Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesINTRODUCTION
Barcelona is on a quest to transform its industries and become a knowledge-intensive city. It is one of the world's most attractive cities as measured by European City Monitor in 2006 where it rated as number 1 in Europe for quality of life for employees and number 5 in Europe as city for businesses to potentially relocate to. Each year Barcelona attracts a growing resident international community, not only there for business or holiday but to set up home, find employment or start a business. Fifteen per cent of the population is from outside Spain (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2007).
Barcelona is an increasingly popular destination for the 'creative classes' (defined as highly educated professionals and other 'creative' people), with almost 55% of members of the international community from the European Union 15 and the USA and Canada now living there educated beyond the age of 18. This is more than double the proportion of the local population so educated (22.6%) (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2007). The city is now finding, however, that attracting this talented international community is not enough on its own to stimulate its transformation to the knowledge-intensive city. Indeed, employment data is showing growth in the proportion of lower value add jobs, fuelled by growth in the construction sector and leisure services, rather than the knowledge-intensive sec tors (IDESCAT 2006). For members of this international community to become a significant actors in helping transform the knowledge intensity of the city, Barcelona authorities are increasingly recognising the need to connect it to the local firms and institutions.
Recognising this need, in February 2007, the City Government, the Ajuntament de Barcelona, commissioned Imperial College Business School to undertake a research project focusing on the 22@ Barcelona District of Innovation, a large scale regeneration project that is transforming almost 200 hectares of the city into a centre for the knowledge intensive industries. The Ajuntament de Barcelona tasked the research team first with understanding the extent to which the international community was currently engaged with local firms and institutions and the local community. Secondly, the team was asked to determine the attitudes of the local community, firms and organisations towards newly arrived internationals and vice versa, and finally to suggest what actions could be taken to enhance the level of engagement between these communities in line with the objectives of the regeneration programme. More specifically, the Ajuntament sought to find ways to: accelerate the transformation of the city to a 'knowledge city' (Barcelo 2007), and especially the new 22@ District so it becomes the new international heart of the city for both firms and institutions and the international workforce and harness the international community's links to firms and institutions worldwide to develop Barcelona as a global hub of innovation for knowledge-based industries and provide new international market opportunities for existing firms.
This paper describes the results of the study and demonstrates how successful urban regeneration and the corresponding transformation to a knowledge-intensive economy demands a multi-facetted approach. The paper suggests three conclusions of relevance to city policymakers concerned with securing the economic future of their cities in the new environment. The first is that reliance on one or even a small set of linked initiatives is not enough for success in such a shift; a systemic approach is required. Secondly, it suggests more specifically that reliance on attracting international human capital as a catalyst for knowledge-intensive economic development without considering their personal needs and the needs for proper measures to connect this new population to the existing one, its firms and institutions is not likely to be successful. Proactivity is needed in making connections between key players. Thirdly, it suggests that supply-side policies alone are insufficient and need complementing with demand-side initiatives.
INFLUX OF HUMAN CAPITAL, INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE LOCAL ECONOMY AND COMMUNITIES
There is now a burgeoning literature on the importance of human capital in increasing levels of innovation in many industries and given localities. This literature covers both local attributes and amenities which attract skilled international labour to a specific locality and the extra effects that develop through international movements between places of origin and settlement that create new social and economic networks, which in turn result in new business opportunities.
In her work, Saxenian (2005), for example, shows that new immigrants as well as first generation US citizens from China, India and South East Asia represent around one third of employees in the high tech industries of Silicon Valley. She further suggests that the transformation of the rapidly emerging economies, especially China and India, and their skill base during the last decade has created not only an outward flow of highly trained knowledge workers to the US but has also initiated a reverse flow as many of these knowledge workers return to their home countries and towns. Their return, however, is not a reverse brain drain but evidence of what Saxenian describes as 'brain mobility'. The term 'brain mobility' refers to individuals working in one or more locations and moving seamlessly between these, even when they are many time zones apart. In the case studied by Saxenian (2005), these skilled professionals and senior managers return 'home' part time or for a short period to establish local businesses that can supply US-based firms with goods or services or to provide other outsourced services.
In the case of Silicon Valley we see not only an international professional community connecting and being deeply engaged with local firms but also creating the principal actors network, developing ties with their original community by leveraging their international social network. This international community's social network, which extends back into their home countries and often other countries, is an important tool for increasing the competitiveness of firms in their original locality, as well as opening up potential new international markets.
Florida (2002) suggests that these kinds of professionals, what he calls the 'creative classes', are highly mobile in emerging knowledge-based economies and will settle in places that offer desirable socio-cultural and economic environments. He argues that this movement creates a virtuous circle as firms relocate to exploit the newly available high quality human and social capital, as well as engage more closely with advanced and innovative consumers of their products and services. 'Yes, but this is necessary but insufficient, if you don't connect them, they use your city like a hotel' said one of our informants.
From a somewhat different angle, Fujita et al. (1999) also stress the importance to innovation of a heterogeneous labour force in terms of skills and backgrounds that brings diversity and suggests that unless a city and its economy are constantly supplied with such people convergence in knowledge and information will occur and innovation will diminish. Cities that do not have the diversity of skills to re-invent themselves when faced with industry, technological or marketplace changes will atrophy, lacking the human capital to generate new industries and employment and failing to attract new firms and direct investment.
Our research suggests that failure to exploit the diversity, higher levels of education and knowledge and the international social networks of a highly mobile international community that is already present in the city is likely to hold back a city's progress towards becoming a knowledge-intensive economy.
The principal finding of the research is that it is not sufficient simply to attract a highly skilled international community to live and work in a given city with the aim of encouraging greater knowledge-intensity in existing and new businesses. For the city to benefit, it is essential to capture the knowledge and economic spill-overs into local firms and institutions and do so by pro-actively engaging both local and new international communities. Our research also sought to identify the programmes a city, in this case, Barcelona, might implement to maximise the connectedness of this community and the benefits that would accrue.
THE 22@ BARCELONA INNOVATION DISTRICT
Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, is the second largest city of Spain in population, only exceeded by Madrid. Barcelona City Council, the Ajuntament de Barcelona, is the local public administration that represents, governs and administers the city's interests. It has a population of 1.6 million, and a metropolitan population of 3.3 million.
The 22@ Barcelona, District of Innovation, is located in one of the poorer districts of Barcelona, Sant Marti. In the nineteenth century, this district was the industrial hub of Barcelona and was the fifth largest cotton city in the world (Hughes 1982). With the demise of the cotton industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, the storage, weaving and dyeing yards became the home of light engineering and the printing industry. By the late nineteen nineties, the district was run down and had high unemployment compared with the rest of the city. It did, however, offer an extensive area that could be developed, around 200 hectares of privately owned land, all located within two kilometres of the city centre. In the year 2000 a regeneration plan was approved to transform this district into the new knowledge hub of the city. The regeneration programme, now in place, is designed to transform the physical infrastructure, aims to create four industry clusters that could bring together local and international industry, universities, public and private sector research centres and technology transfer programmes, including incubators for new firms, and financial support for start ups. Unusually for many such regeneration schemes, the 22@Barcelona plan includes provision for housing and social amenities.
FEED