He is, with Ni Pengfei, co-founder and currently director of the Urban Competitiveness Project. But by 1990 much of this OPEC-induced anxiety had passed and the member states of the European Community (EC) were preoccupied with the need to realize the potential inherent in the newly adopted Single European Act (SEA). .
THE WIDER INTEREST IN URBAN ECONOMIC–
Third, the SEP must be conducted with full awareness of the assets and plans of all other key competing cities. Being aware of what is holding a city back is just as important as discovering what could create positive movement.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
A final introductory comment is that an honest and objective assessment of the city's comparative strengths and weaknesses is essential. Investments in future strong sectors of the economy have become places located in urban economies; Jobs are created locally;
THE RAPIDLY CHANGING GLOBAL ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT
The growing role of the World Trade Organization and the constraints this has placed on government policy responses. In Europe, the macroeconomic situation has been one of stagnation or recession in most EU member states.
THE NEW POSITION OF CITIES IN THIS CONTEXT
The emergence of China, India, and other Third World economies has developed from competition in labor-intensive, low-wage activities in fields more closely related to the skills of the service sector. One of the objectives of this study is to assess the policy response of leaders and decision makers in a selection of key and representative urban regions of the EU.
WHY THESE TEN CITIES?
Of course, each niche will have its own requirements for inputs, factors of production, and so on, so careful decision-making by city leaders and their private-sector counterparts is still required. Lyon and Dresden continue to influence what city leaders do and can do in each metropolitan area.
THE PLAN OF THE BOOK
The challenges posed by the SEA, the (Maastricht) Treaty of the European Union (TEU), rapidly changing technology, and regional and global economic and political turbulence and their responses to these should be of interest to all who are in the possibilities interested from policy initiatives to globalization on the part of city leaders. It is hoped that this book will be of interest not only to researchers, but above all to city officials, planners and leaders, and their counterparts in the private sector, all of whom care about the cities in which they live.
A FINAL COMMENT
NOTES
In this chapter and the next, we will examine two questions that are essential to effective strategic-economic planning. Furthermore, a study conducted for the Government of Ontario, and which we will examine later in this chapter, concludes that 'it is essential that we consider (Ontario and Canada's largest metropolitan areas) the principal assets responsible for is for our provincial and national economic competitiveness.'6.
APPROACHES TO URBAN ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS
In Britain, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) has issued several reports dealing with the competitiveness of cities in the United Kingdom. This value is used to rank the urban economies from most to least competitive.
APPROACHES TO STRATEGIC PLANNING
In this case, the results of the exercise are usually not very successful. As for the design of the plan itself, I have offered an approach that I believe achieves what is needed for an effective SEP.
SUMMARY
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, New York: Basic Books, 2002; and Richard Florida and Irene Tinagli, Europe in the Creative Age, London: Demos, 2004. The question of convergence or divergence of income per inhabitants between the different regions of the EU is of great interest and important for the cities' economic future. economies located at the center and the periphery, so we will examine recent developments in this topic.
THE IMPACT OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE AND THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF NATIONS
The actual equilibrium distribution of economic activity is not based solely on the values of the underlying asset. Given this, it is difficult to attribute a dominant influence on the competitiveness of a local industrial cluster to the policies of the national government.
THE ROLE OF AGGLOMERATION, INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS, CLUSTERS, AND NETWORKS
What about the transfer of tacit knowledge (passed face-to-face rather than in publications) and knowledge and technology spillovers that are part of the rationale for clusters. These structures are of economic importance to the vitality and future of the cities in this study.
CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR URBAN ECONOMIES
The general consensus in the literature is that there has indeed been convergence in per capita income between Member States, but that there is in fact divergence at the level of regions. When we introduce technology transfer, it becomes clear that access to technology is no longer a simple function of the resources spent on research and development.
THE IMPORTANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE, AND THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF FACTORS OF
Finally, the knowledge infrastructure of universities, research laboratories and the 'triple helix' model captures the attention of city leaders in the 'new economy' era. Close, symbiotic cooperation from the three entities will be necessary to realize the city's full potential.
