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This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic, fiscal, social and political fallout on cities and metropolitan regions. We assess the effect of the pandemic on urban economic geography at the intra- and inter-regional geographic scales in the context of four main forces: the social scarring instilled by the pandemic; the lockdown as a forced experiment; the need to secure the urban built environment against future risks; and changes in the urban form and system. At the macrogeographic scale, we argue the pandemic is unlikely to significantly alter the winner-take-all economic geography and spatial inequality of the global city system. At the microgeographic scale, however, we suggest that it may bring about a series of short-term and some longer-running social changes in the structure and morphology of cities, suburbs and metropolitan regions. The durability and extent of these changes will depend on the timeline and length of the pandemic.

Manville, Lens, Mönkkönen's reply to our 'Housing, urban growth and inequalities' Urban Studies article is welcome. However, it fails to engage with our two main criticisms of the housing-as-opportunity literature: that (a) deregulation and upzoning in large and dynamic cities are unlikely to benefit those at the bottom of the income pyramid facing the greatest affordability problems; and that (b) greater deregulation will not facilitate interregional migration from low opportunity regions to booming cities, thus having no discernible impact on within-city and cross-regional inequality. We also argue that because they publicly endorse legislation making bold claims in this respect, the burden of proof lies on them and others who propose sweeping policy experiments with our cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is often seen as the cure-all solution for poverty reduction. Proponents argue that it leads to job creation, higher incomes and lower poverty rates in the cities in which it occurs. Others argue that many entrepreneurs are actually creating low-productivity firms serving local markets. Yet, despite this debate, little research has considered the impact of entrepreneurship on poverty in cities. This paper addresses this gap using a panel of US cities for the period between 2005 and 2015. We hypothesize that the impact of entrepreneurship will depend on whether it is in tradeable sectors, so likely to have positive local multiplier effects, or non-tradeable sectors, which may saturate local markets. We find that entrepreneurship in tradeables reduces poverty and increases incomes for non-entrepreneurs, a result we confirm using an instrumental variable approach, taking the inheritance of entrepreneurial traits as the instruments. In contrast, while there are some economic benefits from non-tradeable entrepreneurship, we find these are not large enough to reduce poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and scale of inter-regional and inter-urban inequalities in the UK in the context of international comparisons and our aim is to identify the extent to which such inequalities are associated with strong national economic performance. In order to do this, we first discuss the evolution of UK interregional inequalities relative to comparator European economies over more than a century. We then focus specifically on comparisons between the UK and the reunified Germany. These two exercises demonstrate that the experience of the UK has been rather different to other countries. We further explore UK inter-urban inequalities in the light of international evidence and then explain why observations of cities only tell us a partial story about the nature of interregional inequalities, especially in the case of the UK. Finally, we move onto an OECD-wide analysis of the relationships between economic growth and interregional inequality. What we observe is that any such relationships are very weak, and the only real evidence of a positive relationship is in the post-2008 crisis period, a result which points to differentials in regional resilience rather than inequality-led growth. Moreover, once former transition economies are removed from the sample, the relationship disappears, or if anything becomes slightly negative. As such, the international evidence suggests that the UK's very high spatial inequalities have hampered, rather than facilitated, national economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Urban economics and branches of mainstream economics – what we call the 'housing as opportunity' school of thought – have been arguing that shortages of affordable housing in dense agglomerations represent a fundamental barrier to economic development. Housing shortages are considered to limit migration into thriving cities, curtailing their expansion potential, generating rising social and spatial inequalities and inhibiting national growth. According to this dominant view, relaxing zoning and other planning regulations in the most prosperous cities is crucial to unleash the economic potential of cities and nations and to facilitate within-country migration. In this article, we contend that the bulk of the claims of the housing as opportunity approach are fundamentally flawed and lead to simplistic and misguided policy recommendations. We posit that there is no clear and uncontroversial evidence that housing regulation is a principal source of differences in home availability or prices across cities. Blanket changes in zoning are unlikely to increase domestic migration or to improve affordability for lower-income households in prosperous areas. They would, however, increase gentrification within metropolitan areas and would not appreciably decrease income inequality. In contrast to the housing models, we argue that the basic motors of all these features of the economy are the current geography of employment, wages and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of cities in fostering innovation has for long been taken for granted. Agglomeration and the knowledge spillovers generated in dense urban environments have been considered fundamental drivers of innovation. This view has, however, become challenged by research questioning the returns to physical agglomeration and local networking, placing instead more emphasis on the importance of interregional and international collaboration, and on innovation in peripheral regions. This paper delves into the debate on the role of cities for innovation by examining the interplay between urban location and local collaboration in Norway. It uses data from the Community Innovation Survey for 2006–2010 to map out the geographical dimension of R&D collaboration in Norwegian firms with a view to assessing whether different types of R&D collaboration in urban and rural locations affect firms' propensity to innovate. The results show that local collaboration is associated with increased process and organisational innovation, while it does not produce higher levels of product or marketing innovation. Conversely, international collaboration is connected with higher probabilities of product, new‐to‐market and marketing innovations. Furthermore, location in urban or rural areas makes no difference for most innovation outcomes in Norway when other characteristics are controlled for. Location in cities also does not shape the returns to local R&D collaboration. Hence, the role of cities for innovation in Norway, whether in themselves or as sites for dense local interaction, is less relevant than the urban innovation literature would predict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth in China in recent decades has largely rested on the dynamism of its cities. High economic growth has coincided with measures aimed at improving the efficiency of local governments and with a mounting political drive to curb corruption. Yet the connection between government institutions and urban growth in China remains poorly understood. This paper is the first to look into the link between government efficiency and corruption, on the one hand, and urban growth in China, on the other hand and to assess what is the role of institutions relative to more traditional factors for economic growth in Chinese cities. Using panel data for 283 cities over the period