Establishing the natural order of things: building the early foundations for urban entrepreneurialism in the United States
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Keywords: Urban entrepreneurialism, location consultants
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Andrew Wood, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky
Nicholas A. Phelps, Melbourne School of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne
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Abstract
Accounts of local economic development in the United States emphasize and implicitly periodize the role of “entrepreneurial” cities in promoting, among other things, the attraction of inward investment (Harvey 1989). In this paper we trace some of the ‘pre-history’ of this shift towards urban entrepreneurialism, to suggest that the template structuring competition for inward investment was already well established by interests that had long sought to enable and promote the mobility of capital.
Our particular focus is on the consultants who have long served to mediate between large firms searching for investment sites and the communities seeking to attract them. This was a competition that reflected an asymmetrical relationship between mobile capital – in the form of the large firm – and the fixity or immobility of local government. The paper emphasizes the ways in which economic development interests at the State and urban scales came to rely on consultants as they developed the strategies, practices and institutional frameworks that furthered the competition for investment. The parameters that shaped entrepreneurial strategies locked urban interests into a particular model of economic development that was already well established in the United States. It is a model that serves to further the footloose nature of capitalism.
Establishing the natural order of things: building the early foundations for urban entrepreneurialism in the United States
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Paper Abstract
