Governance in innovative cities and the importance of branding.

THREE CASE STUDY EXAMPLES

Throughout the Western world there are interesting examples of cities where policy makers have contributed to the emergence of a local knowledge economy. Different authorities have had varying degrees of success but generally fail in transplanting particular models. Planning a 'Silicon Somewhere' (Hospers 2006a) has led regularly to disappointments. The lesson to be learnt from 'great planning disasters' of this sort is that a local knowledge economy cannot be produced from scratch (Hospers 2006a). Knowledge-intensive activity must always have a firm basis in the existing local economic structure or at least be able to find some link-up there. In addition, the successful development of innovative cities depends upon clear vision, collaboration, attention to practical details and a realistic place marketing strategy. By way of illustration, below we will examine practical experiences with a policy which links branding to a package of policies in three modern urban areas. The examples given below illustrate three potential approaches--a combination of high tech and a lively music culture, the creation of a cross-border region mixing health industry excellence with a young brand and the transformation of an old city via infrastructure investment and imaginative cultural rebranding that takes the 'old' as the basis for an exciting 'new'. The focus is on localized urban diversity policy in Austin (Texas), the networking and branding strategy of the Scandinavian Oresund and the 'real-world-science' approach in the English city of Manchester.

Austin: USA's live-music capital

In the heart of the American State of Texas the city of Austin is a leading innovative and creative centre. The city combines a high-tech and academic environment with abundant life style assets such as a vibrant local music scene. The population of Austin is one of the best educated and prosperous in the USA and wages have grown faster than elsewhere in Texas (Florida 2002). The city has become a high-tech mecca attracting a lot of international computer hardware and software companies (e.g. Dell and IBM) as well as big research consortia such as SEMATECH (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology). There is an active partnership between academia, the city and State government. BioAustin, an initiative of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, for instance, has been jointly set up to attract and support bio-related companies and researchers.

In 2007, more than 2,100 patents were assigned to Austin innovators, giving Austin third place in the list of most innovative cities in the US (Austin Chamber of Commerce 2008) on this measure. More than a third of the local private-sector workforce then had a job in high-tech-related activities. However, when people hear 'Austin', most will not associate the city with high-tech companies or its university. Many of them rather will refer to 'Austin City Limits', a live music broadcast on public TV, or the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival. In effect the city has for many years boasted a status as the live-music capital of the USA. Austin is the hang-out for the domestic pop and rock industry. Performers and bands that have made their mark, such as Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble have their roots in the city. Austin sees itself as a creative community rather than a place which has the merely high-tech character of Silicon Valley. Many knowledge workers indeed have recently moved to Austin to escape the alleged 'nerdistan' mentality in the Valley (Florida 2002).

The success of the city of Austin owes much to a mix of strategies pursued by the local government over a long period (Florida 2002; Landry 2006). Some elements were standard, others much less so. During the 1980s and 1990s, city managers worked hard to attract branch plants of high-tech companies from elsewhere, including Intel, IBM and Motorola. At the same time, the city further invested in its university, the University of Texas, by applying for many State and federal research funds and by specializing in the field of frontier technologies. These efforts would not have paid off so well, however, if the city authorities had not combined them with considerable investments in the local lifestyle and music scene around Sixth Street. Much indeed was owed to one man, former Mayor Kirk Watson who played an especially important part in capitalizing on the convergence between technology and lifestyle. He has been described in the Texas Monthly Biz magazine as 'a man with a vision of what the community wants and the moxie to carry it out'. Watson firmly believed that Austin could only generate technological creativity when there was enough creativity in the cultural domain too. This idea resulted in clever policy tricks: when the high-tech company Vignette, for example, wanted to set up a new facility in Austin's down town, the municipality agreed, but only if the firm committed itself to support the local music scene with one million dollars. Through this winning combination of local technology, culture and policy Austin has been able to attract knowledge workers who, as well as their interesting job, increasingly demand thriving lifestyle amenities. Thus, USA's Live-Music capital has become an outstanding example of a modern innovative city.

The Oresund: The human capital

The Oresund is a cross-border (Euregional) 'twin city', linking Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden via a large bridge, itself a very innovative engineering triumph, the Oresund Link. Historically, the Oresund was the core of the Danish Kingdom but after the peace treaty of Roskilde in 1660 the northern part came under Swedish rule. Despite earlier incidental negotiations to foster Danish-Swedish contacts, it was only in the 1990s that more and more policy makers in the Oresund realised that increased cross-border cooperation could be beneficial for the urban agglomeration as a whole (Oresundsbro Konsortiet 2007). Obviously, one of the aims was to create the critical mass needed for more urban creativity and innovation (Landry 2000). Although the Oresund, with more than 3 million inhabitants is a region rather than a city as regards surface area, it can be regarded as a single urban knowledge area and hence a city-region. It is the most densely populated agglomeration in Scandinavia. Since the 1990s the area has been transformed from a relatively traditional industrial area into a true 'technopolis'.

The Oresund city-region excels in 'health', broadly defined as all activities to do with the health care 'supply chain', including medical technology and life sciences. Next to London and Paris, the Oresund has already succeeding in gaining recognition as one of the top three 'hot spots' in Europe in this youthful branch of the knowledge economy (Hospers 2006b). Collaboration in medical matters has been practised on both sides of the border since the late 1980s, collaboration that was sealed in 1997 by the establishment of the Medicon Valley Academy, a joint venture between local medical technology companies, universities and hospitals. Employment in the health sector in the Oresund has shown vigorous growth in the last few years, especially as regards technically high-flying jobs. This is partly because the conurbation has shown itself able to draw in an increasing number of innovative foreign companies, notably from the United States.

In the few studies carried out to explain the Oresund's economic achievements, at least two success factors have been identified - effective collaboration between local parties in both business and government and a clear branding strategy (Hospers 2006b). The Oresund Committee, with representatives from all the social parties, opted for the theme 'Man and his Needs' as its regional spearhead. Under this banner, the committee has invested in local economic diversity, in particular in a variety of facilities related to human needs, such as health (medical technology), contact with others (the Oresund Bridge) and recreation (varied supply of culture).

But this was not all: the local stakeholders also realised that the presence of these elements was insufficient to place the region properly on the map--the Oresund did not yet have a real image. So they also worked on making the name of the Oresund familiar in Europe through a targeted branding strategy (Oresundsbro Konsortiet 2007), partly by creating a web page and producing marketing brochures but also by creating a special branding organization, the Oresund Identity Network. The network owns rights to the trademark of the Oresund area, comprising a graphic profile, logotype (the typical Scandinavian 'O') and a number of messages that can be used in the marketing of the area. Many Danish and Swedish companies and public organizations from both countries have become members of the Oresund Identity Network. This gives them free access to the regional logotype to use for their own marketing efforts. In addition, in the media, the region has been actively promoted as 'The Human Capital'--note the double meaning--where it is good to live, work and play. Although it is difficult to measure the effect of the branding strategy, it seems that this localised approach to the Oresund has not left its creators empty-handed (Hospers 2006b). After almost 350 years the Oresund is slowly but surely reuniting itself.

Manchester: Original and modern

Manchester, an agglomeration of about three million people in the north west of England, can be proud of its glorious past as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. In the eighteenth century, it was the textiles capital of the world, making the city a classic industrial metropolis. However, the first industrial city, in which half the labour force worked in manufacturing, was also the first place in Western-Europe to experience massive deindustrialisation. From the 1960s onwards, factories closed, workers were fired and the city went into a major economic crisis. The lack of local sectoral diversity made it hard to find local Schumpeterian 'new combinations' of trend and tradition that could help to rejuvenate the Mancunian economy.

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