About the project

This collaboration with The Good Economy explores the long-term future of Bath as its local economy and communities come together to find ways to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and coming recession and reconstruct as a fairer, greener and more resilient city thereafter.

The project focuses on a choice: should we try to rebuild the systems we had or should we build new ones? Our early conversations with local stakeholders confirmed that people want to ‘build back better’.

This project has dual aims:

• First, we aim to flesh out what the ‘build back better’ agenda means for the City of Bath, as a local framework for pursuing innovative policies and building dynamic partnerships across sectors and geographies.

• Second, within this framework, we aim to explore the ‘anchor institution’ role of the University as a coordinator and supporter of local economic activity, using its large resource base of knowledge and skills for business and public services innovation, as well as its local purchasing power and job creation potential. Anchor institutions – universities, local councils and NHS trusts, as well as housing associations – also have a social role to play in developing mutually beneficial and sustainable relationships within their host communities.

We will begin with a baseline analysis of where Bath is now, and options for repair or renewal? It will then consult key informants from community and social economy organisations, businesses, public service providers and other anchor institutions (for example, West of England Combined Authority and Local Enterprise Partnership) over what needs to be done (projects and programmes) and how it could be done (resources and partners). This initial phase of the project will culminate in a stakeholder consultation to consider the results of the research and develop possible future scenarios for Bath – possible paths and destinations for ‘building back better’.

Project team

• Mark Hepworth (Founding Director, The Good Economy)
• Dr Charlie Larkin (Director of Research, IPR)
• Professor James Copestake (University of Bath)
• Catrin Owen (Research Intern, IPR)

Outputs

• Blog: Bath beyond 2020, James Copestake, January 2021
• Bath beyond 2020: Creating a resilient economy together: Podcast and video
• Report: Bath beyond 2020: Creating a resilient economy together
• Blog: Build back better: In the Winter of the 5th Kondratieff wave, Mark Hepworth, June 2020