Musterd Sako

Making Competitive Cities

Musterd Sako

The book investigates the impact on the competitiveness of cities developing creative industries (arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, architects, publishers, designers) and knowledge-intensive industries (ICT, R&D, finance, law). It provides significant new knowledge to the theoretical and practical understanding of the conditions necessary to stimulate «creative knowledge» cities. The editors compare the socio-economic developments, experiences and strategies in 13 urban regions across Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Dublin, Helsinki, Leipzig, Milan, Munich, Poznan, Riga, Sofia and Toulouse. These have different histories and roles; include capital and non-capital cities of different sizes; represent cities with different economic structures; and different cultural, political and welfare state traditions. Through this wide set of examples, Making Competitive Cities informs the debate about creative and knowledge-intensive industries, economic development, and competitiveness policies. It focuses on which metropolitan regions have a better chance to develop as «creative knowledge regions» and which do not, as well as investigating why this is so and what can policy do to influence change. Chapter authors from thirteen European institutions rigorously evaluate, reformulate and empirically test assumptions about cities and their potential for attracting creative and knowledge-intensive industries. As well as a systematic empirical comparison of developments related to these industries, the book examines the pathways that cities have followed and surveys both the negative and positive impacts of different prevailing conditions. Special Features: Analyses link between knowledge-intensive sectors and urban competitiveness Offers evidence from 13 European urban regions drawn from a major research project Establishes a new benchmark for academic and policy debates in a fast-moving field

Place-making and Policies for Competitive Cities

Musterd Sako

Urban policy makers are increasingly striving to strengthen the economic competitiveness of their cities. Currently, they do that mainly in the field of the creative knowledge economy – arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, architecture, publishing, design; and ICT, R&D, finance, and law. This book is about the policies that help to realise such objectives: policies driven by classic location theory, cluster policies, ‘creative class’ policies aimed at attracting talent, as well as policies that connect to pathways, place and personal networks. The experiences and policy strategies of 13 city-regions across Europe have been investigated: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Dublin, Helsinki, Leipzig, Milan, Munich, Poznan, Riga, Sofia and Toulouse. All have different histories and roles: capital cities and secondary cities; cities with different economies and industries; port-based cities and land-locked cities. And all 13 have different cultural, political and welfare state traditions. Through this wide set of contexts, Place-making and Policies for Competitive Citiescontributes to the debate about the development of creative knowledge cities, their economic growth and competitiveness and advocates the development of context-sensitive tailored approaches. Chapter authors from the 13 European cities rigorously evaluate, reformulate and test assumptions behind old and new policies. This solidly-grounded and policy-focused study on the urban policy of place-making highlights practices for different contexts in managing knowledge-intensive cities and, by drawing on the varied experiences from across Europe, it establishes the state-of-the-art for both academic and policy debates in a fast-moving field.