Marco Bontje - Inventive City-Regions: Path Dependence and Creative Knowledge Strategies

INVENTIVE CITY-REGIONS

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Path Dependence and Creative Knowledge Strategies

MARCO BONTJE
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

SAKO MUSTERD
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

PETER PELZER
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright Marco Bontje, Sako Musterd, Peter Pelzer 2011

Marco Bontje, Sako Musterd, Peter Pelzer have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

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Bontje, Marco Arjan.

Inventive City-Regions: Path Dependence and Creative Knowledge strategies. - (Urban and Regional Planning and Development Series)

1. Metropolitan areas Economic aspects Europe. 2. Industrial development projects Europe Case studies. 3. Knowledge management Economic aspects - Europe. 4. Cultural industries Location Europe Case studies. I. Title II. Series III. Musterd, Sako. IV. Pelzer, Peter.

338.6042094-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bontje, Marco Arjan.

Inventive City-Regions: Path Dependence and Creative Knowledge Strategies / by Marco Bontje, Sako Musterd and Peter Pelzer.

p. cm. (Urban and Regional Planning and Development Series)

Includes index.

1. Regional planning Europe. 2. City planning Europe. 3. Economic development - Europe. 4. Europe Economic conditions. I. Musterd, Sako. II. Pelzer, Peter.

III. Title.

HT395.E8B66 2010

307.1216094-dc22

2010036354

ISBN 9781409417729 (hbk)

ISBN 9781315589725 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN 9781317113164 (ebk-ePUB)

This book has been developed on the basis of a research project that was supported by several organizations and programmes. First of all there was financial support from the Urban economic restructuring and sustainable development cluster of the BSIK research programme Innovative Use of Space, coordinated by Habiforum on behalf of the Dutch government. We want to thank Habiforum for making this project possible. The second partner was the Department of Research and Statistics (O+S) of the City of Amsterdam. The Department co-financed the project. We want to thank them not only for this co-financing, but also for the substantial personal contribution of several of their (former) staff: Simone Crok for assisting with the interviews in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Helsinki and the statistical analysis; Manilde van der Oord and Carine van osteren for their involvement in the statistical analysis; and Joanna van Antwerpen and Jeroen Slot for their advice and feedback. In the final phase of this project we updated case study and statistical material with the help of our third partner in the project, the EU 6th Framework project we have also been involved in between 2006 and 2010: Accommodating Creative Knowledge Competitiveness of European Metropolitan Regions within the Enlarged Union (ACRE).

Outside of our home base Amsterdam, we received invaluable assistance of local experts from academia and urban and regional policy from five of the six foreign case studies. They suggested or arranged the right interviewees to answer our questions; provided local statistics and relevant recent research results; and know their way through relevant literature. We would like to thank Montserrat Pareja Eastaway and Angels Santigosa (Barcelona), Jane Lutz (Birmingham), Asta Manninen and Harry Schulman (Helsinki), Joachim Burdack, Gnter Herfert and Oliver Weigel (Leipzig) and Raymond Saller (Munich). Next to them, we owe of course our thanks to all 88 interviewees for sharing their expertise and insights with us.

Finally, we would like to thank UvA Kaartenmakers for providing the seven city-regional overview maps and the map of population dynamics in Leipzigs neighbourhoods.

In the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the academic, political and societal discourse about urban and regional development changed. After discussing the implications of the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist economy and society for about two decades, a new paradigm shift could be witnessed around the turn of the century. This upcoming paradigm suggests that the economic future of cities and city-regions increasingly depends on the capacity to attract, generate, retain and foster creativity, knowledge, and innovation. Several variations on this theme have been coined as concepts: the creative city, knowledge city, creative knowledge city, creative economy, knowledge economy, creative class, learning region, etc. The approaches linked to those concepts and hypotheses differ considerably in terms of cause-effect relationships and the analysis of how urban economic growth works. What they have in common is that they all stress the crucial role of creativity and knowledge as the engines of an urban economy that constantly needs to innovate. Initially the academic, political and societal discourse mainly involved the advanced capitalist world, which was rapidly losing its industrial mass production to low cost locations like China, India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. However, meanwhile also China is investing heavily in its creative economy, while India has successfully added advanced knowledge-intensive services and production after its initial focus on attracting basic administrative and communication services from Europe and North America.