Cambridge is at the heart of Britain’s economic recovery
From atop the Gog Magog Hills on one of those glorious East Anglian big sky days, you can just about spot the cranes going up on a daily basis in the city of Cambridge below.
They are poking through everywhere: by the railway station, where smart new apartment blocks are being sold off-plan to rich Chinese for their student offspring, and at the new 70-acre Cambridge Bio-Medical Campus next to Addenbrooke’s hospital, where new buildings are rising by the month. With the drugs giant Astra Zeneca about to build a new £330 million — global research HQ here, this campus is now the biggest medical research metropolis of its kind in the world.
There’s more to come. To the north-west of the city, the University of Cambridge is working on a whopping £1bn development including new research facilities, 3000 new homes, space for 2000 post-graduate students, new schools and a nursery, shops and surgeries. Known as the North West Development, it’s the single biggest investment by any university in the UK. Together with another £1bn being pumped into the city by the
No wonder there’s such a Wild West feel to Silicon Fen. Even the airport has renamed itself Cambridge International and has launched daily flights to Paris and Geneva so the local whizz kids and wheeler-dealers can get to Europe’s hotspots at speed for their deals.
Government for a new railway station, new houses and roads, more money is going into Cambridge than at any time since the Victorian age.
No wonder there’s such a Wild West feel to Silicon Fen. Even the airport has renamed itself Cambridge International and has launched daily flights to Paris and Geneva so the local whizz kids and wheeler-dealers can get to Europe’s hotspots at speed for their deals.
There is talk, too, of a bus tunnel or an underground commuter railway being built beneath these chalk hills to ease commuting pressures. Back in the 16th century, university students were forbidden — on pain of a fine — from visiting the hills under which Gog and Magog are said to slumber, for fear of disturbing the mythological giants.
Behind those spin- outs is Cambridge’s prowess in research, particularly in the sciences. The vice-chancellor knows better than most how research breeds innovation — he’s a brilliant immunologist who created the vaccine to protect against cervical cancer and used to run the Medical Research Council.
“This focus on fundamental research is why we have seen so many discoveries here, from the double-helix structure of DNA to sequencing of the human genome,” he says.
Think of the university as a giant, gilded incubator. As the richest academic institution in the country, it has £4bn in long-term investments. During the past few decades, more than 1,500 technology companies have emerged from the so-called Cambridge Cluster. Of those, Prof Borysiewicz says the university has backed 300 hi-tech and 200-computer based companies (which earn £250m between them) with more than a £ 1bn of funding and it also owns the IP on more than 1,000 patents.
What is more, he says, these companies have a fantastic survival rate: 80 per cent of start-ups are viable after three years, compared with 58 per cent nationally. “Another important reason for success is the way the local angels invested in local companies time and time again. Once the angels and entrepreneurs made some money, most of them reinvested back into other start-ups and so the eco-system flourishes. Our Entrepreneurs Society at the university is now the most popular of all the societies, with students from all disciplines — from the arts to science — being members.”
Locals were bemused when during a visit a few weeks ago, David Cameron said the city lies at the heart of Britain’s economic recovery. They say that the Prime Minister is behind the curve by a few decades; that Cambridge has been leading the way. As Chrimes cheekily remarks, Cambridge may have educated fewer Prime Ministers than has Oxford — 14 versus 27 — but the next Bill Gates is more likely to come out of Cambridge which lays claim to 91 affiliated Nobel prize winners (to Oxford’s 51) than anywhere else in the country. Don’t even mention the boat race. THE INDEPENDENT