Redefining ultra-micro economics

New Weather is excited to be launching this new project in partnership with Friends Provident Foundation  which we hope will help heal the rift between the emerging ultra-local economic sector and mainstream economic policy makers.

The underlying problem is this: policy-makers regard strategy, and macro-economic strategy in particular, as the pinnacle of their achievement. They are nervous about local economics because it looks too small-scale and because it looks a little too like plumbing. Most importantly – it isn’t explained in language that the Treasury can immediately categorise and respond to.

The present incomprehension between the emerging ultra-local economics sector and the economics policy world is a major block to progress, and a hurdle that needs to be crossed before these resilient approaches can become mainstream – and before they can get the help they need to accelerate.

The aim of our project is to generate new ways of describing the ambition of the emerging ultra-local economics sector in familiar economic terms, and link it to the evidence which might convince Treasury and local authority policy makers that – by ignoring the ultra-local – they are ignoring the economic levers of the future.