ABSTRACT

Large cities in the global north currently experience a redevelopment surge steeped in a feverish drive to be more entrepreneurial. Amidst the destruction to people and neighborhoods wrought by austerity policies and the mortgage foreclosure fiasco, development alliances (local governments, real-estate interests, business interests) strive to cultivate a richly entrepreneurial city that refines their previous (pre-2006) ‘go-entrepreneurial’ city project. From London to Madrid to Berlin to Chicago, the drive is to more deeply ‘business-up’ downtowns, re-make investment climates, foster neighborhood gentrification, and implant new cultural, social, and economic facilities to invigorate the engines of economic growth. The built environment, the supposed spine of the project, is served up as the all-important stage and setting. Out of this, as now chronicled, has emerged a new technocratic vocabulary – smart growth, city sustainability, urban innovators, the creative class, creative city re-birth – that emphasises a market-rooted, go-global development agenda.