‘Bristol’s One City Approach can certainly be improved but it should not be discarded’

The run-up to the local elections on May 6 is a good time to debate not just the policies that should be pursued by those competing to be the future leaders of our city and city region, but also to consider ways of improving our city governance arrangements.

The Bristol One City Approach, despite the fact that it has won international recognition for breaking new ground in how to run a city, has come in for some misplaced criticism in recent weeks.

I should declare an interest – research I carried out on city governance in other countries was used to help develop the One City Approach. With that proviso, I offer here an evidence-based assessment of the model.

The Covid-19 pandemic provides the essential context for this discussion.

Lucy Jones explains, in her excellent book on public disasters, The Big Ones, how communities that recover best after a calamity have three important features: good collaborative governance, competent and committed local leaders and a far-sighted vision for their area.

The Bristol One City Approach delivers on all three.

1) Good collaborative governance

Each year, the European Union invites cities from across the continent to apply for the award of European Capital of Innovation (iCapital). This is a very competitive process involving rigorous evaluation of bids by an international panel of experts. It is a credit to Bristol that, in September 2019, the One City Approach led to our city being recognised as one of the six most innovative cities in Europe.

A key strength of the One City Approach is that it acts as a catalyst for collaboration. It brings a wide range of voices into local policy-making processes, and it releases a diversity of place-based enthusiasms and energies.

At the first City Gathering, held in July 2016, 70 civic leaders drawn from every sector of the city shared ideas on the big challenges facing Bristol and agreed to work together in a new way to tackle them.

At the twelfth City Gathering held in March 2021, more than 400 civic leaders participated. More and more leaders have joined in because they see great value in this inclusive approach to community problem solving.

2) Bristol’s inspirational civic leaders

One of the criticisms of the Bristol One City Approach is that it is a top down instrument dominated by the mayor of the city.

But this argument is without foundation. It fails to recognise how the model expands the power and influence of hundreds of civic leaders who have developed their own imaginative responses to the challenges facing the city. There are now a large number of civic initiatives and these are documented in the One City Annual Reports.

Here are just two examples of inspirational local leadership stimulated by the Bristol One City Approach.

The Feeding Bristol Healthy Holidays 2019 programme delivered over 65,000 meals to needy children and other vulnerable people. Council staff worked with the voluntary sector, business, faith groups and volunteers from every ward of the city to make sure that no one went hungry.

The Period Friendly Bristol initiative of 2020 is already recognised as a world-leading example of a civic initiative designed to address the problems encountered by women and girls being denied access to menstrual products. Again, the initiative was a joint effort between the council, business and civil society.

Opponents of the Bristol One City Approach put themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that they would prefer it if these One City efforts to improve the quality of life in our city had never taken place.

3) Far-sighted vision

Launched at a City Gathering in January 2019, the Bristol One City Plan looks forward to 2050 and sets out, in considerable detail, how the city intends to become a fair, healthy and sustainable city.

This is not a conventional city council plan – it is a collective plan that sees the council’s efforts as part of a broader civic effort.

Better than that, it is reviewed annually with our city’s youth mayors having a direct say on what the top three priorities should be for each coming year.

Where next?

The One City Approach can certainly be improved. For example, the role of city councillors in developing and delivering a variety of One City initiatives can, in my view, be strengthened.

There is, however, zero evidence to support the suggestion that the Bristol One City Approach should be discarded.

As one civic leader, active in our Covid-19 response efforts, put it to me recently: “If we didn’t already have a One City Approach we’d be desperately trying to create it.”

Robin Hambleton is emeritus professor of city leadership at UWE Bristol. His latest book is Cities and communities beyond Covid-19. How local leadership can change our future for the better, published by Bristol University Press.

Main photo: Martin Booth

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