Inclusive growth from an urban perspective: a challenge for the metropolis of the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the study of inclusive growth from an urban perspective. It proposes to focus the relationship between urban economic growth and income distribution in cities in which manufacturing production and external demand play a central role. Opposed to the literature that considers economic growth leads to an increase in inequality in income distribution, we present some operative economic tools from Marshallian Industrial Districts theory and from urban economic theory with which to develop an economic strategy for inclusive urban growth, making possible to achieve simultaneously economic growth and improvements in income distribution. An interesting example of a metropolis with a dynamic of economic and employment growth compatible with a reduction in income inequality is provided by Barcelona. This metropolis disposes a Survey of living conditions and habits of the population since 1986 that allows an analysis in terms of inclusive urban growth.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive urban growth
• metropolis
• Marshallian industrial district
• urban policies
• urbanization economies
• Gini coefficient

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• R58
• O18
• D31

Acknowledgements

We thank the IERMB for supporting the research ‘Urban Inclusive Growth. The Barcelona metropolis and the exit from the economic crisis: strengthening the model of inclusive growth’. We also thank the IERMB's Departments of Statistics and of Regional and Urban Economics. The authors would like to thank Rafael Boix and the anonymous referees by their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Joan Trullén http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3275-4432

Vittorio Galletto http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1709-8000

Notes

1 This work is part of a line of research initiated in 2012 at the Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies (https://iermb.uab.cat/en/) of on inclusive growth in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. It takes the results of the Survey of Living Conditions and Habits of the Population of Barcelona.

2 On the relationship between income inequalities and regional economic growth, see Rayuela, Veneri, and Ramos (2014) and Veneri and Murtin (2016). Veneri and Murtin (2016, p. 25) arrive to the conclusion that between 2003 and 2012 OECD regions with the highest inequality in income distribution are those with higher levels of income and output, and also those with higher levels of unemployment, on average.

3 For the use of the term ‘fuzzy’ in regional economics, see Markusen (2003).

4 Dei Ottati (2018) stresses that the literature on Industrial Districts developed from the work of Giacomo Becattini meant a rereading of Italian economic development.

5 The notion of industrial district has adapted to different historical contexts (Bellandi & De Propis, 2017).

6 In his latest work, Giacomo Becattini calls it ‘the paradigm of productive chorality’ (Becattini, 2015). On the role of innovation in industrial districts, see Boix and Trullén (2010).

7 The spatial dynamics of knowledge-intensive activities such as those related to information and communication technologies are similar to those of the manufacturing activities traditionally contemplated in studies of Marshallian industrial districts. An application of this idea is found in the experience of ‘22@, district of activities’, a project that assumed that high and medium-high knowledge intensive activities could be spatially concentrated in the old manufacturing industrial zones located in industrial cities, including the central nucleus of the metropolis (Trullén, 2011).

8 Actually, the literature on Marshallian Industrial Districts has neglected aspects related to income distribution; It should be noted the contribution of Federico Signorini, who has pioneered the study of the relationship between productivity and wages in Italian industrial districts (Signorini, 1994).

9 Sforzi and Boix (2018) is one of the first analysis of the on the transition to services of the traditionally manufacturing MID in Italy and Spain.

10 On the process of city transformation and the existence of trajectories of urban transformation, see Lazzeretti and Oliva (2018) for Florence (Italy) and Colombino and Vanolo (2017) for Turin (Italy).

11 For an introductory review of measures on economic inequality, see Jenkins and Kern (2009).

12 An example of a research with different indicators is the Inclusive Growth Index published yearly by The Brookings Institution (Shaerer, Shah, Friedhoff, & Berube, 2018), an index that charts the performance of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas with a set of different indicators in three broad categories (growth, prosperity, and inclusion).

13 See the Special Issue of the Revista Economica de Catalunya on ‘The Olympic Project Barcelona 1992’. Special Issue, Revista Economica de Catalunya, num 2, segona època, Maig Agost 1986.

14 The project ‘Barcelona, City of knowledge’ defines a new economic strategy based on 4 pillars: (1) the importance of knowledge in order to explain the continuity of production; (2) the growing importance of skilled work; (3) the growing importance of increasing returns in manufacturing and service activities; (4) the importance of territorial factors (Trullén, 2000, p. 17).