From the category archives:

Place Management

WEF Abu Dhabi 2015 – Future Cities

October 30, 2015

The population of the world’s urban cities will grow by over 2 billion people between now and 2050. How do we harness the positive economic, creative and cultural dynamics of this unprecedented migration while at the same time build resilience and social fabric? This was the topic of a discussion at the World Economic Forum […]

Read the full article →

Smart Specialisation in a City Context

October 26, 2015

Smart specialisation is a new innovation policy concept[1] which has been has been developed in Europe to indicate flexible and dynamic innovation strategies, which adopted by a single region but assessed at the national and EU level, with the aim to avoiding fragmentation efforts in the field of innovation support. All EU member states Regions […]

Read the full article →

The New Approach for How to Make a Place Innovative

October 21, 2015

To drive the development of an innovation ecosystem, four different sectors must be linked together: government, business, civil society and academia. This is what we call the Quad Helix and they need to be engaged in collaboration forums and projects and together drive development. Also within and between the academic and business sectors, the innovation […]

Read the full article →

Place Brand and Management Training in Uppsala

October 9, 2015

Bearing had the opportunity to give a  Place Brand and Management training session for the political leadership in the city of Uppsala in Sweden this week. The half day session was highly appreciated and we shared methodology and tools with the participants, and ignited a very interesting dialogue about the vision and opportunities of the […]

Read the full article →

Historic Background to Policy Driven Innovation System Development

October 7, 2015

In our work, we often talk about integrated projects and integrated development, but what does this really mean, and in what context can it be relevant? To explain this, below is an historic background. Pro-active work with regional policy driven innovation system development started in most OECD countries in the 1950s and 1960s. This was […]

Read the full article →

The New Context of Regional Development Strategies

October 2, 2015

Bearing is often working on city and regional development strategies, and most often, the places we work with face similar challenges. Retention and attraction of talents and Investments has always been important to economic development, but it is even more critical to building competitive regions in today’s post-crises economy. Through the history of economic development, […]

Read the full article →

Cambridge – Its all in the DNA

September 28, 2015

– “How do grow the perfect English lawn?” -“Oh, it’s quite straightforward sir. You just cut it, roll it and water it for about 400 years.” Old English joke Being known for years as a Silicon Fen, an analogue of the Silicon Valley, the University of Cambridge has fully deserved its reputation of Europe’s top […]

Read the full article →

The Strategy Potential of Uppsala City

September 26, 2015

This week, Bearing has delivered a strategy report to the Swedish city of Uppsala. The report is an interim delivery in the Uppsala county RIK strategy development project, which aims to prepare for a new regional development strategy to be decided in 2016. On the macro level and in the context of competitive smart specialisation, […]

Read the full article →

Innovative Sustainable Re-development – Masdar City

September 25, 2015

This blog article is about Masdar City, a new city project in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The dual core of this project is innovation and sustainability. The goal is to extend the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the new city, by growing new neighbourhoods around the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. The institute is […]

Read the full article →

Culture and Heritage–Transmitting Place Identity Through Museums

September 20, 2015

Much of place identity is communicated through its heritage, of which museums form a significant part. A local or national museum can convey a great deal about a place: about its values, its priorities and how it sees itself, both in an historical and a contemporary sense. Today’s post is based around a recent interview […]

Read the full article →

The Shifting Global Business Landscape

September 10, 2015

Emerging markets are changing where and how the world does business. For the last three decades, emerging markets have been a source of low-cost but increasingly skilled labour. Their fast-growing cities are filled with millions of new and increasingly prosperous consumers, who provide a new growth market for global corporations at a time when much […]

Read the full article →

Place Branding of Uppsala

September 7, 2015

Bearing has won a contract to analyse and recommend the components of an updated place brand for the city of Uppsala in Sweden. This is a follow-on assignment from the strategy  analysis project which we are working on for Uppsala county and Uppsala city since January this year. The global competition of cities is estimated […]

Read the full article →

The Worlds Largest Cities – 1955 and 2015

September 4, 2015

The last six decades have been a period of rapid urbanisation. More than half of the world’s population now live in cities and towns, compared to just over a third in 1955, and that figure is expected to grow to two-thirds by 2050, meaning a projected additional 2.5 billion people living in urban areas. At […]

Read the full article →

The Paradox of Sustainable Tourism

August 29, 2015

In this weeks issue of The Economist, there is an article titled “Travelling light” that we would like to recommend. Do read it. The Economist makes the point that travelling by itself is so polluting to the environment, that sustainable tourism does not make sense. To quote the article: “According to the World Tourism Organisation […]

Read the full article →

Multimodal Transport and Railway Systems – An Overview

August 28, 2015

Dear readers, a few months ago we have started a series of articles about multimodal transport and railway systems with a post about King´s Cross station in London. Since then we have published seven more articles, and today we finish the series with this summary overview. The articles in the series are dedicated to analysing  […]

Read the full article →

Innovation Districts at Future of Places Conference

August 24, 2015

In June 2014, the Brookings Institute released The Rise of Innovation Districts, a new report analysing the emerging trend of a new urban model. We wrote an article about the new report last year. Innovation districts is a recent trend in urban planning that has emerged as a new model to stimulate economic growth in […]

Read the full article →

Michael Bloomberg on the City Century

August 22, 2015

Michael Bloomberg served as the 108th Mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms beginning with his first election in 2001. He is also the main owner, founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P, a global financial data and media company. In office, Bloomberg brought a results-based approach to city management, appointing city […]

Read the full article →

North Koreas First Western Concert

August 20, 2015

When we all give the power / we all give the best Every minute of an hour / don’t think about a rest Then you all get the power / you all get the best When everyone gives everything and every song everybody sings. – Laibach, 1980s Place branding can take many forms. Sometimes well-noticed […]

Read the full article →

The Cities Which Will Contribute Most to Global Growth in 2030

August 17, 2015

It is the world’s major cities that are the powerhouses of global growth. Teeming with industry and services, brimming with innovation, and home to booming and increasingly more skilled and diverse labour forces, the world’s 750 biggest cities today account for some 57% of global GDP. According to a study by Oxford Economics earlier this […]

Read the full article →

Official video recordings from Future of Places III

August 14, 2015

The full set of video recordings from the Future of Places III Conference in Stockholm 29th June to 1 July are now available on YouTube. Below is an index with links to the videos. We have published some of the speeches here on this blog while the conference was on-going. However the recordings below are […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →