Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Urban & Regional

Some cities seem destined to become major financial capitals, yet never do--Seville, for instance, was the centre of Spain's opulent New World Empire, but failed to become a financial metropolis. Others, like former colonial backwater Hong Kong, defy the odds by growing into major trading centres. What are the key factors distinguishing those cities that become wealthy from those that don't? Christopher Kennedy illuminates how geography, technology, and especially the infrastructure of urban economies allow cities to develop and thrive.

The Evolution of Great World...

Over the past three decades, the economy of North Carolina's Research Triangle defined by the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill has been transformed from one dependent on agriculture and textiles to one driven by knowledge-based jobs in technology, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. Now home to roughly 1.7 million people, the Research Triangle has attracted an influx of new residents from across the country and around the world while continuing to win praise for its high quality of life. At the region's center is the 7,000-acre Research Triangle Park, one of the nation's...

In the late 2000s human society entered a new urban epoch in which the majority of human beings live in cities. Whilst the city has historically been viewed as the foundation of democracy and citizenship, the geo-political spaces of modern cities are widely misunderstood despite their key role in shaping contemporary global society. How and why have cities become the command centres of the world economy? Does globalization menace cities as we know them? Are cities able to exercise democratic control and strategic choice when multinational corporate competition increasingly limits the...

A city-centred strategy to lift urban productivity must reduce deficits of urban innovation and of infrastructure investment: the new limits to growth. The outlook of more frequent and more costly crises to come - environmental, health, and even economic - makes these deficits more alarming. Yet...