.

The truth is, there are very influential people elsewhere who want to develop this incredibly important work in fundamental Physics; and some of them don’t really want to do this in the North West. Their preference, as you may have surmised, is the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), located in the Golden Triangle.

Investment and brain drains
In the meantime Daresbury has suffered a ‘brain drain’ of top scientists leaving not only the Daresbury Laboratory itself, but also vacating their academic positions in Daresbury’s partner Universities in the North West of England.

It is therefore excellent news that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has just a few days ago announced a £50m funding boost for Daresbury Science & Innovation Campus. The cash has been earmarked from its Large Facilities Capital Fund to create the Hartree Institute of Computational Science at Daresbury.

But this still leaves a question mark over the future location of the New Light Source and the world-class scientists who work on it. And similar considerations also of course applied to the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s threatened financial reductions at Jodrell Bank, which is closely connected with the University of Manchester, until a ‘reprieve’ just very recently.

The best people often feel obliged to go elsewhere when the research dries up.

Support for Russell Group universities
When this sort of talent haemorrhage occurs, it makes for even greater challenge in maintaining the very high reputational stock of Russell Group universities in the North West.

The Russell Group, comprising twenty of the UK’s top research universities, boasts that in 2006/07, Russell Group Universities accounted for 66% (over £2.2 billion) of UK Universities’ research grant and contract income, 68% of total Research Council income, 56% of all doctorates awarded in the United Kingdom, and over 30% of all students studying in the United Kingdom from outside the EU.

So nurturing Russell Group universities in Northern Britain is surely one of the most essential and obvious ways to maintain and extend the reservoir of knowledge and skills in this region.

Big Science ‘added value’ neglected
But the criteria for where to locate the main programme for the New Light Source – or indeed any other Big Science programme anywhere in the UK – are sadly lacking in respect of the ‘added value’ of wider impact, whichever regional economy becomes the host location.

There has been endless debate about the ‘quality of the science’ – an obvious essential – but, lamentably, almost none on the wider sub-national impacts for the regions concerned.

Much of the funding is put up by the Government, which might reasonably expect a good return across a range of benefits and indices both scientific and much wider.

But the funding allocators don’t worry that scientists might have to ‘go South’ if they wanted to follow this exciting Light Source work.

Regional inaction
And it must also be said that initially far too few policy makers in the North of England actually understood the fundamental significance of this ground-breaking work.

A couple of years ago Rachel Lomax, then a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, reminded us all, at a conference in Liverpool, that you ‘can’t laugh your way out of economic decline’.

I’d add that perceiving the possible loss of the New Light Source as principally a blow to ‘civic pride’ won’t get us very far either.

Such a view, still occasionally perpetrated by local media, does not help people in our region to understand the significance of this fundamental research. It also suggests to external observers that our local Knowledge Ecology is weak, and we haven’t much idea about how substantive Knowledge Economies actually work.

Big Science benefits its locations
Rather, we need to say, very loud and clear, that there would be huge benefits, quite possibly to the whole of Northern Britain, in developing the New Light Source at Daresbury.

To summarise so far: Northern Britain has some excellent pools of Knowledge, but not, to date, a great reservoir of supportive cultural understandings and high skills, from which we can really empower Northern people and position our region to advantage.

It’s being hard-headed, looking for common understandings between all parties, local, regional and national, which will make a difference in the end. That is why established and shared criteria for Regeneration proposals are so very important.

Who decides?
As Regeneration practitioners, we need to think about regional Big Science and Knowledge investment.

We do not invite only Transport specialists to have a view on the location of main road and rail routes; nor doctors alone to choose where to put internationally recognised Medical facilities.
Likewise, the location of Big Science facilities is, in the most positive of senses, too important to be left only to the Scientists.

We must now ask, quite urgently, how those of us in Regeneration should be thinking about the management of investment in Science, as a massively important influence on the ebb and flow of Knowledge Ecologies.

Knowledge as an orientation to the world
We need to think of Knowledge, not as a set of academic disciplines, activities, ideas or skills, but rather as an orientation towards the world. It is, to extend my analogy, the watertable on which our society is based, the underpinnings of what we believe, perceive and do.

Informal Knowledge or ‘Knowing’ is the taken-for-granted culture which we all share – the dew, mist or rain which keeps us socially alive and operational whether we recognise it or not. But climates can change, so we will need in future to be more aware of these often ‘invisible’ life-support systems. We need always to be orientated even in our taken-for-granted culture towards seeking to find out more and understand what’s happening around us.

Formal Knowledge, on the other hand, is a more direct driver of modern economies. It includes almost everything ‘High Skills’ – whether these skills are scientific, technical, professional, academic, entrepreneurial, artistic, strategic or whatever. Formal knowledge comprises the streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs of our endeavours.

Who makes Knowledge decisions?
So at a very early stage in any Regeneration proposal we need to find out where these Knowledge resources are, and begin to decide what we can – or should – do with them.
And we must also ask who decides how Knowledge is handled.

Many contemporary Knowledge issues can be determined only at a macro- scale.

