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While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-seeking investments, the authors argue that most other outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) likely have positive effects on income development in the home region. Data on the US urban system not only illustrates this but also shows that this impact is not equal in all city-regions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation as to why high- and low-income cities are associated with self-reinforcing cycles of OFDI activity that have different home-region impacts.

Conventional views assume that inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) have a positive impact on target regions, while OFDIs are often treated as the flip side of this story, being seen as having negative effects by shifting jobs and income abroad. This paper counters this logic by developing a conceptual argument that systematically distinguishes different types of OFDIs and relates them to economic development effects in the home (investing) region.

Using a co-evolutionary conceptualization, this paper suggests that many high-income cities are characterized by a virtuous cycle of development where high, successful OFDI activity generates both positive income effects as well as incentives to engage in further OFDIs in the future, thus leading to additional income increases. In contrast, it is suggested that low-income cities are characterized by what we refer to as vicious cycles of development with low OFDI activity, few development impulses and a lack of incentives and capabilities for future investments.

This paper develops a counter-perspective to conventional views of OFDI activity, arguing that these investments have a positive impact on regional income levels. The authors develop a spatially sensitive explanation which acknowledges that OFDIs do not trigger a linear process but are associated with diverging inter-urban development paths and may contribute to higher levels of intra-urban inequality. From these findings, the authors derive conclusions for future research and public policy.

This chapter explores the question – where is the economy? In taking up this question, I explore the action of economists in making the economy, framed in the place of ‘place’ in the economy and how the politics of economic data and calculation and boundaries make economies. In this way, I argue for a performative understanding of regional economics where the economy can be said to be made, often out of real things such as hospitals, factories, shops and schools, and infrastructure, but also out of social practices that echo out of the field of economics into institutions and ways of thinking calculatedly.

To make this case of this approach, and to grasp the slippery fish of where the economy is, I introduce autoethnographic materials from my experience of being a regional economic commentator, holding forth on the Waterford economy. These empirics relay the everyday methods of economic analysis as a material and political practice, alighting on the data, calculations and boundaries that go into making the economy. Here the curious relationship between the economist and their economy, the dancer and the dance come into view and how people, including myself, call an economy into being.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter – a top-down soft regulation initiative that has been framed as a “movement” to promote good employment across the local area.

The research draws on 24 semi-structured interviews with policy officers, trade unions, employers and civil society actors and various professional and employer bodies who have been involved in the charter since its inception. The interview data are complemented by documentary analysis.

The findings underline the importance of institutional factors such as political access points and the mobilising structures of the state in creating a space for progressive employment policies such as charters to emerge. We also find that the framing of the charter as a mechanism to achieve both social justice and improved productivity allows diverse actors to engage, but at the same time this results in a degree of ambiguity over the normative and substantive reference points for “good employment”.

The article contributes to our understanding of the changing nature of top-down political initiatives that seek to change business practices by engaging a wide range of stakeholders as Allies not adversaries. We argue that while charters are a potentially useful demand side intervention, in the absence of significant workplace or grassroots engagement and without coordinated mechanisms of monitoring and enforcement, their effects on low wage labour markets will be limited.

Due to the limitations of conventional urban planning, it is essential to develop novel techniques of urban futruing. This paper aimed to use the scenario technique to create four plausible narratives of the future of Isfahan. Also, the authors described the problems of city foresight in the Global South.

This paper chronicles the Schwartzian steps taken to build explorative scenarios of Isfahan City in Iran in 2040. After using a STEEPV (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political, Value) analysis, the authors prioritized the collected variables by combining influence diagrams, the iceberg metaphor and an expert-based survey. Once the key uncertainties were derived, four scenarios were developed and discussed.

Through thematic analysis of the official visions of Isfahan’s future and the juxtaposition of these narratives with insight yielded in the scenario-development process, the paper concludes that the Northernness of the prevailing urban imaginaries, uncritical mimetic benchmarking, depoliticization of urban futures and the decorative reductionistic visions colonize urban futures in Isfahan/Iran. Critical/deconstructive city foresight and application of discomfort/ignorance criteria in the generation of scenarios can improve the rigor and quality of city foresight in the Global South.

The application of city foresight in the Global South has been limited. The paper is a step toward bridging this gap and providing some recommendations on how city foresight in the Global South might differ from its counterparts in the Global North.

The project – AskingBristol – uses university students to connect third sector organizations with particular “asks” to organizations which might be able to respond with “offers”. The authors describe the task of the experiment as being an attempt to embed students and their universities within the cities that they are based in, but are often not really very connected to.

This reflective report on practice describes an initiative aimed at producing a piece of “social infrastructure”. Written by the four people involved, the authors theorize and evaluate what we have done so far and what we hope to do in future.

Over two phases, it has had some success, and we think represents a concrete approach to thinking about how “civic” ideas might gain traction within universities. Using ideas about social networks, boundary objects and infrastructure the authors explore the opportunities and problems of such a project, stressing that it allows co-ordination between a wide variety of people and organizations that do not necessarily share common interests.

