Author:

Competitive Industries and Innovation Program

Publisher:

World Bank

Description:

The report analyzes 750 cities to determine what makes them competitive and how they have grown their economies. It provides a catalogue of urban data that city officials can use to benchmark their performance.

Three quarters of the cities studied in the report grew faster than their national economies since the early 2000’s, the report finds, but there is still room for improvement. Millions of jobs can be created if more cities performed at the level of the most competitive ones.

The report finds that to achieve success, competitive cities did not always overhaul their existing economies. Very often they simply became better at what they already did, leveraging their comparative advantage, especially when exporting tradable goods and services to other cities and countries.
 
 
 

In the most successful competitive cities:

• business leaders were consulted about their needs and the constraints they encountered in their operations;
• infrastructure investments were made in collaboration with the firms and the industries they aimed to serve;
• skills initiatives were designed in partnership with firms, ensuring that curricula addressed their practical needs; and
• industries were supported where they had a real commercial potential, through collective initiatives with the private sector rather than through the public sector alone.

Video Summary

Language:

English

Page count:

72

Source:

www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2015/...

Copyright:

World Bank