Spatial Imaginaries and Tech Cities: Place-branding East London’s digital economy

Abstract

We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London's 'Tech City' initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial imaginaries, and specify affordances and constraints on place brands and brand-led strategies. Using mixed methods over a long timeframe, we analyse Tech City's emergence and the overlapping, competing narratives that preceded and succeeded it, highlighting day-today challenges and more basic tensions. While a strong brand has developed, we cast doubt on claims that policy has had a catalytic effect, at least in the ways originally intended.

Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the tech city programme

“…There are two main identification challenges: not accounting for these will bias up estimates of the true policy effect. First, rising media attention around 'Silicon Roundabout' from 2008 (Nathan et al, 2018;Foord 2013) could have induced firms and entrepreneurs into the area before the policy launched. Figure B3 gives a proxy of attention over time via counts of relevant Google searches pre and post-policy.…”

“…By 2010 Ministers were claiming 'something special' for the Inner East London cluster (Cameron, 2010;Osborne and Schmidt, 2012). Other accounts depict policy origins as chaotic (Butcher, 2013;Nathan et al, 2018), and thus as good as random compared to other tech hotspots in the city. To test, I use propensity score matching to identify observably similar tech hotspot LSOAs in London.…”

Gender and Technology Culture: Points of Contact in Tech Cities

“…Tech cities are commonly based in run-down areas on the fringes of, or occupying undesirable spaces within, urban areas, often supported by government grants to promote growth and demonstrate investment in the digital sector. For Nathan et al (2018), such investment demonstrates that tech cities should be treated as unique locations in terms of the business and work opportunities located within them. Wellknown tech cities include: The first three -currently the most significant technology clusters globally (TechNation, 2018) -are the case study sites for this research.…”

“…Technology companies in Silicon Roundabout have received £6.9 billion in venture capital funding since 2010 (London & Partners, 2017). In terms of specialist creative digital clusters within specific urban economies, researchers are starting to address the unique attributes of these sites and the plurality of ‘co-creative’ labour therein (Nathan et al, 2018; Pareja-Eastaway, 2016). However, the inequalities and behavioural factors that contribute to the different experiences and opportunities of work in these spaces have not yet been scrutinised.…”

Making the silicon cape of Africa: Tales, theories and the narration of startup urbanism

“…Such literature has recently focused on the city-making power of technology unicorns (e.g. McNeill, 2016a), or the mobility of entrepreneurial policies that seek to attract high-tech firms (Wiig, 2015), or the spatial politics of places that become metonymically branded as ‘Silicon’ locales (see Nathan and Vandore, 2014; Nathan et al, 2018). Moving in a different direction, this article is not concerned with uncovering the reasons for tech clustering, a research that is well documented in economic geography (e.g.…”