between 2003 and 2014, the results show that the urban growth in China is a consequence of a combination of favorable human capital, innovation, density, local conditions, foreign direct investment, and city‐level government institutions. Both government quality—especially for those cities with the best governments—and the fight against corruption at the city level have a direct effect on urban growth. Measures to tackle corruption at the provincial level matter in a more indirect way, by raising or lowering the returns of other growth‐inducing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent poverty, economic decay and lack of opportunities are at the root of considerable discontent in declining and lagging-behind areas the world over. Poor development prospects and an increasing belief that these places have "no future"--as economic dynamism has been posited to be increasingly dependent on agglomeration economies--have led many of these so-called "places that don't matter" to revolt against the status quo. The revolt has come via an unexpected source: the ballot-box, in a wave of political populism with strong territorial, rather than social foundations. I will argue that the populist wave is challenging the sources of existing well-being in both the less-dynamic and the more prosperous areas and that better, rather than more, place-sensitive territorial development policies are needed in order to find a solution to the problem. Place-sensitive development policies need, however, to stay clear of the welfare, income support and big investment projects of past development strategies if they are to be successful and focus on tapping into untapped potential and on providing opportunities to those people living in the places that "don't matter". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the link between average city size and aggregate economic growth in a total of 114 countries for the period between 1960 and 2010. The analysis--which includes pooled two-stage least-squares (2SLS), panel data analysis, system generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimator and an instrumental variable (IV) approach--finds that, in contrast to the prevailing view, there is no universal positive relationship between average city size and economic growth and that the results vary between high-income and developing countries. In high-income countries, there is consistent evidence of a positive albeit decreasing link between city size and economic growth. In contrast, the relationship does not hold for developing countries, for which most of the coefficients display insignificant results or point towards a negative connection between both factors [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative cities are seen as important sites for the generation of new ideas, products and processes. Yet, beyond case studies of a few high-profile cities, there is little empirical evidence on the link between local creative industries concentration and innovation. This paper addresses this gap with an analysis of around 1,300 UK small- and medium-sized enterprises. The results suggest that firms in local economies with high shares of creative industries employment are significantly more likely to introduce entirely new products and processes than firms elsewhere, but not innovations which are simply new to the firm. This effect is not exclusive to creative industries firms and seems to be largely due to firms in medium-sized, rather than large, cities. The results imply that creative cities may have functional specialisations in new content creation and so firms are more innovative in them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The creative industries have long been seen as an innovative sector. More recent research posits that creative occupations are also a fundamental, but overlooked, driver of innovation. Theory also suggests cities are important for both creative industries and occupations, with urban environments helping firms innovate. Yet little empirical work has considered the links between creative industries, occupations, cities, and innovation at the firm level. This paper addresses this gap using a sample of over 9000 UK SMEs. Our results stress that creative industries firms are more likely to introduce original product innovations, but not those learnt from elsewhere. Creative occupations, however, appear a more robust general driver of innovation. We find no support for the hypothesis that urban creative industries firms are particularly innovative. However, creative occupations are used in cities to introduce product innovations learnt elsewhere. The results suggest that future work needs to seriously consider the importance of occupations in empirical studies of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in cities is increasingly regarded as an outcome of two potential inputs: scientific activity and creativity. Recent firm level research has suggested that what really matters for innovation is the combination of these two inputs, rather than the mere presence of workers representing each group. Yet there is little evidence on whether this relationship holds at the city level. This paper investigates this gap in our knowledge by examining how the simultaneous presence of STEM (geeks) and creative workers (hipsters) in 290 US Metropolitan Statistical Areas during the period between 2005 and 2015 has contributed to determine city level innovation. The results indicate that, although at first sight the presence of STEM workers is a more important driver of innovation than that of creative ones, it is the combination of both factors that maximizes innovation in US cities. The most innovative cities are precisely those that are more successful at combining the two. Hence, current policies which tend to focus mainly on either STEM or creativity may be better targeted at ensuring both are present. • Science-based (STEM) activities in US cities are positively linked with innovation. • Creative activities are less connected to urban innovation, measured by patent generation. • It is, however, the combination of STEM and creative activities in US cities that yields the highest innovation returns. • Geeks are more effective and innovate more when working alongside hipsters in cities. • Hipsters need geeks, but geeks need hipsters. Each group, on its own, makes a lower contribution to urban innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Innovation in Chinese firms is more dependent on factors internal than external to the firm. • The institutional quality of the city where the firm is located is an important exception. • Poor institutional quality represents a serious barrier for firm-level innovation in China. • Better institutions reduce the amount of time firms spend dealing with government regulations to facilitate innovation. • The cost of weak institutions for innovation is higher for private than for state-owned firms. Does the variation in the quality of local government institutions affect the capacity of firms to innovate? This paper uses a unique dataset that combines the specific features of 2,700 firms with the institutional and socioeconomic characteristics of the 25 cities in China where they operate, in order to assess the extent to which institutional quality – measured across four dimensions: rule of law, government effectiveness, corruption, and regulatory quality – affects both the innovation probability and intensity of firms. The results of the econometric analysis show that poor institutional quality in urban China is an important barrier for firm-level innovation. In particular, a deficient rule of law, high corruption, and a weak regulatory quality strongly undermine firm-level innovation. The role of these factors is far more limited in the case of innovation intensity. Better institutions also reduce the amount of time firms spend dealing with government regulations in order to facilitate innovation. The results also indicate that the cost of weak institutions for innovation is higher for private than for state-owned firms, at least in the early stages of innovation. In general, differences in institutional quality generate local urban ecosystems that impinge on the propensity of firms to innovate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]