Entrepreneurial City Research Articles

Post-Coal Fantasies: An Actor-Network Theory-Inspired Critique of Post-Coal Development Strategies in the Jiu Valley, Romania

Romania is among the countries with a long history of coal mining, which intensified in the context of the industrialization and urbanization policies during the socialist period. During the post-socialist transition, mining units decreased considerably, with those considered economically unprofitable being restructured and eventually closed. This process, which began in the late 1990s, continues today with the increasing discussions about the transition from coal in Romania, the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the signing of the Paris Agreement, which stipulates the abandonment of coal by 2030. The Jiu Valley region is Romania’s most important mono-industrial area that developed exclusively around coal extraction. This article proposes an analysis of the social impact of reducing mining activity in this area based on actor-network theory. Recently, the discussions on the “Just Transition” in the Jiu Valley have culminated with the “Jiu Valley Economic, Social, and Environmental Development Strategy” (2021–2030) and the related Action Plan. This paper seeks to address the question: how were people “brought in” for the production of coal during socialism, how were they subsequently “pushed out”, and how challenging is it now for the Jiu Valley strategy to reassemble a network to support the post-coal transition? Our analysis helps to understand, in an innovative way, the challenges of the Jiu Valley Strategy as a mismatch between a creative and entrepreneurial city model on the one hand and the ruralized/small urban (former mono-industrial) conditions prevailing in the Jiu Valley on the other. We thus provide a critical analysis of the strategy as one that is conceptually wedded to the large urban center model and applies the just transition framework in a decontextualized way. We emphasize the role of the dismantling of coal production in the narrowing of the space of possibilities of change brought about by the just transition. Using the published literature on the Jiu Valley, we also show what broader lessons can be drawn from this case for similar transition processes in Central and Eastern Europe.

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

A decision model for sustainable informal entrepreneurship in cities

PurposeSustainable development goals and the climate change agenda are becoming widely promoted topics of research for the 21st century. The role of cities is increasingly recognised as central to investigating these topics. Yet, the field of informal sector entrepreneurship which so many urban entrepreneurs in developing countries depend upon is seldom considered. To redress this imbalance, this study aims to develop a decision model in accordance with institutional theory (IT) and resource dependency theory (RDT) for city managers to deploy. The model identifies and prioritises optimal strategies to address the three areas of sustainability requirements environment society and economy within the study context of Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a mixed methods research design. In the qualitative part, the authors identified the three areas of sustainability requirements (i.e. environment, society and economy) and their corresponding strategies involving the informal sector that operates within the urban environment. In the quantitative part, the authors applied fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) integrated with the 0-1 non-linear optimisation technique to identify optimal strategies.FindingsThe findings show that strategies such as legitimate frameworks, waste management, allocation of urban public space and training programs contribute in important ways to the three areas of sustainability requirements.Practical implicationsThe proposed decision model will assist policy-makers and city managers to prioritise sustainability requirements and implement optimal strategies to address those requirements.Originality/valueThrough the integration of IT and RDT, the decision model developed in this study is unique in its application to urban-based informal entrepreneurship in the context of developing countries. The effective application of the fuzzy QFD approach and the optimisation model in the context of urban-based informal entrepreneurship also offers unique contributions to the field of study.

New urban politics as post-politics of schooling marketization and distribution in entrepreneurial Chinese cities

ABSTRACT The inadequacy of urban scale in analyzing school system restructuring has generated criticism. Thus, this study interprets school system restructuring as a locally embodied process that produces variegated externalities for local people. This interpretation shifts the position of school system restructuring within the debate on new urban politics (NUP). Following the post-democratic understanding of NUP, we propose three research questions. Firstly, how does school system restructuring produce a new benefit structure that potentially causes dissent from the local society? Secondly, how do different social forces shape the restructuring? Thirdly, how can consensus on the restructuring be reached? We answer by using China as a case study. China has undergone a shift from a public school system to a mixed provision-regulation regime since the 1990s. The comparative analysis of two Chinese cities illustrates the differences in the school system restructuring embedded in local entrepreneurial strategy and the crucial role of the local state in facilitating the restructuring. In Chengdu, school system restructuring has resulted in dissent from middle class households that have the power to reshape the restructuring. In Mianyang, the school system restructuring disadvantaged the working class who was persuaded by the municipality’s discursive strategy to accept the restructuring.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities: Global Perspectives

