Global report predicts boom times ahead for Southampton
8:36am Monday 28th March 2011
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SOUTHAMPTON is to dump Liverpool out of the UK’s top five cities by 2025, according to a global research report.
The Southampton urban area will be among the fasting growing of the country’s top 20 cities.
Only Edinburgh, Belfast and Peterborough will grow quicker, researchers at the respected US-based McKinsey Global Institute found.
Liverpool’s sluggish growth by comparison will see it nudged aside as the annual economic output of the Southampton area rises 38 per cent from £51 billion to £70 billion.
The growth forecast comes as the two cities await an announcement from the Department for Transport on a second bid by Liverpool to grab a slice of Southampton’s lucrative cruise industry.
Southampton port bosses and politicians are objecting to the proposed upgrading of a £20m taxpayer-funded terminal at Liverpool’s Pier Head from a destination to home port for cruises.
It comes as ABP announced it was investing £30m in a fifth cruise terminal for Southampton. It is due to open in 2013, handling an additional 90 cruise calls a year, worth £150m to the local economy.
The previous Labour Govern-ment ruled Liverpool’s cruise bid would be unfair competition.
Council leader Royston Smith said: “It’s very encouraging bearing in mind Liverpool will also continue to grow. This report confirms that Southampton is going in the right direction and there is a rosy future.”
He said Southampton and Portsmouth would be the key drivers and were at the heart of regional economic development which would continue through the new Solent Local Enterprise Partnership.
The growth forecasts were based on data from European statisticians who categorise the Southampton urban area as including Portsmouth, Bognor Regis, Salisbury, Winchester and Andover. Over the forecast period, 2007 to 2025, the population will grow from 1.7 to 1.89 million.
The top four cities will continue to be London, Birmingham, Manchester, and West Yorkshire (Leeds urban area).
The new report, called Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities, predicts that London will by 2025 fall from third to fourth in the top five global cities by GDP (gross domestic product), behind New York, Tokyo and Shanghai.
Created from a database of more than 2,000 metropolitan areas around the world, it assesses the top cities by population and GDP data and identifies changes that will occur from now to 2025.
Global report predicts boom times ahead for Southampton (From Daily Echo)