Ian Gordon

Ian Gordon is a political economist, by inclination and by education, with a keen interest in how political and economic logics interact. Particularly in relation to urban, regional and spatial contexts, as he encountered then in his first post-graduate trade, as a civil servant providing research support for a regional Economic Planning Council.

Ambition to do this more effectively led him back to university, first for time to build a bigger model. But then (more seriously) to work, argue and teach about, more typically complex, cross-cutting issues on an interdisciplinary basis. As he was party to through the 1970s/80s at the University of Kent, being tried quite successfully, with a strong mix of urban social scientists – though no Geography department.

By then, however, departments elsewhere were becoming more diverse, including ones that were closer to the (London) core of current urban /metropolitan action, on which he had worked while at Kent. So he moved first to a Geography Chair at the University of Reading, for the 1990s, and then at the millennium to become Professor of Human Geography at LSE, where he remains. As an Emeritus since 2013, though still active - both academically and at the interface with practical urban governance that he (and other colleagues in the LSE London group) particularly value.

His main research interests have been in: how urban clusters and occupational escalators actually work; with migration flows of all scales/types; spatial labour markets; territorial competition; governance strategies for extended metro regions; - and populism. He led the team carrying out the London 'integrative city study' for ESRC's Cities, Competitiveness and Cohesion programme, and subsequently was academic convenor for the Leverhulme International Symposium at the LSE on The Resurgent City.

He was a member of Mayor Johnson’s Outer London Commission from 2009-2016 and has taken a lead since 2023 in LSE London efforts to make the London Plan both more effectively strategic and more outward -looking.

His publications include The London Employment Problem (with Buck and Young, Oxford U.P., 1986), Divided Cities: New York and London in the contemporary world (edited with Fainstein and Harloe, Blackwell, 1992) Territorial Competition in an Integrated Europe (edited with Cheshire, Avebury, 1995), Working Capital: life and labour in contemporary London (with Buck, Hall, Harloe and Kleinman, Routledge, 2002), and Changing Cities: Rethinking urban competitiveness, cohesion and governance (edited with Buck, Harding and Turok, December 2004).

View Ian's publications