This is a truly outstanding book by leading scholars in urban studies that provides an original and thought-provoking view on creative knowledge cities. Its orientation on urban policy is creative and innovative, as it accounts for context-specific histories of multi-layered cities.

Ron Boschma, CIRCLE (Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy), Lund University, Sweden, and URU (Urban and Regional research centre Utrecht), Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Place-making and Policies for Competitive Cities offers critical insights into the many perplexing institutional and political tasks that cities must assume as they pursue the vital search for creativity and competitiveness in the context of ever-intensifying globalization.

Allen J. Scott, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Geography and Department of Public Policy, University of California - Los Angeles

Urban policy makers are increasingly striving to strengthen the economic competitiveness of their cities. Currently, they do that mainly in the field of the creative knowledge economy - arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, architecture, publishing, design, and ICT, R&D, finance, and law. This book is about the policies that help to realise such objectives: policies driven by classic location theory, cluster policies, 'creative class' policies aimed at attracting talent, as well as policies that connect to pathways, place and personal networks.

The experiences and policy strategies of 13 city-regions across Europe have been investigated: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Dublin, Helsinki, Leipzig, Milan, Munich, Poznan, Riga, Sofia and Toulouse. All have different histories and roles: capital cities and secondary cities, cities with different economies and industries, port-based cities and land-locked cities. And all 13 have different cultural, political and welfare state traditions. Through this wide set of contexts, Place-making and Policies for Competitive Citiescontributes to the debate about the development of creative knowledge cities, their economic growth and competitiveness and advocates the development of context-sensitive tailored approaches. Chapter authors from the 13 European cities rigorously evaluate, reformulate and test assumptions behind old and new policies.

This solidly-grounded and policy-focused study on the urban policy of place-making highlights practices for different contexts in managing knowledge-intensive cities and, by drawing on the varied experiences from across Europe, it establishes the state-of-the-art for both academic and policy debates in a fast-moving field.