ABSTRACT
The ongoing desire of cities to attract inward investment is enhancing pressure on growth dynamics and risking both spatial fragmentation and social segregation. While place-making strategies have been explored to restore or recreate city centres as important catalysts for economic development and transformation, investments in speculative buildings and public spaces appear as top-down and limited interventions. This chapter focuses on five key challenges to economic competitiveness that can be identified in city centres worldwide arising from: disparities in urban growth leading to fragmented urban agglomerations and less accessible city centres, the ongoing reinvention and transformation of local knowledge economies to counteract global influence, rising pressure on commercial and retail activities in city cities due to increased digitisation, enhanced dependency on tourism, and new housing that accommodates particular social groups, reducing social diversity and inclusion. These challenges illustrate both differences and similarities between developed and developing countries.
