Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place

Description

The mission of the Heseltine Institute is to become a renowned public policy research institute that brings together expertise from various fields, including research, policy, practice, and community stakeholders. Its primary objective is to collaborate and influence the public policies that will shape the cities of tomorrow.

Located at the crossroads of research, policy, and practice, the Heseltine Institute is uniquely positioned to contribute to the urban debate. Although the institute is based in the Liverpool City Region, it has connections to national and global stakeholders, making it an essential component of the University of Liverpool's contribution to urban discourse. The Heseltine Institute aims to promote urban policy based on sound evidence, informed by high-quality research, and grounded in a thorough understanding of place. It participates in civic activities and partnerships to tackle a range of urban challenges and delivers a diverse range of research and consultancy services to shape place-based policy.

The Heseltine Institute has four key objectives:

• Lead: Foster debate on how to respond to current urban challenges and opportunities by employing critical, high-quality research.
• Convene: Provide a forum where research, policy, practice, and community stakeholders can interact, build relationships, and work collaboratively to address urban challenges and opportunities.
• Broker: Identify opportunities to link high-quality academic research at the University of Liverpool with urban policy actors and other stakeholders involved in specific urban challenges and opportunities.
• Inform: Act as a conduit for research and evidence to inform and shape urban policymaking.

The Heseltine Institute's researchers have interdisciplinary expertise in public policy, local and regional economic development, devolution, urban governance, and co-production. Place-making offers a comprehensive narrative for the Heseltine Institute's policy and research contribution, acknowledging the need to foster local capacity and resourcefulness and emphasising the importance of the institute's expertise.

The Heseltine Institute adopts a collaborative approach to its research and policy engagement. It is committed to co-production with research, policy, and community stakeholders, which allows it to convene different forms of expertise to produce creative synergies that can lead to outcomes that would otherwise be unattainable.

The Heseltine Institute's research and policy engagement focuses on three interconnected themes:

• Future of cities and city regions: How can humans understand and generate sustainable, democratic, and inclusive responses to defining urban challenges and opportunities? Current work on this theme includes urban governance and transformation, institutional design, commoning, smart cities, and social and democratic innovation.
• Regional inequalities: How can humans understand and generate evidence-based responses to rebalancing the UK's regional inequalities in productivity, incomes, employment, health and well-being, and net zero? Current work on this theme includes economic development and inclusive growth, skills and employability, precarity and the future of work, and devolution and local and sub-national government.
• Public service reform: How can humans design and deliver public services in a way that enhances public value? Current work on this theme includes evaluating locally-led solutions to improve social and economic outcomes of place and facilitating real-time learning on how public service reform can be practically achieved to inform local and national policy.

The Heseltine Institute also supports the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences research theme Sustainable and Resilient Cities.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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University affiliation(s)

University of Liverpool
Liverpool