Governance and the city: an empirical exploration into global determinants of urban performance

This paper examines the field of urban governance and globalisation through an empirically-based exploration of determinants of performance of cities. The paper introduces a preliminary worldwide database for cities, containing variables and indicators of globalisation (at the country and city level), city governance, city performance (access and quality of infrastructure service delivery), as well as other relevant city characteristics.

The empirically-based analysis concludes that:

• good governance and globalisation (at both the country as well as at the city level) do matter for city-level performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services
• globalisation and good city governance are significantly related with each other. There appear to be dynamic pressures from globalisation and accountability that result in better performance at the city level
• there are particular and complex interactions between technology choices, governance and city performance, as well as evidence of a non-linear (u-shaped) relationship between city size and performance, challenging the view that very large cities necessarily exhibit lower performance and pointing to potential agglomeration economies
• there exists a need for expanding the database and the econometric framework, as well as to more general future research directions and policy implications emerging from the initial empirical investigation in the field of governance and the city.

[adapted form author]