A city is not a T-shirt

Review of the book “Making Competitive Cities” by citybreaths:

In the era of rapid urbanization, we are all trying to understand how numerous processes and phenomena shape our cities: globalization, post-industrialization, entrepreneurial cities, creative classes, clustering industries, networked societies, etcetera. All cities are in need of grand theories that can function as instruments for making these cities the best cities.

But that doesn’t work, according to Musterd & Murie. Their book is a conclusion of 4 years of comprehensive empirical research in 13 major European cities. “Cities are context”, the authors say, implying that cities are multi-layered entities that have been shaped over centuries by their economies, cultures, politics, technologies and institutions. This has resulted in cities with different roles (capital cities, industrial cities, educational centres) and different population compositions. We must be cautious to draw general conclusions from these roles, functions and compositions. Reality is extremely differentiated. In order to gain or maintain importance, cities have to capitalize on elements of their rich histories and individual assets. There is no golden formula that can attract the creative class to every city. Cities should be considered one by one. Each city’s history and the legacies from history are important influences on their future, but they are not determinants.

Next to the importance of a city’s path dependency for urban development, the authors found that an individual’s choice for a city depends on certain factors. The research shows that key actors (professionals and managers) in creative and knowledge economies choose a place to work and live based largely on personal networks and ‘hard’ conditions, and less on ‘soft’ conditions. These soft conditions are certain amenities that a city has such as tolerance, diversity, openness and ‘nice environments’ (yes, Richard Florida’s conditions). These amenities do play a role, however, in the decision whether or not to stay in a city, but are not important in a city’s competitiveness. Personal networks and hard conditions are much more important, making up for about 80-90 percent of what the location decision is based on. Relations with friends, familiy and professional colleagues - personal networks (or individual trajectories) - and available space, accessibility, tax regimes, etc. - hard conditions - are the most important factors.

So the factors on which MANY cities have based (part of) their competitive strategies on in the past years turned out to be the least important. Say goodbye to Richard Florida, it’s time for a new hype.