New Cities and Concepts of Value

New Cities and Concepts of Value: Planning, Building, and Responding to New Urban Realities
Building for Value: If you build it, will they come?
New cities as valuable places to do business
New cities aim to be centers of innovation
and experimentation. As such, they can
become hubs showcasing the strengths
of their respective parts of the world. But
by simply providing places for linkages
and businesses to set up in a new city,
will business and investment necessarily
follow?
New cities are places where pioneering
ideas, products, tools or even business
models can be trialed in an urban
environment. This creation of problemsolving
opportunities is celebrated as a key
value new cities have to offer businesses
and entrepreneurs.
Attracting Entrepreneurs
• Promoting ease of doing business
through reduction of set-up costs and
a regulatory environment friendly to
entrepreneurs and investors;
• Reducing the costs of risk-taking and
increasing the acceptance of failure:
bankruptcy laws, regulations allowing
for starting, closing, and re-starting
companies, and even the education
system’s approach to failure contribute
to a welcoming environment for
entrepreneurs;
• Fostering a quality of life that
encourages entrepreneurs to stay
and grow with the city,
• Offering incentives, such as free office
space for small startups or access to
top ICT infrastructure.
New cities at this year’s Forum shared
the desire to to attract entrepreneurs and
promote clusters of innovation. Crosssector
strategies to link academics, private
R&D, and enterprise were debated in depth.
The aim was to understand the best ways
to attract and retain talent and capital,
which today moves so readily around the
globe. Cities can promote the ecosystems
that entrepreneurs require in the following
ways:
• Developing a robust educational
system: a strong talent base is
essential for emerging startups that
aim to recruit top talent;
Yachay Knowledge City in Ecuador, and
Mohammed VI Green City in Morocco, for
example, place universities at the heart of
their developments, and use partnerships
with international universities to promote
local centers for research and development.
Sri City in India has established ‘single
window approvals’ as another way to
encourage business with simpler set-up
procedures.
Participants at Cityquest challenged the
idea that cities can pre-select the economic
cluster that forms around entrepreneurs.
One participant asserted that “a city cannot
attract entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs
in a city attract entrepreneurs”, suggesting
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