ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

2 ■ THE ECONOMICS OF UNIQUENESS
Introduction
Th is book takes inspiration from Nobel Prize Laureate Robert Merton Solow’s
quotation: “Over the long term, places with strong, distinctive identities are more
likely to prosper than places without them. Every place must identify its strongest,
most distinctive features and develop them or run the risk of being all things to all
persons and nothing special to any. […] Livability is not a middle-class luxury. It
is an economic imperative.”
Th e positive infl uence of cultural heritage on livability, economic growth, and
local economic development has been increasingly studied and discussed in the
last few decades. Building on concepts springing from biodiversity and natural
heritage conservation, cultural economists have been developing their arguments
about the economic importance of cultural heritage assets. Th is book presents the
latest contributions on this topic, including methods of assessing the economic
values of cultural heritage and ways to apply these fi ndings to the practical issues
faced by policy makers confronted with explosive urban growth—one of the
defi ning characteristics of this century. Th e authors argue that it is vital for policy
makers and other stakeholders to appreciate the important role that cultural heritage
can play in generating employment and sustainable economic development,
and then incorporate this understanding into urban planning and development
policies. Th is must be done to ensure that rapid urbanization, particularly in the
developing world, is not accompanied by the destruction of much of our heritage.
Urbanization and the Jobs Crisis
Th e recent economic and fi nancial crisis of the 2000s has resulted in job losses in
both developing and developed economies. Th e International Labor Organization
(ILO 2012) notes that, despite economic recovery since 2009, particularly
in high-growth emerging economies, there are still 27 million more unemployed
workers worldwide than at the start of the crisis, while the employment-to-
population ratio showed the largest decline on record between 2007 and 2010.
Th e ILO report estimates that the world faces an “urgent challenge” to create 600
million jobs over the next decade and that “job creation in the real economy must
become our number one priority.”
Paradoxically, in the midst of a global jobs crisis, businesses continue to have
major concerns about their ability to attract suffi cient talent to drive growth and
development. A recent survey of about 350 senior business leaders worldwide
(Deloitte Consulting 2010) found that “high unemployment rates in the U.S. and
abroad have not created the talent surplus that many would have predicted. On
the contrary, many executives predict talent shortages across key business units.”