Immigration is a topic of enduring interest. In addition, immigrant communities, as cultural, economic and political emblems, have always existed in global cities. Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities: Global Perspectives, edited by Prof. Cathy Yang Liu, provides a comprehensive insight into the experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs in 13 diverse urban cities across five continents. This book employs a traditionally comparative approach to analyze the economic and development differences between the Global North and the Global South. One of its key innovations, however, is the theoretical framework used to explore emerging economies like South Africa and Brazil. By reading this book, readers can gain a panoramic and brand-new understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship in some immigrant cities. In their opening words of Part I, Lauren W. Forbes and Cathy Y. Liu introduce the connections between global cities and economic patterns using the theoretical framework of comparative analysis and transnational immigration studies. In the aftermath of WWII, Sydney, the fourth greatest immigrant city in the contemporary world, introduced large-scale settler immigration programs that saw it accept people from countries, such as Korea, Lebanon, etc., and refugees from Iraq and Syria. Unlike late immigrants (the post-1997) to Hong Kong, Sydney has witnessed several generations of family immigration who have brought distinctive lifestyles and business careers. Korean immigrants in Sydney have succeeded in building the intergenerational businesses such as restaurants, supermarkets and hotels. By contrast, indigent refugees or humanitarian immigrants from Africa have found it harder to start businesses because they are more poorly educated. By the authority of the Chinese Central Government, Hong Kong, as a global intermediary in entrepôt trade, experienced an economic boom, which motivated many local people and attracted many British, Americans and Austrians to establish their businesses since its handover in 1997. However, this boom relied upon large numbers of low-paid laborers from South Asian nations like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Comparatively speaking, on the other side of the world, European and American cities, like Barcelona, Paris, New York, El Paso and Washington, DC, reveal the varying ecology of immigration communities. Asian and African immigrants participate widely in the food service market in Barcelona and Paris. Their particular national and ethnic foodstuffs bring people together in the urban neighborhoods but can create the derisive name of ‘commercial ghettoes’ that are separate from the white mainstream but serve as a conduit for Europeans to know about the communities. On the other hand, besides trans-pacific Asian immigrants like Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Vietnamese and Filipinos to the USA, Hispanic immigration from countries, such as Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, also make up a significant share of immigration to the USA owing to their proximity to the US border. It is notable that, according to the figures of the US Census Bureau, of the 1,050,911 firms in New York City, 51 percent of them are minority-owned (p. 102). Furthermore, in New York City, successful self-employed Hispanic businesspeople are also key players in the ethnic leadership in the city, advocating for working-class immigrants and maintaining good relationship with local politicians and with mestizo elites in New York’s professional sphere (p. 104). This resonates with similar cases of Mongolians, Nepalese, Salvadorans, Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington, DC, who have developed livelihoods as street peddlers, bakers or small restaurant owners.

Rethinking China’s urban governance: The role of the state in neighbourhoods, cities and regions

Following the notion of the entrepreneurial city, this paper examines recent scholarship about China’s urban governance. Despite prevailing marketisation, the role of the state is visible in neighbourhood, cities and city-regions. The state necessarily deals with a fast changing society and deploys market-like instruments to achieve its development objectives. Through multi-scalar governance, the state involves social and market actors but at the same time maintains strategic intervention capacity. China’s contextualised scholarship provides a more nuanced understanding beyond the entrepreneurial city thesis, which is more state-centred.

The declining appeal of mega-events in entrepreneurial cities: From Los Angeles 1984 to Los Angeles 2028

Mega-events appear to be losing their appeal as tools for urban development. Events have long been funded by local governments on the promise that they can act as a catalyst for economic growth. But constituents and leaders are questioning that approach, disrupting the relationship between municipalities and global sports institutions. These political shifts are analyzed with a comparative study of Olympic planning and urban politics in American cities, from the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics to present-day preparations for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics (during this period, Olympic planning also occurred in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Salt Lake City). The paper examines the development, mobility, and contestation of an “LA model” of mega-event planning, which emphasizes municipal fiscal conservativism, and which has provided a political rationale for city leaders to invest in mega-events. The travels of the model illustrate the evolving role of mega-events in the political economy of entrepreneurial cities.

