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Urban‐rural interaction in China has evolved over time and presented features in different periods since 1949. The aim of this paper is to measure urban‐rural interaction in China in a 50‐year period from 1958 to 2007, and to see if it bears resemblance to the historical evolution.

The paper historically reviews urban‐rural interaction in four periods after 1949. Then, it uses principal component analysis (PCA) and assesses this interaction in the study period.

The quantification of urban‐rural interaction bears resemblances to its historical evolution. Reform and opening‐up as well as the rural‐favored policies contribute a lot to the increase of urban‐rural interaction.

The paper systematically reviews the evolution of urban‐rural interaction in China, and analyzes the features of this interaction in different periods since 1949. It introduces PCA and measures urban‐rural interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to provide conceptual foundations for a study exploring the capacity of hard infrastructure and amenities to influence the socio‐economic imprint of urban spaces. The paper argues that some urban developments are more economically efficient in generating innovation and knowledge than others.

The paper reviews the debate between urban density and infrastructure. Drawing on empirical evidence and economic production theory, it explores the spatial links between economic growth, innovation and knowledge productivity. It argues that the growing role of human capital in the production process has linked productivity to a city's mix and levels of infrastructure and amenities. It reviews five key infrastructure types for knowledge‐based developments.

This paper finds that the positive contribution of density to urban vibrancy and human connectivity is constrained by a city's infrastructure and amenity levels. It concludes that urban development cognisant of an appropriate mix and level of infrastructure and amenities will more likely enhance regional knowledge development and innovation than those which are not.

The evidence presented in this paper has a broad range of strategic and practical socio‐economic implications, and contributes towards understanding how urban form can leverage social aspects of a city for economic growth.

Using an inter‐disciplinarian approach, this paper provides invaluable insights into the types of infrastructure and importance of urban form for knowledge‐based development. It contends that well‐planned knowledge‐based developments can be leveraged to ensure the successful implementation and delivery of national innovation and productivity priorities.

David Gordon’s early work included a focus on cities and their role in capitalist development, but he didn’t complete or publish an ambitious project called CAPITALopolis. Gordon instead developed a framework linking Marxian insights with historical analysis of institutional impact and change through his social structures of accumulation framework. Subsequent mainstream and radical urban analyses didn’t use Gordon’s work, but his early writings are consistent with his passion for fighting racial and economic inequality, and understanding those forces systematically as part of the history and logic of capitalism.

Urban sustainability is an inseparable dimension of today's cities; thus, the role played by creativity, and consequently sustainable urban entrepreneurship and the networks it raises, gives rise to the pro-activity of these two constructs toward a tripartition (economic, social and environmental). This study aims to measure sustainable urban entrepreneurship through a composite of existing indicators in the literature of cities.

In this study, the authors followed a quantitative research by applying exploratory factor analysis. The sample contains 308 towns and cities in Portugal, and the data were collected using secondary databases (e.g. INE; PORDATA).

Through quantitative research, this study identified the key indicators that mediate sustainable urban entrepreneurship in cities, as a methodological tool for them to evaluate their sustainable entrepreneurial capacity.

The results obtained here provide information to show that sustainable urban entrepreneurship is an essential construct for cities, allowing a solution to many of their urban problems by its association with creative economy and its influence on the revitalization of urban spaces by urban regeneration, and by the importance of networks in these, the latter being another fundamental construct.

This research makes important contributions to studies considering the sustainability construct in urban entrepreneurship area. It will help to fill part of the gap in existing studies involving the cities’ aspects in entrepreneurship field. Consequently, the main contribution of this study lies in identifying the indicators that contribute to cities' tripartite sustainable balance by assuming sustainable urban entrepreneurship as a crucial premise.

In recent decades, processes of postindustrialization, economic restructuring, and globalization have been transforming the landscape of social and economic inequalities in general (Wade, 2003), and in urban settings in particular (Baum, 1997; Fainstein, 1990; Sassen, 1990a, 1991, 1998; Waldinger, 1996). The role of cities as strategic sites in the globalization process and as arenas of economic transformation is central in the literature of globalization and economic restructuring (Fainstein, 2000; Sassen, 1988, 1998).

This study applies theoretical perspectives from urban, environmental, and organization studies to examine if “smart growth” represents an ecological restructuring of the political economy of conventional urban development, long theorized as a “growth machine” (Molotch, H. (1976) The city as growth machine: Toward a political economy of place. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 309–332; Logan & Molotch, 2007); the purpose is to determine if there is a “smart growth machine.”

