The Oxford-Cambridge Arc: An International Perspective
The scale of opportunity of the Ox-Cam Arc is often viewed and debated through a domestic prism.
Yet the innovation economy is global. Connecting as it does a unique set of world-class UK institutions, industry capabilities, and communities of practice, the Arc’s competition and context is even more international than it is national. A wider view may instead observe the Arc to be one of a group of 10 or more corridors that connect and adjoin the world's most innovative regions and urban centres. These are found in North America, Northern and Central Europe, Israel, and, increasingly in East Asia.
Over the last 50 years, nearly all of these places have grown and matured quite organically around shared infrastructure and research. Many have expanded from cities and research centres into ‘corridors’ and ‘triangles’ as supply chains and labour markets become more inter-linked.
Yet in recent years each of these locations have begun to benefit from more intentional approaches, driven by a sense of interdependence in their quest to be friendly to talent, business, communities and the planet. As such the global picture now shows a lot more momentum to bring forward quality and inclusive places that can serve high levels of sustainable commuting, and meaningful complementarity within and across industry clusters. This mindset shift has been no doubt accelerated by the distributive effect of Covid-19, the urgency to lead on climate change, the demand shift in new and established industries, and the expanding enterprise imperative of universities.
The OxCam Arc opportunity will benefit from pursuing its goals with a clear eye on how its counterpart locations in the rest of the world are adjusting. What other corridor locations deliver will very much shape what ‘good looks like’ for the scarce talent, investors, researchers, disruptive businesses and entrepreneurs who make location choices on a daily basis.
Connecting the Corridors
Building fast, frequent, high capacity rail services between cities and towns along the innovation corridor has been a top priority for more than a decade in many places.
The most advanced in this pursuit is China’s Greater Bay Area, where high speed rail is nearly complete: the litmus test there is for everyone to be within 45 minutes travel time to the three largest city centres. Meanwhile Government and private sector are now combining into a joint body to deliver rail between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, shrinking commute times to no more than an hour. And Israel’s Infrastructure Planning Council is now committed to double the rail capacity between Tel Aviv and Haifa, reducing travel time to 30 mins.
Big-ticket rail is not the only or immediate answer, and elsewhere more agile solutions are providing interim solutions. Toronto-Waterloo innovation corridor is establishing a 2-way,
all-day bus rapid service to connect the cities in 90 minutes and double the number of stops to reach the estimated 1.4 million jobs along the line. Free public buses, expanded shuttle services, ‘park and pedal’ hubs, mobile ticketing and advanced carpooling technology are all important parts of the North Carolina Research Triangle’s and Boston 128’s subsidised offers.
Of course digital connectivity has become even more critical to absorb the distributed demand. North Carolina created a microwave system linking the three universities and the Research Triangle Institute, and is building a fibre optic cable ring throughout the triangle. Toronto-Waterloo has just rolled out 5G to 13 cities and towns along the corridor.
Not progressing in these areas has become a competitive disadvantage for those who have been slower. The inefficiency of the private shuttle alternative in Silicon Valley has become a talent deterrent, while in Israel the risks of bypassing intermediate locations along the new rail line are being observed in Tel-Aviv-Haifa corridor.
Shaping the Arc of Opportunity
Given the depth and breadth of assets they are home to, top tier innovation corridors increasingly realise they have to develop a more co-ordinated economic development plan to guide the growth journey they are on.
This firstly means deliberate clustering – whether it is biotech (in many places), hydrogen fuel cells (Yangtze River Delta corridor), agtech (North Carolina) and much more. It is also means some spatial complementarity. The Cascadia corridor is benefiting from an Innovation Partnership Zones programme set up by the upper tier government to crowd in public labs and companies in 8 key locations, spanning 5G, manufacturing and global health. This integrated approach also tends to result in certain towns and cities becoming recognised demonstrators and testbeds for new innovations being developed by local companies. As with drone deliveries in Tel Aviv-Haifa, and equity IoT in Silicon Valley, these create both an early customer base and social impact opportunity.
In some cases the way clusters are currently dispersed is not viewed to be optimal for collaboration, so many are looking to relocate universities and institutes. A new campus along the Waterloo-Toronto corridor is pioneering planetary health entrepreneurship in collaboration with the small town of Milton and a further education College. The BioValley has brought together universities in neighbouring Basel, Freiburg and Strasbourg to set up a European Campus without walls or borders and build a shared plan for internationalisation. In Southern China the Greater Bay Area has even set up its own eponymous University which Is building two campuses in the 4th largest city in the corridor, Dongguan.
The Place and Habitat imperative
A committed multi-stakeholder approach to places is becoming recognised as essential for corridors. This applies to both the key nodes and dense knowledge hubs as well as the locations whose place assets have been neglected. A number of life sciences-rich regions are bringing forward a much higher urban calibre of mixed use campuses, retrofitted suburbs and urban districts along their corridors to respond to the needs of talent, communities, and disaggregating business.
After decades of single use locations, the Research Triangle in North Carolina is now unlocking environments that can host lab and biomanufacturing space alongside a serious 18-hour amenity and education offer, and in some cases medium-density apartment housing. Many larger companies voted to support a 10 year business levy to help finance the transformation. Here, as in Boston 128, larger firms are distributing their presence across 4-5 corridor locations to service future growth and be closer to homes, services and specialist facilities.
The knowledge that leading corridors produce, and the talent they are home to, create great demand to translate into a thoroughgoing approach to sustainable habitat. These corridors are increasingly home to circular economy (Eindhoven & Dutch Delta) and nature-based solutions clusters (Research Triangle North Carolina), carbon-neutral districts (see Guelph in Toronto-Waterloo), and areas where sites are bundled for green investment and demonstration opportunities (as in China’s Greater Bay Area).
Combined and distributed leadership
Finally, those who lead, plan and champion these corridors realise that in most cases responsibility for these locations spans jurisdictions that used to have little in common other than a shared use of infrastructure. Now there is an impetus to run, lead, promote, and organise the corridor, to give them the profile and co-ordination and national priority they deserve.
North Carolina’s Research Triangle Regional Partnership and Toronto-Waterloo’s Innovation Corridor Business Council are two of several examples of a public-private partnership emerging that is focused on marketing and strategic economic development coordination for a previously fragmented geography. These are business-led, convening existing local and regional bodies, and provide a single interface for expanding businesses and international inbound and outbound opportunities. Other collaborative initiatives include match-making platforms in the cloud to allow companies and researchers to share their latest scientific findings and check on the availability of scientific equipment.
Given the obstacles many national governments face in prioritising and promoting their flagship corridors, business, universities and local government coalitions often find they have to lead the way in tandem with local communities. More civic and business leaders have become more proactive on boards for the future economy and mobility of the locality and the region. Over time, the result of the soft collaboration is that higher tiers of government are more inclined to provide co-investment to reduce co-ordination gaps, and create a more enabling planning and policy context in which the larger changes can happen.
Conclusion
The future of the OxCam Arc makes sense to be viewed and organised around with this global perspective in mind. Not only will it help those invested in the Arc’s success to grasp what it will really take to stay on track to retain, renew and amplify its global excellence over the coming decades. Pursuit of global learnings will also be essential in understanding how best everyone can exercise leadership, custodianship, curation and influence amid the shifting sands of technology, politics and place that these special corridor locations have to be constantly alive to.
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Dr Tim Moonen
Managing Director