The economic effects of politically connected entrepreneurs on the quality and rate of regional entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT While research on institutional quality and entrepreneurship has consolidated over the last decade, the role that politically connected entrepreneurship (PE) plays in the perception of economic actors about the quality and a rate of entrepreneurial activity in their cities remains unanswered. The origin and nature of PE are heterogeneous, and it is associated with economic activity in a strong formal and informal cooperation with local and national governments to access resources in a privileged way. This study uses primary data from 1729 economics agents surveyed in 17 cities in East and Southeast Europe as well as Balkans and Central Asia. In order to better understand the consequences of PE, one should look at how it moderates the relationship between access to capital for entrepreneurs and the outcomes of entrepreneurial activity. We find that politically connected entrepreneurship may limit access to debt finance by other – non-politically economic actors, in particular in countries with a high level of corruption and market uncertainty. PE does not affect equity capital availability for entrepreneurship. Important policy implications are discussed for developing productive entrepreneurship in cities in emerging and developing economies.

A Smart Right to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism

Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

Analysis of Business Plan Preparation Applications as an Effort to Achieve Business Success for Entrepreneurs of Kediri

The research, entitled Analysis of Business Plan Preparation Applications as an Effort to Achieve Business Success for Kediri City Entrepreneurs is a descriptive research, this study examines efforts to achieve business success through the preparation of a business plan. The application for the preparation of a business plan prepared by entrepreneurs Kediri city includes aspects of customer segments, customer relations, bargaining value, promotions, main resources, main activities, relationships with partners and sources of income for entrepreneurs. The population that became the respondents in this study was obtained from the results of the competition for the leading entrepreneur in Kediri city were 100 respondents. The purpose of this study was to determine: (1) the types of businesses found in Kediri city in terms of the results of the preparation of business plans for business practitioner in Kediri city, (2) the market segment that became the customer service orientation of the business practitioners in Kediri city, (3) the types of business promotions carried out by Kediri City entrepreneurs, (4) The way Kediri business practitioner in fostering relationships with customers, (5) Types of advantages/bargaining power provided by Kediri City entrepreneurs to consumers/customers, (6) Sources needed by business practitioners in Kediri city, (7) business partners for business practitioners in the city of Kediri, (8) sources of income from whatever is obtained from business practitioners Kediri city. Data analysis technique is qualitative descriptive analysis. The results of the study indicate that: (1) The types of businesses in the City of Kediri are in the fields of food, beverages, accessories, souvenirs, educational institution services, beauty services, batik, weaving, tailoring, Muslim clothing, t-shirt producing; (2) The market segments as costumer service orientation of the leading business practitioners in Kediri City are mostly adult and adolescent consumers; (3) the most business promotions are exhibitions, online media, social media, banners, business cards, brochures and direct selling; (4) Planning to build relationships with customers through intensive communication with customers, after-sales service and making membership cards (members); (5) The most advantage/bargaining power is to provide excellent service, affordable prices, quality products; (6) the most resource requirements planned are capital, labour, raw materials and equipment; (7) Most Business Partners are Government Agencies and supported by other partners; and (8) The source of income is from the sale of products and from several other sources of income as addition. Keywords: Business plan, customer segment, promotion, bargaining value, business partner.

City planning, urban imaginary, and the branded space: Untangling the role of city plans in shaping Dallas's urban imaginaries

Drawing on notions of the symbolic economy and urban imaginary as an inherent dimension of the neoliberal public sphere, this paper examines historicized city plans and their visions, and develops a framework for understanding the role of city plans in shaping urban imaginaries and branded spaces. The paper claims that future city visions, fundamental to plan-making, help legitimize the power elites' growth agendas and ambitions to invest in both symbolic and material flagship place-making projects heavily bolstered and publicized by the media. The study examines this claim in the American context, selecting Dallas, Texas as a unique entrepreneurial city overly concerned with its public image characterized by a long-standing legacy of place promotion and plan-making. Using archival research and semi-structured interviews with key informants, this paper finds that city plans' visions, subservient to the civic elites' cultural tastes, have been instrumental in rallying public support to materialize place-making projects in accord with the city's larger preoccupation with “world-class” status showcased and widely promoted by media outlets. This study concludes by reflecting on the subtle yet tangible link between plan-making and urban imaginaries, an overt tendency of ever more commodified urban spaces, and the paradox it poses to city planning.

Municipal Statecraft For The Smart City: Retooling The Smart Entrepreneurial City?

