Check out the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in how urban evolution and entrepreneurial capitalism is connected?

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Our debate today works with the book chapter titled Urbanisation and entrepreneurship in development: Like a horse and carriage? from 2018, by Wim Naudé, part of the Smart Futures, Challenges of Urbanisation, and Social Sustainability book, published by Spinger Nature.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Bradford Cross in episode 398 talking about the importance and opportunities of entrepreneurial capitalism.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how entrepreneurial capitalism is connected to the future of cities. This chapter explores the interdependent relationship between urbanisation and entrepreneurship, suggesting that they act as primary drivers for economic development.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: Entrepreneurship, being largely an urban phenomenon, co-evolves over time with cities. While this relationship is like a ‘horse and carriage’, it is not a straightforward one, more akin to ‘love and marriage’. In this chapter, I explore the co-evolution of entrepreneurship and cities. First, I provide a stylised model of development wherein the rise of cities (urbanisation) is the outcome of the activities of entrepreneurs. Second, I provide a stylised overview of entrepreneurship and cities from earlier to later stages of development. In young cities, a main challenge for establishing an entrepreneurial ecosystem is the provision of infrastructure for business’ connectivity and energy. Good urban planning and management skills, including urban policing and dealing with land disputes, may be amongst the most sorely needed in the emerging world today. At more intermediate and later stages of development, cities can become entrepreneurial hotspots and even ‘global start-up cities’. The three main challenges during these stages, as far as the role of entrepreneurs are concerned, relate to (1) rising property prices and rents, urban congestion and fierce business competition, (2) environmental sustainability and (3) the impacts of technology that could make centralisation in cities for business purposes unnecessary. Entrepreneurs have important roles to play as property developers and in the creation of new business models and new markets. They are essentially the drivers of ‘smart’ cities, ‘circular’ cities and suburbanisation and secondary city growth. Over time not all cities, and their entrepreneurs, will necessarily continue to grow and prosper. There is nothing inevitable in the rise of any particular city and the prosperity of its entrepreneurs. Cities do not only generate, they also degenerate. I conclude that the heterogeneity, serendipity and context specificity of global urbanisation implies that there is much that is still unknown about the specifics of the relationship between cities and its entrepreneurs over time.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.347R – The economy forward framework: How midsized cities can achieve inclusive growth in the knowledge economy
• No.380 – Interview with Adam Miller about urban economics

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