Urban Development and Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services: Too Many Unanswered Questions?

Abstract

It is often assumed that future urban employment will be increasingly dependent on the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). This underpins much of the current thinking about the development of the English "core cites." Their example is employed to examine the more general validity of such assumptions, in terms of five critical questions to which research offers only partial and indefinite answers. For any city, how far are these activities really "knowledge intensive"? What markets do they serve? Is their future growth certain? And even when this is the case, how can they make a long-term contribution to local urban economic success? Finally, how far do urban economic institutions and policies need to be adapted to foster knowledge-based activities such as KIBS? It seems that, despite the growth of measured KIBS employment, most of the core cities possess few truly knowledge-intensive KIBS, capable of serving national and international business markets, competitively adapting to future change, and adding to the competitiveness of the wider urban economy. Nationally such activities remain focused into the London region where, if anything, they have increased their concentration is recent years. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing.

Causal relations between knowledge-intensive business services and regional employment growth

“…Part of the literature shares the same view (e.g. Wood, 2006), while other studies prefer to adopt a more restrictive definition of KIBS (e.g. Koch and Stahlecker, 2006).…”

“…It is often conjectured that future urban employment will be increasingly dependent on KIBS (Wood, 2006). The geographic distribution of KIBS is generally not more concentrated than other economic branches (Merino and Rubalcaba, 2013) but, at the same time, shows abnor-mally high values in some cities (Bryson et al, 2004).…”

Especialización, concentración y aglomeración espacial de los servicios intensivos en conocimiento en España

“…Más que un «sector» o un «clúster» de actividades, los KIS están presentes en casi todas las industrias (OECD, 2006: 31;Consoli y Elche, 2009) y, a menudo, conectan diversos sectores productivos entre sí y con el consumo. Entre estas funciones, destacan las de adaptación, difusión de innovaciones y organización de recursos para el desarrollo del conocimiento (Miles, 2003;Kemppilä y Mettänen, 2004;OECD, 2006;Wood, 2006;European Commisison, 2007;Albors-Garrigos et al, 2009;Doloreux et al, 2010;Rodríguez y Camacho, 2010), así como su contribución al desarrollo regional (Herstad y Eberbersger, 2015).…”

Balancing London? A Preliminary Investigation of the “Core Cities” and “Northern Way” Spatial Policy Initiatives Using Multi-City Corporate and Commercial Law Firms

“…The Core Cities group, a strategic alliance of England's major regional cities Wood, 2006aWood, , 2006b). This posed a problem, as strong regional cities had come to be seen as As such, both these spatial frameworks may be interpreted as new policy thinking to bring cities beyond London into Castells ' (1996) socio-spatial framework he calls 'network society'.…”