Local diversity is often credited with being a driver of creative economic activity. Comparative research on this topic is often however highly structural in nature and does little to address questions of agency. This work seeks to link the traditional regional science approach to questions of potential advantages of local diversity with a more bottom-up view of the creative process. From a theoretical perspective this involves incorporating the social psychology literature on the creative process as well as concepts from social network analysis with more aggregated spatial notions of creativity and diversity. More specifically, it addresses how different knowledge is connected through social interaction and how this fuels the creation of new ideas and ultimately creative economic activity. A number of empirical innovations are made in order to test these theoretical constructs beginning with an agent-model/simulation which illuminates how social networks form and evolve over space and time. These artificial networks suggest how agents embedded in diverse local contexts have a creative advantage by possessing greater access to a variety of knowledge. Subsequent statistical analysis of large secondary datasets seeks to provide external validity to the agent-model. The first demonstrates a strong relationship between local diversity and the concentration of creative economic activities across 140 Canadian city-regions. A key implication of this finding is that local diversity is more closely associated with certain types of economic activity, rather than overall economic performance. The second statistical analysis uses the Canadian General Social Survey to compare the social network characteristics of individuals. This analysis shows that people engaged in creative industries and occupations tend to have larger, more dynamic, and more diverse sets of social relations than any other category of worker. The dissertation concludes with a model that suggests policy interventions should focus on developing local environments that provide the necessary conditions in which creative activity can thrive, rather than attempting to intervene directly in the creative process itself.

Recent analyses of creativity in the North American economy have underscored the importance of city-regions in the generation of economic dynamism. These studies have been concerned with at least two principal assertions. The first assertion is that the social dynamics of city-regions constitute the foundations of economic success. The second assertion is that the distribution of human capital (talent) is a crucial element in regional economic prosperity; yet the distribution of human capital across cities is uneven. Therefore, the question emerges: what factors influence the locational choices of talented individuals? In recent years, this question has received considerable scholarly attention. This thesis has identified two existing gaps within this field of inquiry. Conspicuously absent from studies in this area are theoretical insights offered by cultural geographers in the field of whiteness and race. Economic geographers have created an essentialized reading of racial diversity in the economic performance of city-regions. Moreover, work in this area has been constrained by a quantitative focus and a lack of empirical evidence. Accordingly, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a more nuanced understanding of how social processes and institutions underlie and are shaped by the economic performance of city-regions. This is achieved by drawing on insights from an empirical study of 44 semi-structured interviews with academic talent in the City of Kingston, Ontario and 12 interviews with community insiders. The results on the one hand reveal complex dynamics linked to why academics live in particular places, but on the other hand point to one overriding explanation for why academics locate where they do: namely, academics are attracted to Kingston, first and foremost, because of academic jobs, not urban amenities or other characteristics of place. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2009-07-22 11:33:21.839

Local diversity is often credited with being a driver of creative economic activity. Comparative research on this topic is often however highly structural in nature and does little to address questions of agency. This work seeks to link the traditional regional science approach to questions of potential advantages of local diversity with a more bottom-up view of the creative process. From a theoretical perspective this involves incorporating the social psychology literature on the creative process as well as concepts from social network analysis with more aggregated spatial notions of creativity and diversity. More specifically, it addresses how different knowledge is connected through social interaction and how this fuels the creation of new ideas and ultimately creative economic activity. A number of empirical innovations are made in order to test these theoretical constructs beginning with an agent-model/simulation which illuminates how social networks form and evolve over space and time. These artificial networks suggest how agents embedded in diverse local contexts have a creative advantage by possessing greater access to a variety of knowledge. Subsequent statistical analysis of large secondary datasets seeks to provide external validity to the agent-model. The first demonstrates a strong relationship between local diversity and the concentration of creative economic activities across 140 Canadian city-regions. A key implication of this finding is that local diversity is more closely associated with certain types of economic activity, rather than overall economic performance. The second statistical analysis uses the Canadian General Social Survey to compare the social network characteristics of individuals. This analysis shows that people engaged in creative industries and occupations tend to have larger, more dynamic, and more diverse sets of social relations than any other category of worker. The dissertation concludes with a model that suggests policy interventions should focus on developing local environments that provide the necessary conditions in which creative activity can thrive, rather than attempting to intervene directly in the creative process itself.