Urban scholarship has begun to trouble the neat alignment of smart city governance with urban entrepreneurialism. Starting from the proposition that states remain central in smart city governance and that unfolding the smart city involves crafting new performances of the state, this paper revisits evolving theorisations of urban governance through the lens of urban entrepreneurialism to examine how municipal state roles and practices are being refashioned and reoriented. Utilising empirical research on smart city governance across Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, we identify and tease out the active roles and the constitutive and experimental practices of entrepreneurial municipal statecraft involved in smart city governance. We frame these as ‘extrospective’ or ‘beyond-the-state’ in which new forms of partnerships are forged, and ‘introspective’ in which the dispositions, capabilities and competences of the municipal state itself are reformed. The paper enriches entrepreneurial accounts of smart cities and the situated and contextually-articulated agenda pursued in the name of governing ‘the smart city’. It highlights plural municipal state agenda and the reworking of practices and performances of the municipal state that these entail. It remains imperative, the paper concludes, to attend critically to the ways that smart co-constitutes the state in unpredictable ways.

Entrepreneurship in Cities

Impactful, growth-oriented entrepreneurship is a major research and policy focus. Building on arguments put forward by Jane Jacobs more than 50 years ago, we propose that local knowledge spillovers in a city are enhanced by human agency in that city (e.g. local psychological openness). This effect is critically amplified by the catalyst function of a favorable structural city environment that not only connects these agentic people (via urban density), but also facilitates the production and flow of new knowledge for these connected agentic people (via a diverse industry mix). This three-way interaction effect was confirmed in our empirical investigation of quality entrepreneurship across the MSAs (cities) in the US, using a large-scale dataset of the psychological profiles of millions of people. Local openness shows a robust positive effect on the level of quality entrepreneurship. This effect is further strengthened by a favorable structural city environment (i.e. high density and diversity) by up to 35%. Reviving Jacobs’ people focus, the results indicate that the best performing cities in terms of knowledge spillovers and economic performance are those that are not only home to, and attract, agentic people, but also empower these people by means of a physical and industrial city landscape that enables them to act in more innovative and entrepreneurial ways, as envisioned by Jacobs. We discuss the policy implications of our findings and an agenda for future research.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems in cities: The role of institutions.

Entrepreneurship activity varies significantly across cities. We use the novel data for 1,652 ecosystem actors across sixteen cities in nine developing and transition economies during 2018-2019 to examine the role that institutional context plays in facilitating the productive entrepreneurship and reducing the unproductive entrepreneurship. This study is the first to develop and test a model of multi-dimensional institutional arrangements in cities. It demonstrates that not just that institutions matter in shaping the entrepreneurship ecosystem in cities, but in particular those institutional arrangements enhancing the productive and reducing unproductive entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that differences between normative, cognitive, and regulatory pillars are associated with variance in both types of entrepreneurship in cities. For the formation of productive and high-growth entrepreneurs, all three pillars of institutional arrangement matter. For unproductive entrepreneurship normative pillar of institutions and the role of civil society matter most. This study has theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurship ecosystem policy in cities.

Reciprocal Impact of Family and Business for Internally Displaced Female Entrepreneurs

This study fills research gaps by illustrating the reciprocal impact family and business have on each other with respect to internally displaced (IDP) women entrepreneurs. The study refers to the reciprocal determinism component of social learning theory (SLT), which enriches understanding of this cyclical relationship and its ensuing impact. To this end, a qualitative comparative design is applied using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with fifteen IDP Palestinian female entrepreneurs in city and refugee camp locales in the Ramallah area of Palestine. The results indicate both positive and negative influences, with instances of both family support and family discouragement, as well as instances of the business both benefitting and hindering the family. IDP female entrepreneurs’ dedication to both their families and their businesses is evident. Paradoxical influences of patriarchy illustrate both obstacles and privilege. While evidence of social class discrimination emerges as a potentially strong influence, further research is required to investigate the extent of this phenomenon between IDPs and non-IDPs, as well as among IDPs themselves. Collectively, patriarchal and social class paradoxes lead to an extension upon of Bhaskar’s notion of transfactuality while demonstrating the strength of reciprocal determinism in facilitating enriched understanding of a wide range of phenomena.