Yet the policies and actions which culminate in such Knowledge decisions are often made with no such considerations in mind, by people at a relatively local level.

For example, many matters around transport and infrastructure, education, housing and other services are determined at the micro- level, and against criteria relating mainly to quite short-term local electoral accountability.

Big decisions and Big Science
But decisions about Big Science or other large-scale investment in Knowledge of whatever sort, are often made by people and organisations with little or no local accountability, and according to criteria which have nothing to do with local people’s direct concerns.

Only in places where Knowledge – or at least its outcomes – are intrinsically valued, is there likely to be congruence between local decision-making and the consequences of this at strategic levels for Knowledge. Context in these matters is critical. Hence once again my emphasis on widely shared and comprehensive criteria.

So let’s also look at things the other way.

Talking to the right people
Trying to persuade investors in another country that they should do business in a given region can be difficult, especially when the plants and professional skills may be more cheaply available elsewhere.

This is one of the reasons I have doubts about the single-minded pursuit of clustering industries in Technology Parks as an end in themselves.

Things look different however, if we seek to attract expertise at the international cutting edge of scientific Knowledge, rather than simply seeking investment capital.

Technology Parks or Big Science?
It may be more effective to talk with a handful of very top experts who might be persuaded to stay and work in a regional location, provided they have the laboratories and other back-up they require.

If we just concentrate on building the real estate for technology parks we will get a qualitatively different regeneration outcome, from if we push the boat out on globally cutting-edge scientific research.

Regeneration practitioners, please take note.

Combining approaches
Ideally, of course, we should put the technology and the pursuits of high-level scientific research together. And indeed this has to some extent happened in regard to the Merseyside identification with work on Infectious Diseases.

We have the world-class Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the Teaching Hospitals, in conjunction with the Bioscience facilities of the University of Liverpool. These facilities, as we have noted, are working in tandem with the Biotechnology cluster for vaccines and so forth in Speke, on the city outskirts.

Here is real and potential synergy indeed. I hope someone is conducting the case study!

Knowledge Ecologies and their potential
Ultimately, it is Knowledge Ecologies, the contexts in which Knowledge activities occur, which determine how much benefit may be derived from the resources available – and I’m sure by now I don’t have to extend this, as an analogy, to the management of water, to make my point.

Understanding Knowledge Ecologies, and valuing Knowledge, produces a virtuous circle.

Decision makers at every level must be geared in to ‘looking after’ Knowledge, before everyone
can benefit fully from what it can deliver.The physical detail of Regeneration programmes must marry with the human requirements of the people the programmes are intended to serve.

Knowledge centres in their communities
Recognising the role of schools, colleges and universities in their communities, and ensuring they are integrated into their localities – as well as outward-looking – is an essential element of this.

And what, for instance, is or could be the full impact of a teaching hospital or any other facility which employs and / or engages many ‘ordinary’ people, in a very extraordinary and high skills setting?

Or how should we value a cultural initiative such as the renewal of Hope Street, in Liverpool? Hope Street Quarter is home to this city’s international orchestra, several of its theatres, its two cathedrals, and much else, including more recently the joint Universities’ Science Park headquarters. The refurbishment of Hope Street has quite literally brought together the aspirations of flagship Knowledge-led educational and cultural organisations, significant independent businesses and local people in communities across the spectrum from university residences to the more challenging parts of Toxteth, our nearest neighbouring area.

As Chair of HOPES, the charity which spear-headed Hope Street’s renewal over several years, I can vouch for the difficulties – and also the huge benefits – of trying to bring all these perspectives together.

Checking the human realities of Knowledge Ecologies
Whether we are looking at the siting of a Children’s Centre – not, please, in the middle of an uninhabited industrial estate, just because the local authority has a nice spare building there – or, indeed, at the location of an international centre of excellence for Big Science – maybe a decent air link away from the Golden Triangle might be a good idea? – the question has to be:

Will this development serve its purpose in the most humanly effective way?
Attention to Knowledge Ecologies at whatever level, from early years learning right through to the operation of the most complex scientific research, reminds us of something which is quite obvious but sometimes put aside…… The economics of land acquisition and construction or physical development are only one of a large number of factors which Regeneration practitioners must address when taking programmes forward.

If we want the best from Regeneration programmes we need to be joined up.

The USP of Regeneration
It is the full acknowledgement of physical and socio-economic integration and cohesion, as a basic underlying principle, which distinguishes Regeneration from simply construction, community engagement, economic development or planning. This is what makes Knowledge in all its senses so critical in Regeneration.

Our Unique Selling Point as Regeneration practitioners is that we seek to bring together all the skills and understandings of the various disciplines and endeavours which underpin our work. Not every construction, community, developmental or planning scheme comprises Regeneration.

Full Regeneration programmes include all these elements, plus that special ‘extra’ of ensuring that all the Knowledge streams, formal and informal, will, ultimately, flow together for the common good.

Delivering synergies
Bringing all these elements together is however a tall order.

This ‘gearing in’ or re-alignment is not however something with only top-end outcomes.

Appropriate understandings and management of Knowledge by every one of us, across the board, would help us as Regeneration practitioners to address all sorts of issues.

