Informational world cities An empirical investigation of cities in the 21st century Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) durch die Philosophische Fakultät der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf vorgelegt von Agnes Mainka Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang G. Stock Prof. Dr. Isabella Peters Düsseldorf Januar 2017 Abstract The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate world cities that are in a network. The network is constituted by the flows of capital, power, and information. The key innovation is ICT and the acknowledgment of human capital as an important economic resource. The research approach combines urban studies, sociology, and information science. Thus, diverse hypotheses have emerged in recent years that are going to describe the knowledge, creative, digital, or smart city. In the work at hand, I will combine the approaches of diverse city types and different research fields into one investigation. According to twelve hypotheses, characteristics and best practice examples of informational world city’s development will be identified. The focus is to emphasize on real world examples. The dominating research method is grounded theory which allows to mix different approaches to gather data, e.g. interviews, field research, and statistics. In total, 31 cities are investigated regarding their digital and cognitive infrastructure, political willingness and cityness. The interviews and field studies have been conducted between June 2010 and May 2014. Literature and secondary data has been updated continuously. The focus of this empirical investigation of 31 informational world cities is to verify actual research approaches based on expert interviews. Do experts with different backgrounds and from different origins agree with general assumptions that explain the success and forecast further growth of cities in the 21st century? In general, cities in a globalized world become more similar. Moreover, they are following the similar strategies to foster future success. Thus, for instance, city planners develop citywide ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi hotspots, establish science parks and knowledge clusters in an entire neighborhood, introduce bike and car sharing, and finally push entrepreneurship and coworking spaces. All this is happening under the flagship of becoming a knowledge or smart city. But some cities are outstanding in their performance in a special sector. This could be the elite university located in or near the city as wells as an extraordinary stock exchange market. Whether it is money or talent both bring capital into the city. Thus, Boston and San Francisco Bay Area are both attracting knowledge with regard to their elite universities and New York is attracting power in terms of finance and multinational corporations. The results of this investigation present how the diverse cities meet the changing demands of the knowledge society in an increasing digitized environment. I Acknowledgement I wish to express my sincere appreciation to those who have contributed to this thesis and supported me in one way or the other during this amazing journey. First of all, I am extremely grateful to my main supervisor, Professor Wolfgang G. Stock, for his guidance and all the useful discussions and brainstorming sessions, especially during the difficult conceptual development and writing stages. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. My sincere gratitude is reserved for Professor Isabella Peters for her invaluable insights and suggestions. I really appreciate her willingness to discuss a draft version of my thesis. This has helped me a lot to reflect my own work. She is an inspiration. I thank her, the Sonder Forschungs Fond of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, and the Department of Information Science for giving me the opportunity to visit all the cities and meet all the experts around the world. Special thanks go as well to the experts who took the time for giving me an interview and inspired the work at hand. The interviews further have profited from colleagues and friends that have accompanied me during the field studies. I like to thank Christine Meschede, Sarah Hartmann, Janina Nicolic, Duwaraka Murugadas, Stefanie Vieten, Sviatlana Khveshchanka, Anika Stallmann, Lisa Orszullok, Adriana Kosior, Evelyn Dröge, and further, Katrin Weller for conducting the interviews in Melbourne. Especially I like to thank Isabella Peters and Wolfgang G. Stock who have advised me during my first field studies and interviews. Further, I like to thank all colleagues and friends that have helped me to finalize this work by reading several draft versions: Lisa Beutelspacher, Tobias Siebenlist, Christine Meschede, Tamara Heck, Kathleen Haking, Anika Stallmann, Lisa Orszullok, and Alexander Richter. In particular, I like to thank Carsten Brinker for spending his holidays to accompanying me during the field studies and interviews in the US and Brazil and making these beautiful photos that I am allowed to use in this work. He is always motivating me and helping whenever it is possible for him. Thank you! Finally, I like to thank my parents and my sister who have supported me during my study and my research. II Declaration of Authorship I hereby declare that the thesis submitted is my own unaided work. All direct or indirect sources used are acknowledged as references. I am aware that the thesis in digital form can be examined for the use of unauthorized aid and in order to determine whether the thesis as a whole or parts incorporated in it may be deemed as plagiarism. For the comparison of my work with existing sources I agree that it shall be entered in a database where it shall also remain after examination, to enable comparison with future theses submitted. Further rights of reproduction and usage, however, are not granted here. This work was not previously presented to another examination board and has not been published. first and last name city, date, and signature III Contents LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................VI LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................... X 1 INFORMATIONAL WORLD CITIES .......................................................................................... 1 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................... 6 2 THE RISE OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY ............................................................................... 9 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 14 3 MEASURING CITIES OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY ............................................................. 17 3.1 INFRASTRUCTURES .................................................................................................................... 17 3.1.1 ICT infrastructure ........................................................................................................ 18 3.1.2 Cognitive infrastructure .............................................................................................. 24 3.2 POLITICAL WILL ........................................................................................................................ 30 3.3 WORLD CITY ............................................................................................................................ 35 3.4 HYPOTHESIS OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................. 44 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 45 4 METHODS .......................................................................................................................... 55 4.1 GROUNDED THEORY: COMBINATION OF RESEARCH METHODS TO INVESTIGATE NEW FIELDS ..................... 56 4.2 LITERATURE REVIEW: IDENTIFYING PROTOTYPICAL CITIES OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY ........................... 57 4.3 INTERVIEWS: A QUALITATIVE APPROACH ....................................................................................... 58 4.4 GAINING FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE THROUGH FIELD STUDIES .............................................................. 61 4.5 MEASURING CITIES AND NATIONS ON SECONDARY DATA ................................................................... 63 4.6 RETRIEVAL OF PATENTS AND SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS ..................................................................... 64 4.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESULTS...................................................................................................... 64 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 66 5 IDENTIFYING PROTOTYPICAL CITIES OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY ................................... 69 5.1 DIGITAL AND SMART CITIES ......................................................................................................... 73 5.1.1 ICT infrastructure ........................................................................................................ 73 5.1.2 ICT networks ..............................................................................................................