Sako Musterd and Alan Murie (eds.), Making Competitive Cities. Wiley-Blackwell. 2010.

The book investigates the impact on the competitiveness of cities developing creative industries (arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, architects, publishers, designers) and knowledge-intensive industries (ICT, R&D, finance, law). It provides significant new knowledge to the theoretical and practical understanding of the conditions necessary to stimulate "creative knowledge" cities.
The editors compare the socio-economic developments, experiences and strategies in 13 urban regions across Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Dublin, Helsinki, Leipzig, Milan, Munich, Poznan, Riga, Sofia and Toulouse. The book focuses on which metropolitan regions have a better chance to develop as "creative knowledge regions" and which do not, as well as investigating why this is so and what can policy do to influence change.