Lactancia artificial

City competitiveness has emerged as a driver of regional development policies, driving and contributing to a ‘Constructed Advantage’ (Philip Cooke & Leydesdorff 2006) by creating or encouraging a favourable business environment that encompasses local economic conditions, governance, knowledge infrastructure, community, and culture. For example, in the US, the re-invention of urban centres as vigorous, vibrant foci of the new knowledge economy, and hence desirable places to work and live, has become a major driver of regional development policy.

In this intensely competitive environment, the desire of regions, cities, and specific city neighbourhoods to develop and project an appropriate identity or ‘brand’ remains a topic of debate and some controversy (Kavaratzis & Ashworth 2005). Embracing the concept of city competitiveness, and promoting the value of developing an image or brand of the city that allows the characterisation, promotion, and marketing of a given urban area as a ‘product’¹⁸,

‘City Brands’ such as Anholt’s (2006) produce rankings of major cities are based upon regular global surveys. Anholt’s surveys attempt to capture attitudes towards cities that combine both economic and quality of life issues, with the most recent survey grouping these factors into six components, detailed below, which combine to give an overall score for a city.

18 Business Improvement District(s) (BID) are another example of targeted marketing of specific areas as a product. They emerged as a public-private partnership in a given urban area (neighbourhood) financed by a supplemental levy on local businesses. These BIDs aim to develop a common identity and marketing strategy aimed at making the area attractive to visitors and businesses. For example, five BIDs are part of a pilot project by the London Development Agency in 2003, expanding to 20 operational BIDs in 2009 (LDA 2009). See also section 5.2.1 of this thesis.

 The presence – perceptions of the city’s international status and standing.

 The place – physical aspects of each city, including perceptions of the quality of the environment, transport infrastructure, and factors such as climate.

 The potential - the economic and educational opportunities that a city is believed to offer visitors, businesses, and immigrants.

 The pulse – how exciting people think the city is, and how easy they think it would be to find interesting things to do there.

 The people – are citizens perceived to be warm and friendly, or cold and prejudiced against outsiders? Would it be easy to find and fit into a community that shares their language and culture?

 The prerequisites - the basic qualities of the city. What is it like to live there? How easy would it be to find satisfactory, affordable accommodation? What is the general standard of public amenities?

When the results of such surveys favour a particular location, they are rapidly incorporated into the marketing message of high-ranking cities. These rankings and associated marketing messages about cities’ attractiveness to different businesses prove useful for marketing purposes at a high-level positioning of a city.

A number of ongoing studies and surveys confirm the relative importance of such factors as drivers of foreign direct investment in different industrial sectors. A useful framework is provided in KPMG’s Competitive Alternatives Report (KPMG 2008). Although this report primarily focuses on the economic factors that differentiate locations (as shown in the upper-left quadrant of Table 5), it also notes the importance of ‘softer’ business and personal factors that strongly influence location choice.

Table 5: Drivers of FDI investment¹⁹

Cost Factors Other Key Factors

Business

 Labour availability and skills

 Access to markets, customers, and suppliers

 Cost of consumer products and services

The significance of non-economic factors in driving location choices is reinforced in responses to a qualitative survey conducted by Think London (2006). The telephone survey polled 219 foreign-owned companies with offices in London who were asked to indicate the ‘Most important factor that influenced their decision to locate in London’, with the results of this survey summarised in Table 6.

19 Adapted from KPMG Competitive Alternatives Report (2008)

Table 6: Results of FDI survey on location variables²⁰ Most important factor influencing location decision

Status as a global business city 29%

Client base proximity 17%

Other companies in sector 16%

No main factor 8%

English language 7%

Access to European markets 6%

Ease of international travel/global position 3%

Quality of life 3%

Availability of skilled labour force 2%

Access to other markets 2%

This survey also included 15 face-to-face interviews with senior executives within foreign firms to gain a more detailed understanding of their views of London, with the following main outcomes:

London’s position as a gateway city to the rest of Europe, and its status as a global business city, are the most important location factors according to the survey. Access to markets, as well as accessibility to the rest of the world, are indeed important facets of London as evidenced in this quote:

“The central hub of Europe is London and London is a launch pad into Europe.”

Survey results also support the fact that companies locating in London are strongly influenced by aspects of access and co-location with clients, competitors, and/or partners, evidenced in the wider telephone survey, and expressed by the following quote:

“London is a ‘virtuous circle’ – many companies have an HQ in London, so to access them, other companies feel that they need a London HQ, and so on.”

20 Adapted from Think London (2006c)

Softer, less tangible, aspects associated with London’s status as a ‘World City’ are also clearly important, as well as the cosmopolitan feel of the city and its diverse population:

“London has great access to language skills (due to mix of nationalities). Used to have multi-lingual helpdesk in Amsterdam, but had problems finding appropriate language skills – moved to London and was pleasantly surprised how easy they were to find, and good ones”