Cities Outlook 2024

Cities Outlook, our annual health check of the economic performance of urban Britain, offers a deep dive into the latest economic data on how UK cities are performing against a range of indicators including innovation, housing, skills, employment and productivity. In a general election year where growth will be central to the debate, Cities Outlook 2024 has a special focus on the economic performance of cities since 2010. It contrasts this performance to the 1998-2010 period, assessing how cities would have fared had pre-2010 trends continued and what this means for the party that forms the next government. While almost all places are better off than they were in 2010, if pre-2010 trends had continued, the UK economy would be £88 billion (4.6 per cent) larger. Meanwhile Britain’s north-south divide has continued to widen, with the Greater South East’s share of UK jobs, output and income increasing still further. In 2010, 38.9 per cent of all jobs were in the Greater South East. By 2022 this had risen to 40.9 per cent.