Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
heritage buildings, various arts activities, and theatres, whether catering to high-
brow or popular tastes. Improvements in all or some of these features may attract
and retain knowledge-based workers, although the extent of these attractions is still
not clear as the discussion on Creative Cities (Chap. 10) has shown.
A third set of features within the physical capital category consists of what can be
called the
mobile capital or finance
features, since unlike many of the other capital
assets they can be easily moved. One of the most important is the actual stock of fi-
nancial assets. Those assets that are available and useable can be used to upgrade all
the other physical capital stock as well as improve human capacity. In a knowledge
context they include R&D expenditures and the availability of risk capital sources
discussed earlier that is available to support new innovative enterprises. Within this
category one must also consider the tax levels in the city, inflation rates, and the
municipal debt. The latter can lead to fewer services if not resolved and can be a
drag on value creation, unless it is used for investment purposes and can be paid
back from existing resources or future output. Several cities in the U.S.A. are close
to bankruptcy, in part because of large unfunded pension commitments to former
public workers, a problem not faced by European cities because these are usually
funded by national schemes. These financial exigencies have led to cuts in munici-
pal services, meaning that citizens lose access to many services, while opportunities
for new initiatives are limited, which reduces the attractiveness of the cities for in-
coming businesses. In addition the category also includes the range and availability
of machinery, from vehicles to factory machines and technical assets.
11.6.3
Association Capital of Cities
Carillo (
2006
) called these features Meta Capital. Since they all involve some type
of association that connects people and objects, and represent the interactions nec-
essary for the human and physical agents to create value, the term 'association'
may be more easily understood. The domain is divided into four categories. The
relational
sub-domain consists of the activities that create and lubricate the flow of
the productive process, from the historical breakthroughs that saw the development
of record-keeping in cities, and later currencies to act as exchange mechanisms,
to the wide range of activities now usually known as producer-service activities,
such as financial, legal, advertising and marketing services. These latter services are
necessary for the productive process that is a result of the combination of agents,
inputs and instrumental objects. Closely related to these activities are the various
networks
that were discussed earlier as crucial to inventive and innovative activity
since they facilitate the exchange of tacit information. These include: formal organ-
isational connections that link businesses or parts of businesses, websites that bring
people and organizations together, to the informational sources—from newspapers
and journals to media outlets and information-gathering services that provide ac-
cess to specialised information required by businesses and people. It also covers the
informal networks, such as social and business linkages, or the more formal asso-
ciations designed to promote the interests of the group, such as trade organizations,
