ABSTRACT
As the world emerges from a period of hyper-financialization of the global economy, cities have seen the proliferation of ‘city’ or ‘business’ improvement districts (i.e. CIDs or BIDs) and the more recent development of ecological enclaves (e.g. eco-cities) by large private developers, often using ‘world-class’ cities as test-beds. These are often conducted under public–private partnerships with city governments and may sometimes include national governments. These public–private partnerships are heavily backed by large private developers who conceive of these efforts as building up the capacity to deploy new ‘financial products’ in other cities across the world (Hodson & Marvin, 2010).
