Start-ups and the entrepreneurial city

Start-up technology and digital platform firms have become a much-talked about plank of urban economic development policy worldwide. The paper considers the various modes and practices of urban capitalism which sit behind these ‘disruptive’ business models, and connects it to the recent revisiting of the landmark essay by David Harvey (1989. ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation of Urban Governance in Late Capitalism.’ Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 71 (1): 3–17) on urban entrepreneurialism. Attempts to rank and measure the relative strengths of start-up ‘ecosystems’ have put a new spin on inter-urban competition. Some of the best-known start-ups such as Uber and Airbnb have made direct incursions into the redrawing of markets of the collective consumption of urban services. Others may fly under the radar as they facilitate the rostering of casual labour, provide predatory payday loans, and push new on-demand consumption choices. And at the same time, digital platforms allow unprecedented opportunities for social enterprise and ‘defensive’ localist capitalism. The paper argues that urbanists must understand the diversity of start-ups and their different ways of framing the urban, and sets out a number of areas for further debate.