Fostering Urban Digital Integrated Systems: The Case of Carrè Laval, Canada

City governments are embracing digital technologies to improve hard and soft urban systems, so as to create and improve urban experiences, foster an entrepreneurial city, as well as devise novel services that can improve the livability of citizens and boost the local economy. Unlike traditional infrastructure and urban systems, which tend to be natural monopolies, data-driven digital platforms can engage multiple stakeholders simultaneously. This article, introducing the notion of hybrid urban digital integrated systems, proposes a methodology aims at the integration of digital and physical elements in urban environments. We based our discussion on the work developed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senseable City Lab, which focused on the integration of the digital-technology-based solutions in Carré Laval of the city of Laval, Canada. As the result of the workshop, six projects have been developed by students, namely, “Activating Surface,” “Infinite memories,” “Fora,” “iTable,” “MinecARft,” and “Foodprint.”These designs aim at promoting civic engagement as intrinsic elements of the re-appropriation and redesign of this severely underutilized site. The human-centered designs rooted in specific context will help digital technologies embedded in the city and increase the attractiveness of the city to local and new stakeholders.

Memindai Posisi Strategis dan Alternatif Strategi Pengusaha Rotan Kota Pekanbaru

The condition of r attan e ntrepreneurs in Pekanbaru city is already worrying, it is necessary to formulate an appropriate alternative strategy to save the rattan entrepreneurs so that they do not leave names. The research objectives are to analyze the strategic position of the rattan entrepreneurs in Pekanbaru city and to determine alternative strategies that could be used to nourish the r attan industry in Pekanbaru c ity. The research objects are rattan entrepreneurs with a population of 43 business units. Data collection techniques are through questionnaires, interviews and literature study. Data analysis uses External Factor Evaluation (EFE), Internal Factor Evaluation (IFE), SWOT-8K Matrix Analysis and QSPM Matrix Analysis. The results of this study are : 1) the conditions of the Pekanbaru city entrepreneurs in a very worrying position where the opportunity position is lower than the threat position, while the strength is in a lower position than the weakness, 2) Based on the SWOT-8K analysis, it shows the strategic position of the Pekanbaru city rattan entrepreneur is in the IIIA quadrant position, namely the sanitation strategy, and 3) Based on the QSPM matrix analysis, the alternative strategy that can be used by rattan craftsmen in Pekanbaru city is aggressive sanitation strategy. https://doi.org/10.26905/jmdk.v8i2.4153

Climate urbanism and austerity in structurally disadvantaged cities

ABSTRACT If the governance challenges of climate change have been well researched for medium-sized, affluent and larger entrepreneurial cities, relatively little is known about climate urbanism in small-to-medium-sized cities experiencing long-term industrial decline, social deprivation and austerity. Such structurally disadvantaged cities often struggle to build inclusive new climate alliances, attract green jobs, and forge new images. This intervention argues that research on climate urbanism needs to consider two emerging trends in structurally disadvantaged cities: (1) how austerity is producing uneven geographies of climate urbanism; (2) the local social and economic conditions underpinning the construction of new climate alliances around alternative trajectories of urban development.

Network Survival Strategies of Migrant Entrepreneurs in Large Cities: Analysis of Albanian Firms in Milan

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the role of cultural bias (preference for what is culturally more akin) in the entrepreneurial choice regarding different types of social networks in the context of urban mixed embeddedness. We test empirically the presence and aftermaths of this cultural bias, drawing on evidence from a natural experiment with regard to Albanian ethnic entrepreneurs in the city of Milan, Italy. Namely, these entrepreneurs are exposed to the same mixed urban embeddedness and, when we control for firm characteristics, the only discriminating component explaining their success is their choice of social network. We focus on the choice over three types of social networks, classified according to varying degrees of cultural distance between the network and the entrepreneur: (a) the indigenous population, (b) the local Albanian diaspora, and (c) fellow citizens residing in the country of origin, Albania (i.e., transnational networking). We employ a novel method for reverse engineering of preferences for networking by using a Kaplan-Meier estimator and a propensity-score matching technique. We find that strategic network liaisons with locals is actually the most beneficial social network for ethnic firm performance. However, it is social networking within the culturally closer local Albanian diaspora that is the most common behaviour.

Social Economics and the Solidarity City

As someone who has had an interest in how alternatives to the neoliberal postulates famously articulated in Harvey’s (1989) ground-breaking analysis of the entrepreneurial city which go back to my ...