The health of the financial sector is a matter of policy concern, most especially in developing countries where failure in financial intermediation can critically disrupt the development process. The link between the financial sector and growth has been the subject of a large literature, most recently reviewed by Khan and Senhadji, who concludes that while there is strong empirical evidence that robust financial markets support economic growth, there is very little work of operational relevance for improving the functioning of the financial sector. However, cities are places of incremental decision-making involving complex negotiations that produce accumulations of urban assets and…

Locating Ibiza on the map may be more or less comfortable, depending on where you’re from and your knowledge of geography. Ibiza (Catalan: Eivissa) is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of Spain.

Ibiza has become well known for its association with nightlife, electronic dance music, and for the summer club scene, all of which attract large numbers of tourists drawn to that type of holiday. Several years before 2010, the island’s government and the Spanish Tourist Office had been working to promote more family-oriented tourism, with the police closing down clubs that played music…

The creative city is a concept developed by Australian David Yencken in 1988 and has since become a global movement reflecting a new planning paradigm for cities. In his article “The Creative City,” it was first described in the literary journal Meanjin. In this article, Yencken argues that while cities must be efficient and fair, a creative city must also be committed to fostering creativity among its citizens and providing emotionally satisfying places and experiences for them.

The first mention of the creative city as a concept was in a seminar organized by the Australia Council, the City of Melbourne…

According to Aristotle “A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.” Aristotle also wrote in The Politics that a city too, like an individual, has a work to do; and that city which is best adapted to the fulfilment of its work is to be deemed greatest, in the same sense of the word great in which Hippocrates might be called greater, not as a man, but as a physician, than some one else who was taller. And even if we reckon greatness by numbers, we ought not to include everybody, for there must always be…

The discussion of urban issues often involves economic and political concerns. Some of the more critical aspects of the new urban sociology emphasize greater attention to political economy. But this is not all there is to the new approach. People live in a symbolic world that is meaningful to them. They possess sentiments and ideas and attempt to communicate with others using common concepts. Social interaction in human societies is organized through the direct use of spoken or written language. A significant part, however, employs expressive symbols that are used to convey meanings. One of the principal sources of extended…

The Night-Time Economy is an increasingly important subject of interest to researchers. Throughout history, towns and cities have had some manifestation of an “economy” that operates in the evening and at night. So, people traded objects and services beyond the end of the commonly understood “working day”. In Asia, night markets selling domestic goods, medicines, and food have existed for thousands of years. Anyway, in the 21st-century leisure or “post-industrial” age, the transactional nature of the evening and night has appeared to grow in importance to the functioning of towns and cities. So while perhaps not the same content of…

In Toni Morrison’s scintillating novel, “Jazz,” the image of the City and its energy available for good or for ill is the centre, the pulse of the book. There is no air in the City, but there is breath, and every morning it races through him like laughing gas brightening his eyes, his talk, and his expectations… That kind of fascination, permanent and out of control, seizes children, young girls, men of every description, mothers, brides, and barfly women. If they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more like the people they always…

The interest to regulate night-time behaviour is not new. Government policy is paradoxically torn between the economic benefits of a vibrant night-time economy, open all hours, and the regulatory concerns of noise, nuisance, incivilities and violence. So, the night-time economy is increasingly being recognized as a driver of economic growth, but for it to succeed a broad range of professionals need to cultivate it. Whether you work in planning, health, economics, transport, the arts or property — the night-time economy can no longer be an afterthought.

Anyway, cities can increase their productivity by adopting measures that regulate and diversify the…