Nine smart growth projects (SGPs) in four cities in California and Oregon were identified and semistructured interviews were held with the respective developers, architects, and civic officials involved in their implementation process. Comparative, descriptive, and grounded approaches were used to generate themes from interviews and other data sources.

The findings suggest that an ecological modernization of urban political economy occurs through the coordination of entrepreneurial action, technical expertise, and “smart” regulation. Individual and institutional entrepreneurs shift the organizational field of urban development. Technical expertise is needed to make projects sustainable and financially feasible. Finally, a “smart” regulatory framework that balances regulations and incentives is needed to forge cooperative relationships between local governments and developers. This constellation of actors and institutions represents a smart growth machine.

The author questions whether urban growth can become “smart” using an original study of nine SGPs in four cities across California and Oregon.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the default portrayal of street trade as an informal occupation and spatial practice, by examining comparatively the changes in the regulatory frameworks of two politically distinct city administrations in Latin America since the introduction of the informal economy debate.

This paper draws from a comparative case study design to synthesize evidence from historical administrative records, secondary research and materials from a two-year fieldwork carried out in Lima and Bogotá in 2008 and 2009.

The author argues that the incorporation of the informal economy framework into local governments’ policymaking has reframed street trade as a subject of policy. Since the 1970s, the author traces a shift from worker-centered initiatives, through the deregulation of street trade, to entrepreneurial-centered approaches. Nowadays, both, Lima’s neoliberal governance focusing on “formalizing” and Bogotá’s socialist/progressive governance aiming at “upgrading” street trade respond more explicitly to distinct assessments about the informal economy – legalist and dualist, respectively. Yet, both cities converge in that the closer street trade is perceived as an informal occupation; the more likely policy initiatives decouple the right to work from the right to access public space, spurring more marginal forms of street vending.

Even though the informal economy framework has helped to draw attention to important policy issues locally, nationally and internationally, this paper calls for a critical revision of such framing at the local level to allow for inclusive urban governance.

This paper studies the political economy of the endogenous urban–rural divide in two dimensions: labor market and provision of public goods.

This paper gives a dual-sector model endogenously depending on the consumption of public goods (club goods), the number of rural–urban migrants and the tax rate (transfer payments).

According to the research findings in this paper, the constraints on the participation of rural residents portray the rural residents' bargaining power, and in the game between the urban elites and the rural residents, tax rates depend on the preferences of the urban elites and the constraints urban elites and the rural residents jointly face. Therefore, the urban elites have to set tax rates deviating from the most preferred ones. The model in this paper can explain a series of empirical findings and yield new theoretical findings for empirical testing.

Significantly, the paper finds that the increase in agricultural productivity will lead to industrialization, accompanied by the disintegration of the dual-sector model. However, though the increase in industrial productivity can accelerate industrialization, it will further expand the urban–rural divide.

In spite of controversies in academia, various nations around the world have been propounding the importance of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) as the driving force in economic growth and development strategies. Accordingly, this research aims to understand how these industries could contribute to forming a cultural and creative policy scheme in an urban context that is structured based on local cultural assets.

The case analysis of Rasht city, a UNESCO Creative City, assesses the planning policies from the national to the regional level to determine the cultural policy planning platform of Creative Rasht in four phases of urban cultural resources, municipal objectives, festival urban branding and the role of stakeholders, which are fashioned by the integrated cultural identity and sustainable city. This is followed by semi-structured interviews with experts and young researchers in the field of culture-led urban regeneration to evaluate different phases of the policy planning process.

By means of the qualitative method and ethnographic research, this paper argues that managerial regulations for local cultural industries contribute not only to the reinforcement of cultural resources but also to urban cultural sustainable development.

Building on empirical research, this paper attempts to argue the significant role of local CCIs alongside social values in creating a creative city platform, given the necessity for an urban cultural platform in Iran. It also emphasises the importance of local communities’ participation in the decision-making process and awareness-raising among different groups of stakeholders.

This chapter offers a theoretical appraisal of our contemporary hyper-regulated urban spaces situated against a backdrop of deindustrialisation, the shift to consumer economies and the rise of the creative city paradigm. While existing work has characterised urban space as dead and asocial spaces bereft of life. This chapter opts to think our city centres as ‘Zombie Cities’: cities which have been eviscerated the social but are forced to wear the exterior signs of life through the injection of economically productive but artificial modes of culture and creativity. This sets the stage for explaining why parkour is inconsistently included and excluded from urban space, and how it attains spatio-economically contingent legitimacy and inclusion into urban space that problematises existing theoretical perspectives around a revanchist urbanism.