How to approach urban competitiveness in the ICT age

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How to approach urban competitiveness in the ICT
age?

• Paul Drewe
• Delft University of Technology
• The Netherlands
•  

La compétitivité urbaine à lère de la nouvelle
économie enjeux et défis Colloque de
lAssociation dÉconomie Politique (AÉP) Montréal
2005
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Montreal, the worst city for business?
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The menu

• Urban competitiveness some conventional
  approaches
  
  1.1 Regional science or spatial economics
  1.2 Surveys
  of location factors
  1.3 Ranking cities
• How about the new science of networks?
• The spatial dimension of competitiveness a
  matching of networks
• A word about the new economy
• Limits to urban groth the challenge of
  sustainability
• Savoir pour agir by way of tentative
  conclusion

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Urban competitiveness some conventional
approaches

• Existing approaches such as spatial economics,
  surveys of location factors and city rankings
  fall short of understanding urban
  competitiveness, in particular because ICT is
  making a difference.

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Regional science or spatial economics

• the key concepts of distance, accessibility,
  transport cost and choice of location need to be
  rethought in the light of ICT developments
• time needs to be property conceptualized and
  logistics be incorporated
• there is a general lack of empirical testing of
  ideas and of practice-orientedness

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Surveys of location factors

• a single overriding location factor does not
  exist (which precludes the construction of a
  simple location model)
• types of economic activity matter
• there are also critical factors at country level
• surveys are purely descriptive they do not
  explain actual company decisions with regard to
  mobile investment

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Best cities for business

• rankings depend on
• the choice of indicators, mostly ad hoc
• the weights attached to them in order to produce
  an overall score of apples and oranges
  (weighting procedures are not always made
  explicit)
• the winners are happy and use the results in
  city marketing whereas losers question the
  method and urge politicians to action
• e.g. Pour une rayonnement européen des
  métropoles Françaises 50 grands projects pour
  une France attractive dans une Europe dynamique.

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Best cities for business

• In order to deal properly with ICT, the
  performance of e.g. the Internet must be measured
  as it depends on geographic location, backbone
  connectivity, and network infrasctucture.

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The new science of networks

• the market, a direct network composed of
• nodes, i.e. all potential economic players such
  as business firms, financial institutions and
  governments
  
• links, quantifying various interactions between
  economic players dealing with purchases and
  sales, RD, design, marketing, logistics and the
  like
• competitiveness, seen from a network angle
  
• there are many nodes with only a few
  links
  and consequently a low degree
  of
  competitiveness,but only a few
  highly
  competitive nodes with a large
  number of links

Source Barabasi, 2002
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The spatial dimension of competitiveness a
matching of networks

• a network(ed) firm can operate on different
  levels
• agglomerated
• deagglomerated
  
• dispersed within countries
  
• Worldwide
• provided the networks match
• ICT Internet infrastructure
  
• traditional infrastructure (road,rail,seaports
  airports)
• RD creation
  
• F2F contact (buzz or urban quality of life)
• summary
• le territoire aménagé par les réseaux (Musso
  et al)
• the death of distance but not the death of
  geography (Gorman)

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A word about the new economy

• the new economy appears less like a new
  economy than like an old economy that has access
  to a new technology The
  old economy of established companies and the new
  economy of dot-coms are merging and it will be
  difficult to distinguish them (Porter, 2001)

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Limits to urban groth the challenge of
sustainability

• a working hypothesis
• Living and producing in cities of high
  population density seen from an aggregate point
  of view is advantageous as far as economic
  benefits and certain social (public-good)
  benefits are concerned, but only at the price of
  high social as well as economic costs.
• (The reverse holds for cities or regions of
  lesser density)
• Best cities fot business may collide with most
  liveable cities
• sustainable urban development
• a balanced development of society, economy and
  environment.

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Savoir pour agir by way of tentative
conclusion

• the 21st century will be a century of uncertainty
  and hence of scenarios. But to practice the art
  of the long view, it is crucial to identify
  those areas that can be controlled by means of
  strategic interventions
• a Glocal scenario of top companies and local
  innovative milieux
• if strategic interventions are to achieve a
  sustainable urban development, then they should
  not be limited to technological innovations, but
  boost social innovations, too

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There are still more questions than answers.But
this makes for interesting avenues of research.