Tailored: context-sensitive: urban policies for creative knowledge cities

The final chapter draws together the different strands of policy interventions and provides an overall conclusion for the volume. The implications from this are that new policies for sustainable urban economic development should pay attention to pathways, place and personal networks. That does not imply that earlier policy strategies have become totally redundant. Some of the ‘classic’ strategies, in particular those that build on the potential benefits of agglomeration and clustering of specific sectors and their institutions, need attention as well. The material and virtual infrastructure, attractive tax systems, swift interaction, good access and smooth communications are all important to sustain. However, none of the policies developed involve adopting a simple uniform model of intervention. This volume demonstrates that policies should be tailored, simply because the national, local, physical, social, economic, cultural, political and institutional contexts require such an approach.