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN URBAN COMPETITIVENESS PLANNING
Demands are being created for an 'attractive' part of the workforce - educated, skilled, highly paid. It is clear that the consequences of technological progress can be factors that lead to the deterioration, expansion or even salvation of individual urban economies.
FINAL COMMENTS
The realization of the four freedoms meant that what was being given up was the deep and pervasive structure of interference in economic transactions by national governments. To a significant degree the locus of decision-making regarding economic and social issues concerning the city's residents had moved up the hierarchy in Brussels and the EC institutions. There is more than one way to conceptualize the geographical structure of EU cities.
The credibility of this claim will be tested as a result of the work that will be done in each of the cities.
CITIES IN THE CORE
In the most general sense, they were concerned about competition for some central activities of the city's economy. Research and development is one area where this inward focus has been problematic. Throughout production, research was mostly done in-house, rather than being outsourced from advanced centers in the rest of the world.
It was a very considerable undertaking; Unfortunately, the 'tangentopoli' political corruption scandal, which will be discussed in the next chapter, made it impossible to realize the goals of the Milan project.
CITIES ON THE PERIPHERY
The third and final strategy was the development of the industrial and advanced business services sectors. In short, there was a wide range of concerns in Copenhagen in the early 1990s. In the early 1990s, there was no sense of urgency among Hamburg's city leaders.
The central element of the post-1992 plan for Seville's economy was undoubtedly the plan for the site of the World's Fair itself, the Proyecto Cartuja.
COMMENTS IN CONCLUSION
I discussed this in Peter Karl Kresl and Earl Fry, The Urban Response to Internationalization, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2005, Ch. For a discussion of these functions, see Peter Karl Kresl, "Gateway Cities: A Comparison of North America with the European Community", Ekistics, Vol. The plans, which were adopted to varying degrees in the early 1990s, were not implemented in a frictionless, high-certainty economic space in which specific actions could be expected to have predetermined consequences.
If this was devastating at the level of the national economy, it was potentially exaggerated at the level of the urban region, since the latter is relatively more specialized and less diversified in its economic activity.
TURBULENCE
More than any of the other cities in this study, with the possible exception of. We can thus conclude that some of the major elements of Olympic planning have been achieved. Each of the four core cities is close to important, if not dominant, trade partners.
It was in the implementation of the competence area concept that Dresden showed some good thinking. Much of the land use planning mentioned above has been done to support these clusters. A new university and an 800 ha technology park will be established south of the city.
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF THE TEN EU CITIES
The SEP itself is clear in its objectives and the responsibilities of the entities involved are clearly defined. The key elements of turbulence that had the potential to negatively impact the performance of the ten cities are listed. There is too much at stake regarding the economic livelihoods of the metropolitan region's residents to tolerate cronyism and ineffective performance.
The recently adopted plans for these ten cities have not been in operation long enough for observations to be made regarding this aspect of the SEP process.
THE STRATEGIC–ECONOMIC PLANNING CHALLENGES OF THE FUTURE FOR CITY LEADERS
There are many reasons to believe that the relative economic stagnation of the past 15 years will extend into the foreseeable future. How will the economies of Central Europe develop and how will they be connected with the rest of the EU? Given the possibility that the EU economy will continue to experience relative stagnation, pressure from protectionist forces should continue and the EU's major urban economies should expect to be affected.
On the other hand, the technology game is not played at the level of the national economy.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The only guarantee at issue here is that of marginalization of the urban region's economy if nothing is done. The situation of the French economy was analyzed, with a conclusion that was perhaps a little too positive, in Peter Karl Kresl and Sylvain Gallais, France Encounters Globalization, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2002. Hutchins , Mary , 'Appendix 1: The Meaning and Measurement of Urban Competitiveness – Technical Paper,' in Michael Parkinson, Mary Hutchins, James Simmie, Greg Clark and Hans Verdonk (2004), Competitive European Cities: Where do the Core Cities Stand, London : Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 80–105.
Parkinson, Michael, Mary Hutchins, James Simmie, Greg Clark en Hans Verdonk (2004), Competitive European Cities: Where do the Core Cities Stand, Londen: Bureau van de vice-premier.