This is a sign that it has been too hard to generate the same hives of entrepreneurship and wealth creation in existing urban centres, despite their huge advantages such as shops, cafes and bus stops.The success of the out-of-town science park is a badge of business failure for town centres, just as much as the existence of the out-of-town shopping centre. Anybody who has tried to influence a local authority decision such as the placing of a crossing or traffic island will see the truth of this.Some of the most successful clusters are in new science parks developed with the direct input of the businesses using them. The authors write: "In many cities the existing political structures and city leadership find it difficult to respond to the speed and nature of change in modern economies."Professional local government and planning officials have tended to set policies without much sensitivity to the real needs of households or businesses. Thus education policy affects transport planning too, because if people decide they have to send their children to independent schools it will lead to an increase in car traffic as harassed parents do the motorised school run rather than walking their children to the local school.A further implication of this train of argument is that policies can no longer be left in the hands of the professions that have traditionally monopolised them.As the paper puts it, local government has been run - not very effectively - as a form of command and control economy. This matters for business because potential employees will not move to work for a company if they cannot live their lives as they want - people, as well as companies, exist in specific places Once you start making the links it is hard to stop.

Many businesses locate in places it is easy to get out of, so decisions about the motorway, rail and air network have a big impact on certain towns at the expense of others.The policy agenda becomes more difficult at local level. Most local authorities keep policies in separate compartments: economic development, planning, transport, housing, education and so on. Even those with effective enterprise agencies whose job it is to look at the big picture can rarely translate broad conclusions into an across-the-board strategy.The main conclusion of a recent series of papers on cities is that urban policies need this broad sweep. The summary paper* proposes a series of "policy handshakes" as a device for joining up local policies that have traditionally remained separate.One obvious example - when you think about it - is that housing and education policy ought to be related because people's decisions about where to live are conditioned by where they want to send their children to school.Therefore improving a school can regenerate an estate. Few of his British fans realised that his first visit to this country had been as an airman back in the Fifties when he flew B-36s at Upper Hayford and Burtonwood airbases.By 1960 he was again performing professionally, even appearing on his own daily television show in Lincoln, Nebraska, but it would be another 15 years before his transformation into Boxcar Willie; a personal and angry response to the influx into country music of middle-of-the-road acts like John Denver and Olivia Newton-John.In 1977, whilst working at George Jones's Possum Hollow Club in Nashville, he was spotted by a Scottish promoter, Drew Taylor, who booked him for the first of four tours over the next 18 months. But his success in the music business proved erratic and he also worked as a refrigerator salesman, a bowling alley attendant and for many years as a pilot with the US air force.

In 1942, aged only 10 years old, Martin made his radio debut.Performing as Marty Martin, he played the local bars and honky tonks, sharing gigs with the great Lofty Frizzell and even appearing on Dallas's answer to the Grand Ole Opry, the Big D Jamboree. Years later, he would remember those times in songs like "The Old Iron Trail". He was exposed to the music of many of the major country acts of that era and found himself particularly drawn to the discs of the man known as "The Singing Brakeman", Jimmie Rodgers. As a result he became perhaps the most popular country act on this side of the Atlantic, a welcome buffer against the often soupy MOR excesses then prevalent in much of the music. Boxcar Willie's stage name came courtesy of a hobo he had once seen on a passing train; the man reminded him of his friend and fellow performer Willie Nelson. Boxcar Willie's stage attire the overalls, jacket and battered hat gave his live appearances an apt and memorable visual aspect whilst his imitative train whistle itself became much (and often badly) imitated.