This is one “experiment”, in one city, but it demonstrates the possibilities of getting “civic” universities engaged with local third sector organizations.

If it became a piece of social infrastructure, such a project could embed ideas about “civic”, “impact”, “engagement” and so on into the routines of the city and the university.

Though Asking Bristol cannot solve the problems of the city, it shows that we can transfer resources, time, skills and space to where they are needed.

The authors do not think anything like this has been attempted before, and hope that sharing it will stimulate some comparisons, and perhaps some dissemination of the idea.

This study aims to establish an assessment model to measure big data readiness in the public sector, specifically targeting local governments at the provincial and city/regency levels. Additionally, the study aims to gain valuable insights into the readiness of selected local governments in Indonesia by using the established assessment model.

This study uses a mixed-method approach, using focus group discussions (FGDs), surveys and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to establish the assessment model. The FGDs involve gathering perspectives on readiness variables from experts in academia, government and practice, whereas the survey collects data from a sample of selected local governments using a questionnaire developed based on the variables obtained in FGDs. The EFA is used on survey data to condense the variables into a smaller set of dimensions or factors. Ultimately, the assessment model is applied to evaluate the level of big data readiness among the selected Indonesian local governments.

FGDs identify 32 essential variables for evaluating the readiness of local governments to adopt big data. Subsequently, EFA reduces this number by five and organizes the remaining variables into four factors: big data strategy, policy and collaboration, infrastructure and human resources and data collection and utilization. The application of the assessment model reveals that the overall readiness for big data in the selected local governments is primarily moderate, with those in the Java cluster displaying higher readiness. In addition, the data collection and utilization factor achieves the highest score among the four factors.

This study offers an assessment model for evaluating big data readiness within local governments by combining perspectives from big data experts in academia, government and practice.

The historical evolution of the economy of Ireland's South East region is traced, highlighting Waterford's key role as the region's leading urban centre and port. What had been a rather traditional regional economic structure underwent considerable modernisation in the last two decades, but lacks the sectoral specialisation which provides a strong economic base in other Irish regions. The National Spatial Strategy, launched in 2002, sought to promote regional specialisation in exporting sectors, but lacked the governance structures required to drive the process. The current National Planning Framework is more focused on building up the main regional centres, but is likely to leave Waterford City well short of the scale required to be competitive in global markets. An alternative strategy is proposed, whereby Waterford would work in collaboration with the South East's unique set of strong county towns to create a distinctive and coherent, region-wide and sectorally focused, urban system. The success of such a project, however, would be dependent on the creation of a strong regional government tier and the devolution to the regions of a wide range of powers and functions currently concentrated at national level.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and cities and how the relationship between multinational enterprise (MNEs) and local firms facilitates regional cleantech innovation.

Using a combination of social network analysis, regression analysis and interview analysis, the authors map and analyze a cleantech cluster to investigate the relationship between MNEs and local firms and the resulting effects on cleantech innovation.

The findings of the paper indicate that FDI plays a crucial role in cities and their local clusters by acting as a broker between a diverse set of actors: firms, institutions, universities, financial and other intermediaries. Additionally, connectedness to MNEs improves local firms’ innovation.

This study is not free of limitations, mainly, because of the aspects that the analysis is based on one city and one cleantech hub. Further research could verify whether the findings of this paper hold in other cities and industries.

The findings, elucidating the connection between MNEs and local firms, as well as MNEs being important brokers in the local system, and the resulting impact, will help policymakers to take appropriate actions and support the local cleantech innovation. It is important to not only attract high-quality FDI into local clusters, but also to create and support collaborations between foreign firms and local actors, because colocation does not automatically leads to positive spillovers and a lot depends on how MNEs are integrated into the local milieu.

The present paper argues that FDI plays an important role in local cleantech innovation and it is important to integrate foreign firms in local social networks.

The authors analyze FDI patterns in an emerging industry at the city and local cluster level using a unique database containing the information on relationships between MNEs and local firms, as well as interview data.

This paper is premised upon an analysis of 26 cities within the UK regarding their smart city projects. Each city was analyzed through news articles, reports and policy documents to ascertain the level of each city's development as a smart city. Each was coded by separating the projects into five types, which were ranked on a scale from 0 (no plans for use) to 5 (project type in use). The most common types are the provision of open data and the creation of business ecosystems as the primary driver of the smart city. However, many councils and enterprises proclaim smartness before the technology is actually in use, making it difficult to separate what is utilised and what is under development. Therefore, this paper further carried out an analysis of 20 cities and their intended plans to usher in the smart city, to observe the expected emergence of smart city technology. This was achieved by interrogating various roadmaps and policy documents produced by the respective cities. It was found that the most prevalent form of emergent smart city technology is the rollout of 5G and increased educational programmes alongside a proliferation of internet of things and electric vehicle usage.