This book started by setting out the extent and nature of geographic divisions within countries – the borders within that have plagued many countries around the world for decades. Some countries have geographic divides that are astronomical and at the same time have government interventions which are doing little to change them – at best they are not making them worse – but are certainly not going any way to make them any better. The case of the UK was drawn on in this book because it is one such country.

Indeed, the UK is said to be one of the most geographically divided advanced economies in the world, and certainly one of the most spatially divided countries in Europe. The numbers speak for themselves here. In 2016, inner London (west) had an economic output that was 611 per cent higher than the average region of a European nation []. London substantially overshadows every region of the UK, having a gross value added per head of population (£50,000) that is over double every other region apart from south- east England (for example, the north- east and Wales have a gross value 1added of just over £20,000).

What lies beneath these stark numbers are historical structures of power that maintain these borders within – a key message from this book is that geographic places are positioned, and have little, if any, control over this positioning. When governments talk about wanting to boost economically lagging areas by activity that restores their ‘pride’ in where they live, this misses a fundamental point. People living in economically deprived localities have little control over how their locality is judged – their ‘pride’ in where they live is not entirely within their orbit of control – this is at least in part determined by how it is judged in relation to other places, as part of the broader web of power relations that maintain the relatively high and low status positions of places.