This book focuses on cities, their relationships with each other and the disparities between them. Analysing cities as the places where diversity is especially apparent, where cultural richness is experienced and where conflicts often erupt, it illustrates how cultures and cultural diversity...

With the publication of The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida in 2002, the "creative city" became the new hot topic among urban policymakers, planners and economists. Florida has developed one of three path-breaking theories about the relationship between creative individuals and...

This book analyses the economic development of cities from the 'cultural economy' and 'creative industry' perspectives, examining and differentiating them as two related but distinct segments of contemporary city economies. The authors argue that although they are normally conflated, the first...

1. The urban context and the need for economic-strategic planning -- 2. The literature on urban competitiveness and strategic-economic planning -- 3. The economic and geographic analysis of urban competitiveness -- 4. The ten cities and their planning at the outset of the 1990s -- 5. How these...