ABSTRACT
There is nowadays plenty of evidence that cities are engines of growth and development for regions and nations. Cities are widely recognised as major sources of human, knowledge and organisational resources that support competitiveness and innovation policies. Of course, this potential is heterogeneous among cities and strongly dependent upon their dimension, economic structure and the ways they are connected nationally and internationally (e.g. OECD, 2011). Yet, whatever the group of cities considered, competitiveness and innovation-oriented policies can hardly be conceived without a strong involvement of cities as “engines” within regions and nations. Contrarily to the popular discourse, it seems that “the world is not flat”. On the contrary, it is becoming more “convex” and the economicinnovation role of cities is increasing (Rodriguez-Pose and Crescenzi, 2008; McCann, 2008). Competitive countries have competitive cities, i.e. cities with the dynamic capacity to grow and develop over time, nurturing and attracting jobs, people and skills (e.g. Kitson et al., 2004; van Winden and Carvalho, 2008).
