Unpacking the ‘Start-up City’ : Entrepreneurship, Neoliberal Governance and Local Actors Agency

This book provides an invaluable overview of neoliberalising trends in urban policies and governance by presenting novel perspectives on municipal entrepreneurship support policies. It seeks to address a current lack of in-depth empirical knowledge of this topic and the reference literature’s silence on local actors agency. The book ’s scholarly debate around the impact of neoliberal capitalism on cities interweaves with empirical observations in the European cities of Barcelona and Milan with a view to examining what lies behind the “start-up city” label, and the way local actors reproduce, contest and re-signify entrepreneurship policies and practices in a highly individualised context. Based on more than sixty interviews with key policy actors, including young beneficiaries, it sheds light on their representations, motivations, intentions and room for manoeuvre in a way that encompasses local specificities in which multi-scalar economic, social, institutional and cultural processes interact. Finally, this book offers new insights into critical entrepreneurship studies and current debates about convergence and divergence trends in urban policies and governance. Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures 1 Studying Entrepreneurship in European Cities 1.1 Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Cities 1.2 Insights from Cultural Political Economy and the Sociology of Public Action 1.3 A Methodology Note 1.4 The Structure of the Book References 2 “This Is Like a Big Transatlantic Liner”: Contingent Converging Trends 2.1 MESPs: Multi-scalar and Multi-dimensional Trajectories 2.1.1 Milan: Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Ethos 2.1.2 The Barcelona Model of Entrepreneurialism 2.2 The Local Embeddedness of MESPs 2.2.1 Barcelona Activa: A Publicly Managed MESP Model 2.2.2 Milan at the Local and National Dynamics Crossroads 2.3 Radicalising Urban Entrepreneurialism? References 3 Inclusive Entrepreneurship Policies: Reproducing Heterogeneity, Negotiating Ambivalence 3.1 Entrepreneurship: A Contested Concept 3.2 Inclusive Entrepreneurship 3.3 Diversified Policy Instruments in Diversified Urban Economies 3.3.1 Embracing Heterogeneity: The Case of Barcelona 3.3.2 Embracing Heterogeneity: The Case of Milan 3.4 Beyond Entrepreneurship Promotion 3.4.1 Barcelona: Alternative Views and Entrepreneurship Options 3.4.2 Entrepreneurship in Milan: Supporting or Dissuading? 3.5 Inclusive MESPs: from Top-Down Dynamics to Agency References 4 “The Mindset Has Changed a Lot”? Situated Agency of Youth Entrepreneurs 4.1 Cities as Ideal Opportunity Entrepreneur Milieux 4.2 Not So Young? 4.3 Innovators 4.3.1 Innovators for Innovation’s Sake 4.3.2 “A Life Project” 4.3.3 A Strategic and Meaningful Step 4.4 “I See It as Something Normal”: Ordinary Young People’s Needs and Aspirations 4.4.1 Building a Meaningful Life Journey 4.4.2 “You Must Do It All Yourself and Make the Most of It” References 5 Differentiated Inclusion 5.1 The Democratisation of Entrepreneurship Promise 5.2 Differentiated and Differentiating Policy Instruments 5.2.1 The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Differentiated Inclusion 5.2.2 The Higher the Business Risk, the Lower the Individual Risk-Taking? 5.2.3 Reward Expectations and Alternatives 5.2.4 Local Public Action and Youth Coping Strategies 5.3 Individualisation: Growing Opportunities, Worsening Inequalities? References 6 Conclusions References Index