Effects of globalization transform the forms of relations between settlements and it also changed the relations between capital and labor. In this global era performances of individual settlements became crucial in the absence of old hierarchic boundaries. But individual performances of settlements are not enough to integrate the global system. A New type of spatial organization appeared which is called networking to enhance complementary and cooperative relations crucial for synergy. The spatial reflexions of this transformation process are city regions. This study aims to determine the factors affecting economic performance and networking patterns of settlements in Antalya Region with the use of quantitative research methods.

ABSTRACT SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT IN CITY-REGIONS: THE CASE OF IZMIR CITY REGION Nal, Seda M.S., Department of City and Regional Planning, Regional Planning Supervisor : Assist. Prof. Dr. Ela Babalik Sutcliffe July 2008, 385 pages While the vast literature on sustainable transport emphasizes certain urban development patterns as those that should be encouraged in urban planning, it is a fact that there is an increasing tendency in many urban areas in the world towards becoming a city-region. However, whether these city-region development patterns can help attain a more sustainable urban growth and transport system is a relatively less studied area in the field of sustainable transport. In general terms, the study aims to bring together these two important fields of research in the planning literature: sustainable transport and city-regions, with a view to analyze whether they can co-exist, whether their policies comply with, and complement each other, eventually whether it is possible to attain transport sustainability in city-regions. Regarding this aim, three aspects are identified as &amp / #8216 / threats&amp / #8217 / for the attainment of sustainable transport and land-use development in city-regions: 1.Increase in need to travel and car dependency due to increase in interactions and longer distances in city-regions, 2. Economic objectives for city-regions conflicting with objectives of sustainable transport, and 3. Difficulty in ensuring policy coordination for an integrated approach to sustainability due to fragmentation of governments. Two most effective ways of achieving sustainable transport, land-use planning policies and policies for improving public transport and non-motorized transport, are chosen as the main policy approaches to be analyzed. Through the analysis of planning experience in a selected case study area, the Izmir City Region, the study intends to find out whether these issues are real threats for attaining sustainable transport in city regions and whether they can be overcome.

With potential of increased efficiency and a broader range of services, inter-municipal cooperation is often presented as a universal solution to public welfare challenges. Today, all Swedish municipalities are involved in inter-municipal cooperation in various policy areas. However, little is known about the municipalities’ capacity to coordinate their cooperation arrangements in the complex network of institutions and overlapping territories that characterise the regional level of governance. Building on the institutional collective action framework and the concept of governance capacity, this study examines how the municipalities’ capacity for regional coordination of upper secondary education in the city region of Örebro County varies depending on the institutional structures, the opportunities for cooperation and the social capital that embed the inter-municipal arrangements. The empirical study is based on a mixed method approach; where a qualitative content analysis of public documents is combined with interviews of representatives from different inter-municipal arrangements in Örebro County. By analysing how inter-municipal cooperation on upper secondary education has emerged and developed in Örebro County, this study shows how the municipalities have established institutions at two different levels. In Örebro County, regional networks and contracts operate in parallel with local agreements and municipal associations with delegated authority – only including a few municipalities in the city region. Several of the cooperation arrangements also include actors from the private sector and different levels of governance. The emergence of these inter-municipal cooperation arrangements can be interpreted as an institutional outcome of the municipalities' intrinsic motives to ensure a wide range of education to their local citizens as well as the need to secure the supply of skills and workforce in private and public sector. But it can also be interpreted as a strategy for the smaller municipalities to ensure their influence and governance capacity in the city region – which has a built- in power asymmetry linked to the municipalities’ heterogeneity. The emergence of the cooperation arrangements also illustrates a path dependent development, where the municipalities’ historical collaboration tradition determines which institutions that emerge and to which degree social capital can be established. Particularly noteworthy in the emergence of the inter-municipal cooperation in Örebro County is the presence of government, which manifests itself through conditional financing of the inter-municipal cooperation arrangements. Thus, within one and the same geographical city region, and within one and the same policy area, there is an overlap of different inter-municipal collaborative arrangements and functional regions, which has emerged in a symbiosis of both horizontal and vertical relations. As a result, the regionalisation that the municipalities create “bottom up”, through voluntary cooperation, work in parallel with the regionalisation that is created “top down”, through formal regional institutions.