By Daniel Wainwright and Martha McPherson

This blog is part of IIPP’s series on mission-oriented innovation at a local level.

Cities are on the frontline of the climate emergency. They are currently responsible for 70% of global emissions, and this will only rise in future. Globally, the urban population is forecast to increase from 55% to 68% between 2018 and 2050. Without deep changes in the way we eat, move, build and work, city dwellers will suffer — from increasing pollution and heat island effects, to increasingly unstable food chains and greater vulnerability to natural disasters.

So it’s no surprise…

By David Frayman and Martha McPherson

Ferrari. Lamborghini. Maserati. Think of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region and you soon think of the combustion engine. These brands are the global face of a dense network of manufacturing firms operating across diverse sectors, often known as the ‘Third Italy’ model.

But the economic successes of the 20th century have left a mixed legacy. Emilia-Romagna’s place as a hub for logistics and production has resulted in unhealthy levels of air pollution, and it has suffered heavily from Italy’s economic stagnation in the 21st century. …

By Josh Ryan-Collins

This week’s budget appeared at first to be seismic shift away from conservative economic orthodoxy by the government. Alongside a further major expansion in borrowing to support jobs and incomes over the next six months, the chancellor adopted the previous left-wing Labour party’s policy of a major rise in corporation tax (from 19% to 25% of profits) to close a record peacetime budget deficit.

But as the dust has settled and the numbers interrogated, the budget looks rather less radical.

Firstly, it cannot be described as a rejection of austerity. The budget contained no explicit additional resources…

By Thomas Marois

The world of public banks just got a little larger. But did it get better?

In this week’s Spring Budget, the UK chancellor set out further details on the design and governance of the nascent UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB), which was first announced in November 2020.

The UKIB’s raison d’être will be to ‘partner with the private sector and local government to increase infrastructure investment to help tackle climate change and promote economic growth across the UK.’ It will also ‘boost productivity and growth across the UK and to help put the UK on a path to…

This blog is a contribution from one of IIPP’s Master of Public Administration (MPA) students. To find out more about the course, click here.

By Julie McLaren

A recent letter sent from President Biden to his most senior science advisor, Dr. Eric S. Lander, lays down the challenge for future science, technology and innovation policy by asking a simple question: how can it address major global challenges and benefit all in society?

This is a huge question, and the very act of posing it should give us all pause for reflection. …

By Martha McPherson and Nick Kimber

Living with COVID-19 in UCL’s home borough of Camden has been hard for many residents. The borough entered the pandemic from a challenging place where change and a new focus was needed for the Council and its key partners.

Even before COVID struck, despite high overall employment, many of Camden’s citizens were not benefitting from the growth taking place around them. There were high levels of in-work poverty and insecure work, a gap in the rate of employment between those with a health condition or disability and those without, and a lower employment rate…

By Rowan Conway and Mariana Mazzucato

Alongside the NHS, the BBC is an institution that defines Britain. With iconic storytellers from David Attenborough to Steve McQueen, the BBC narrates the story of us, and few nations can claim such a high profile platform from which their story is told to the world. And yet, perhaps because it is so familiar, we fail to appreciate just how much value it creates.

As we outline today in this Project Syndicate article, understanding the BBC’s contributions to the British economy and society — and the concept of public value more broadly — requires…

By Charles Leadbeater

The year which many hoped might be better than the last was not a week old before it confounded us.

A pandemic that many hoped we were getting the better of through science and innovation proved its own devastating capacity to evolve and adapt, to become more threatening than it was even in 2020. A troubling new variant emerged in Britain just as the country left the legal frameworks of the European Union, to be blown around like a plastic bag in the wind. The outgoing US President urged his angry supporters to invade Congress to prevent…