My niche regional policy view; people ought to be studying Swindon a lot more. It's not big, it's not connected to a large city, it doesn't have a university, it isn't very walkable and it's not cool, but it's one of our highest output/capita NUTS3 regions.

Swindon, whatever it is that they do there (the transport links are nothing special either) has higher output per capita than any London region except the big commuter-effect central ones

It interests me because conventional current wisdom on "agglomeration" would say that Swindon has absolutely no chance, is a dead end for investment and the best they could hope for would be a fast train to Bristol or Reading