THEIR rivalry is most vividly expressed each spring, when two boats splash up the River Thames. They compete for brilliant academics and for the aura of intellectual superiority that draws the cleverest students to their colleges. But Cambridge and Oxford also compete in more prosaic ways—as cities and as economies, as places to live and to set up businesses. And here there is no real competition.

Over the past few years Cambridge has added many more workers, highly educated residents and well-paid jobs than Oxford (see chart). Last October 40 Oxford councillors, academics and business leaders went to Cambridge to see how it handles urban problems such as housing and transport. That provoked joshing from the Cambridge local press about its rival going “back to school”, but also a frank acknowledgment of how far the cities’ fortunes have diverged. “Cambridge is at least 20 years ahead of Oxford,” admits Bob Price, the leader of Oxford City Council.

Both cities are wealthy and pretty. They are both about 60 miles from London, along fairly good train lines. Both are constrained by large “green belts” in which it is almost impossible to build houses. Both have Labour-led city councils. But there are big differences between Oxford and Cambridge, too—in topography, regional politics and priorities—and these help to explain the gap in performance.

Whereas the land around Cambridge is flat and boring, much of Oxfordshire is rolling and gorgeous. It attracts wealthy, powerful residents who want to keep it that way. Oxford is surrounded by four different districts, run by Conservative politicians who do not all want to see an expansion of the city onto their land. Nor do they regard Oxford’s economic growth as their priority. Cambridge is surrounded by just one district, Tory-led South Cambridgeshire, whose councillors know on which side their bread is buttered.

In 2014 an assessment commissioned by the city council from URS, a consultancy, found that Oxford needed to build up to 32,000 new houses by 2031. The city says it has space for only about 10,200 of these, so the rest should be spread among the four rural districts. They question the numbers and say Oxford has not done enough to build in the city. They cannot see that Oxford’s unmet housing need holds back the prosperity of the whole county, laments Mr Price. Companies complain that the exorbitant cost of housing is making it hard to hold onto workers. In 2014 the average Oxford home cost 11.3 times average local earnings. That is the biggest discrepancy in Britain: the average is 5.8 times. Each day 46,000 people commute into the city, which has a population of 150,000. And yet local businesses have not managed to persuade local politicians to deal with their problems. Cambridge, with 125,000 people, is quite different. Decades ago a few visionary academics proposed that the city should convert its boffinry (and especially its comparative strength in the sciences) into wider regional prosperity. In the 1970s Trinity College opened the Cambridge Science Park; the St John’s Innovation Centre followed in 1987. A whole ecosystem emerged, combining local government and business and then investors, all driven by the university. This success has also created housing and transport pressures, and property is expensive in Cambridge, too. But Cambridge built 1,020 homes in 2014—three times as many as in 2009. Oxford built just 60 last year. Cambridge’s most recent housing plan, published in conjunction with South Cambridgeshire council, is for 14,000 new homes in the city and 19,000 in the county. There is some opposition to this—but, says Lewis Herbert, head of Cambridge City Council, because only 3% of the new houses will be in the green belt, so far most parties have signed on. “The key to preserving the green belt is getting the other stuff right,” he says. He is pouring money into improving transport links and other infrastructure for the surrounding area, assisted by a “city deal”, a central-government scheme that gives large dollops of cash to local authorities that boost growth.

The University of Oxford has not been as forward-looking as its ancient rival, although Mr Price says he has seen a change under the current vice-chancellor, Andrew Hamilton. The university is now much more involved in decision-making, he says. Like local businesses, it has realised, belatedly, that the housing shortage affects its ability to attract world-class academics as well as technicians and cleaners.

What the city, and the county, now need is someone to provide a strategic overview and then to bang heads together to push it through. None of the districts in Oxfordshire is big or powerful enough to do so. Some politicians point to the example of Manchester, where 10 local councils have joined together, creating efficiencies financially and in urban planning. But they are all part of a single metropolis.

It is just possible that, if the councils cannot work out a solution, Westminster might intervene and merge the city, district and county levels to form a unitary regional government. “Working better together now will build a strategic defence against being forced into unitary government,” argues Keith Mitchell, a retired head of Oxfordshire County Council.

More broadly, Oxford’s travails go to the heart of the problems with England’s planning system. “Development is seen as a bad thing in this country and planning is there to stop it,” says David Rudlin, a planner whose design for solving Britain’s housing woes won the Wolfson prize, a prestigious economics award. He says Cambridge is doing much better, though even it could learn from a place like Freiburg, a German university town that has used town extensions and trams to solve similar problems. What is needed is an overhaul of both the planning system and the green belt policy. But it does not require a DPhil from the University of Oxford to see how difficult that is going to be.