One of the many joys of working at the Centre is having the opportunity to read and think about some of the great research that is undertaken across the globe looking at cities, their economies and why they matter to the future wellbeing of individuals, businesses and communities (however you define it).
Also if you’re like me, you rely on a very wide range of sources and contacts to alert you to all this great work.
So in my very humble way I thought I’d start a weekly blog highlighting my recommended reading list of research on cities that I’ve come across that week. My recommendations whilst obviously personal and subject to all my biases and judgment errors, will be guided by the following criteria: a) those I’ve actually read; b) contains or is based on research; c) is accessible to a wider readership; and d) I enjoyed reading them.
So my initial list is:
- ‘Education or Creativity: What matters most for economic performance?’ by Emanuela Marrocu & Raffaele Paci – combines Glaeser’s ‘human capital’ and Florida’s ‘creative class’ ideas into three separate groups – creative graduates, bohemians and non-creative graduates – and looks at the effect of these groups on the economic performance of 257 regions across the Europe.
- ‘Defining a Great Street’ by Kaid Benfield – photo-based consideration of what makes a great street drawing on city streets from across the US and Europe.
- ‘When Migrants Rule: the legacy of mass migration on economic development in the US’ by Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Viola von Berlepsch – fascinating analysis showing the lasting effects of migration in the late 19th and early 20th century on the current economic performance of US counties. History matters!
- ‘Great Britain’s Second-Order City Regions in Recessions, 1978-2010’ by Tony Champion and Alan Townsend – compares the jobs performance of UK’s big city regions in the current recession to show how much ground cities have lost and how this differed from previous recessions.
- ‘New Geography of Jobs’ by Enrico Moretti – brilliant rich and insightful exposition of why and how the modern economy benefits certain people and places more than others. He also has some interesting things to say about urban manufacturing.
I hope you like them. Please feel free to add to my list and let me know other research that I should be reading.
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