There are plenty of comparative studies of the innovativeness of metropolises. However, I made another one examining innovativeness in the sphere of social media. In Futura journal, I represented a comparison between the Nordic metropolises, which are usually performing well in different innovation rankings.
Examining where there is the most Twitter activity related to the exact term of innovation, Swedish cities are the top performers. When examining Twitter activity proportional to city size, Stockholm is the leading innovation hub in Northern Europe with Malmö following second. What comes to themes related to innovativeness, Helsinki is the most important concentration of startups and technology in the Nordic countries. Stockholm and Malmö are the second and the third largest concentrations of both, startups and technology. Related to innovativeness and economic growth, also the tolerance of the citizens was considered. Interestingly, perhaps the most famous city in the Nordics facing problems related to immigration, Malmö is welcoming refugees most generously. In fact, Malmö is the only metropolitan area, where there is significant movement related to hashtag #refugeeswelcome. Different themes related to innovativeness combined, the same cities appear high in ranking. Overall, Stockholm (in the picture below) is the most innovative metropolis in the Nordic countries. Helsinki has the second most Twitter activity related to innovativeness and Malmö the third most. From the results, it is obvious that metropolitan areas should be compared to metropolises approximately the same size - even if measured proportional to city size. The capitals and the largest metropolises of the Nordic countries are competing with each other, while the secondary cities of Nordics are competing in their own race (empirics of them later on).
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We found a cluster that does not bother boundaries of municipalicies. This is normal to clusters (Porter 2000). We named the cluster of innovations and creative class as an "innovation horseshoe" because of its shape.
I am honored by the acknowledgment from Mrs. Lace and Mr. Yun. Now we must just finalize the paper. Sweaty summer coming in the office :D
Below is the permanent link to recently published article in Cities journal. It is also the first article of my PhD thesis. Three more to go, I guess. Well, it's a start :) The picture above is from the construction phase of 18 store twin towers in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki, opened now as Clarion Hotel. Every tenth of the new high rises in Finland is built in Jätkäsaari district, an inner city extension of Helsinki. It has an enormous innovative potential, according to our study below:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.01.005 Kiuru, Juho & Inkinen, Tommi (2017). Predicting innovative growth and demand with proximate human capital: A case study of the Helsinki metropolitan area. Cities. Volume 64, April 2017, Pages 9–17. Juho Kiuru a, , , Tommi Inkinen b, a University of Helsinki, Department of Geosciences and Geography, Division of Urban Geography and Regional Studies, P.O. Box 64, (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2a), FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland b University of Turku, Centre for Maritime Studies, Brahea-Centre, FI-20014 University of Turku, Finland |
Photo by Rob Hurson
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July 2018
AuthorJuho Kiuru, geographer living in Helsinki, Finland. |