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INTRODUCTION-- CITY COMPETITIVENESS AND REAL ESTATE
Cities are the framework of society, and their continuing existence has become an unquestionable part of world order. They provide the canvas for most real estate market activities, and understanding the factors that have led to the success or failure of cities is a vital part of the property process.
But, the nature of city competitiveness is changing rapidly. "Model" growth cycles in "model" world cities based on size, hierarchies, and economic wealth are being increasingly challenged by technology and by new thinking on what will constitute the winning urban dynamic in the 21st century. Emerging definitions of success are being based not on size but on connectivity, not on hierarchies but on networks, and less on wealth and more on environment, quality of life, culture, city governance, and marketing.
And, competition between cities has never been more intense. City marketing is becoming a precise science and branding campaigns, trade missions, major infrastructure projects and the securing of prestige sporting and cultural events are key ingredients of city strategies. The role of property as a contributor to, rather than as a consequence of competitive advantage is a vastly under researched area and one which we believe will become increasingly vital to any city intent on making its mark on the world stage.
Our firm has therefore launched a major research programme "World Winning Cities," representing a multi-year quest to identify the winning cities of the future. Our aim is to draw together the essence of contemporary city competitiveness, and to better understand the extent to which property can drive the new city order. We are focusing on the trends that will impact on the business and economic landscape, in order to predict which cities will be the rising urban stars of the next decade, and equally importantly those cities that may lose in the battle for world city status.
The objective of this project is to develop an innovative methodological approach that will allow us to deconstruct cities and to define and explore the newly emerging principles of city competition and how they relate to real estate. In essence our project is focused on answering four fundamental questions:
(i) What does history teach us about recent winners?
(ii)...