Place Making And Policies For Competitive Cities

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.

Creative industries have become fundamental in signalling the economic wellbeing of cities and urban regions. Workers who are attracted to the sector tend to have strong preferences when it comes to the neighbourhoods they want to live in, with factors such as job availability and urban amenities playing a large part in their decision. Skills and Cities analyses these factors and looks at the implications for urban and regional policy across a range of European cities. Drawing conclusions from the Netherlands and Scandinavian cities Copenhagen and Helsinki, this book sheds new light on the debate about the importance of jobs and urban amenities for attracting high-skilled employees. This edited collection brings together international literature and individual residential experiences from different cities, presenting policy simulations and highlighting the differences between urban and suburban groups. Subsequent chapters discuss the location preference and settlement process of international migrants and students in an attempt to understand what it is that attracts highly-skilled workers to a particular area. This book concludes by expertly drawing together the key issues surrounding the residential behaviour of highly educated workers and students. This collection will be of interest to researchers and policy makers in urban planning, as well as Postgraduate students researching housing preferences.

With a current world population that exceeds seven billion, resource consumption awareness is more important than ever. Investing in sustainable technologies and renewable resources is a necessary step to ensure the future quality of life of all human beings. The Handbook of Research on Sustainable Development and Economics explores topics such as poverty, gender equality, health, security, and the environment through global empirical studies and fundamental frameworks. With the goal of promoting sustainable techniques for the global future, this handbook is a critical reference for business leaders, educators, policymakers, environmental specialists, and the public at large.

The term smart city has become a buzzword. City planners develop ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi hotspots, establish science parks, introduce bike and car sharing, and push entrepreneurship. All this is happening under the flagship of becoming a knowledge city. This book investigates the digital and cognitive infrastructure of 31 cities and how they meet the demands of the knowledge society in an increasingly digitized environment.

Having the ability to measure and explore the geographic space that surrounds us provides endless opportunities for us to utilize and interact with the world. As a broad field of study, geospatial research has applications in a variety of fields including military science, environmental science, civil engineering, and space exploration. Geospatial Research: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a multi-volume publication highlighting critical topics related to geospatial analysis, geographic information systems, and geospatial technologies. Exploring multidisciplinary applications of geographic information systems and technologies in addition to the latest trends and developments in the field, this publication is ideal for academic and government library inclusion, as well as for reference by data scientists, engineers, government agencies, researchers, and graduate-level students in GIS programs.

This book introduces a radically spatialised approach to knowledge creation and innovation. Reflecting on an array of European urban and regional developments, it offers an updated notion of milieu as the conceptual and material space of knowledge and innovation in line with the interpretative turn in social sciences and humanities. In view of the unwillingness of mainstream economics to accommodate such a trend, the authors pursue a broadly understood hermeneutic approach that expands on the triad of knowledge-space-innovation. The book’s main findings are that space is an essential intermediary in the connection between knowledge and innovation, and that a renewed notion of milieu provides the knowledge-space-innovation triad with both an analytical basis and operational power. It also offers fresh insights into the significance and potential of the knowledge economy. A number of empirical European case studies on various scales (organisations, cities and territories) support the findings and suggest new policy directions.

Creative and cultural industries, broadly defined, are now considered by many policy makers across Europe at the heart of their national innovation and economic development agenda. Similarly, many European cities and regions have adopted policies to support and develop these industries and their local support infrastructures. However this policy-making agenda implicitly incorporates (and indeed often conflates) elements of cultural and creative industries, the creative class and so on, which are typically employed without due consideration of context. Thus a better understanding is required. To this end, this book features eight research papers, split evenly with regard to geographical focus between the UK and continental Europe (the latter covering Spain, Germany, France, Luxemburg and Belgium individually and in combination). There is also a similar division in terms of those focusing primarily on the policy level (the chapters of Clifton and Macaulay, Mould and Comunian, Pareja-Eastaway and Pradel i Miquel, Perrin) and those of the individual creative actor (the chapters of Alfken et al, Bennett et al, Wedemeier and Brown). This book was previously published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

This cutting-edge Research Agenda for Place Branding explores ideas and debates that inform a refreshing take on the future of place branding and marketing. It argues that we are at a juncture where the logical and sensible step is to push the ‘reset button’ on such activity and fully reconsider its purpose and goals.