Blog

The fallout from the Manchester City football team's financial breaches highlighted the entanglements of foreign private capital, government revenue and property ownership. Academics have been grappling with such issues for years and yet policymakers often fail to engage with their findings. In this monthly Director's Note, Christopher Newfield asks how academic research can reach policymakers.

This report examines the realities beneath the language of “levelling up”, competitiveness and renewal. It argues that UK freeports must be understood not simply as experimental economic tools, but as an increasingly common spatial strategy in which legal, political and institutional norms are selectively reworked.