Urban entrepreneurialism 2.0? Financialization, cross-scale dynamics, and post-political governance

Abstract

In this commentary, while I acknowledge the value of differentiating varieties of urban entrepreneurialism by focusing on different forms and geographies of innovation in public services, three major pitfalls impeding a renewed understanding of urban entrepreneurialism are identified. First of all, financialization, either as a means or an end, plays a central role in contemporary urban entrepreneurialism and deserves a more thorough scrutiny. Second, discounting the fluidity of spatial scales and multidirectionality in entrepreneurial policy-making, a taxonomy of urban entrepreneurialism is at best a rather flat comparison of urban entrepreneurship and innovation. Finally, the ‘innovation’ in the ways that citizens are governed (e.g. the introduction of a series of new techniques of neoliberal governmentality in the post-political age) should not be overlooked in understanding the ends to which urban entrepreneurialism is turned.