We must deliver the potential synergies in the conjunction of these themes. One of the most fascinating things about Knowledge and Regeneration is that what we know develops iteratively – the layers on the onion keep growing, as we share experiences and thereby understand more.

Looking at Knowledge Ecologies
We might consider three questions which arise from these thoughts about Knowledge.

1. Do we in fact share common understandings about the fundamentals of how Knowledge and Science interface with Regeneration?

Would we agree that common criteria and measures for the evaluation and understanding of Knowledge are now emerging? And what, if so, might these be?

2. Do we as Regeneration practitioners need a special take on ‘regional’ or sub-national Knowledge strategies?

Should those who determine science policy now as a matter of good practice assess likely socio-economic impacts – the ‘added value’ – when the Government invests in Science and Knowledge at sub-national levels?

In 2001 I was amongst those who worked towards the inaugural NW Science Conference, which resulted in the first regional Science Council. Should we collectively now to take this initiative a further step forward, and incorporate the Regeneration agenda directly into national Knowledge and Science strategies?

The Haldane Principle, established in
1918, prescribed that Government should not influence how Science is developed, this being the job of the Research Funding Councils alone. But things were very different 90 years ago.

Science was a much less complicated activity, the costs of scientific research were proportionately less significant, and certainly nobody thought about connections between
investment in Science and investment in what we have come to call Regeneration.

So should the Government now revisit Haldane? Should those who determine science policy now as a matter of good practice assess likely socio-economic impacts – the ‘added value’ – when the Government invests in Science and Knowledge at sub-national levels?

And should we in Regeneration also be developing tools for the same purpose?

3. How can we confront the idea of ‘Sustainability’ – a term which is often dismissed simply I suspect because it is so difficult to ‘unpack’?

To return to the original metaphor, it is not enough that we know where the canals, tributaries, rivers, lakes and hydro-power dams are.

Stable and sustainable systems
We need also to ensure that we have a stable system, one which depends on just a single planet’s-worth of resources.

In this scenario issues such as equality and diversity, or for example the urban-rural divide, take on a new significance. One Planet Living means having an adequate sufficiency for everyone; and this in turn requires a far greater focus on how we deliver Regeneration for real people, whoever and wherever they are.

There is not time right now to develop the theme of social equity, but I am sure everyone agrees it is a non-negotiable, in terms of taking things forward. There is no hope of Sustainability if we do not address the basic needs of all members of our society, women and men, people of every culture and ethnicity, older and young, city and country dwellers alike.

Sustainability is where the social meets the physical
And Sustainability is also the point at which my water metaphor turns into a literal reality. The physical and social worlds meet when we consider Sustainability.

Knowledge is not a finite resource. It can take any of the formats, by analogy, which water has; but it can and does also constantly increase in its volume and impact. And like water, this volume and impact must be managed, if it is to deliver positive change, not destruction.

One of the ways in which Knowledge grows is through our increased understanding of sustainable systems. In this sense, Regeneration practitioners cannot in truth do their job unless they seek also to do themselves out of one.

The end of Regeneration?
Our ambition has to be that Regeneration will become an occasional sideline, for ‘Emergencies Only’ if you like. Our main task as practitioners will be to manage change, and lead not simply on ‘Regeneration’, but rather on Sustainability.

At its best Regeneration provides the connectivity and energy to enable and empower everyone, at every level, building on common understandings to produce positive synergies and outcomes.
This is why I have concentrated here on the idea of Knowledge and how it ‘flows’.

Study Group on Knowledge, Science and Regeneration
And with BURA, the British Urban Regeneration Association and a number of others – some of them here now – I am seeking to take this work forward.

We are developing a Study Group on Knowledge, Science and Regeneration and input to this would be very welcome. Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Testing the ‘Knowledge is like Water’ analogy
But for now I will leave you with an invitation to test out my offered analogy between Knowledge and water:

1. Does the ‘Knowledge is like Water’ model actually ‘hold water’?

2. Does it help us to see how the management of Knowledge in different parts of the United Kingdom may vary, and why?

3. Does the ‘Knowledge is like Water – it flows where it can’ idea help us to see, at every level from Local Areas, through Sub-regions to large chunks of Britain, how a more equitable distribution of Knowledge might be achieved?

4. How might this distribution model nonetheless encourage a free-flow between many different points, such that the Knowledge Ecology, like a good water system, is kept healthy, vigorous and stable?

5. And lastly, how might developing a model to describe the movements and management of water help us in delivering Regeneration?

The interface of Knowledge and Regeneration
The new challenge in Regeneration is to see how in practice Regeneration can interface with Knowledge. This is much like the challenge of managing a watertable, whilst also providing the irrigation systems and the hydro-electric power for revitalising communities and the lives of the people living in them.

Those of us ‘Up North’ continue to hope that a synthesis of Sustainability and Growth will see improvements in our economy and basic standards of living, to match those already enjoyed by the more fortunate of our Southern cousins.

We want Sustainability, but most of us still want regional Growth as well.

I look forward through our work in the new Study Group to discovering more about how we can resolve these challenging demands.

 

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