Urban development and knowledge-intensive business services: Too many unanswered questions?

It is often assumed that future urban employment will be increasingly dependent on the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). This underpins much of the current thinking about the development of the English "core cites." Their example is employed to examine the more general validity of such assumptions, in terms of five critical questions to which research offers only partial and indefinite answers. For any city, how far are these activities really "knowledge intensive"? What markets do they serve? Is their future growth certain? And even when this is the case, how can they make a long-term contribution to local urban economic success? Finally, how far do urban economic institutions and policies need to be adapted to foster knowledge-based activities such as KIBS? It seems that, despite the growth of measured KIBS employment, most of the core cities possess few truly knowledge-intensive KIBS, capable of serving national and international business markets, competitively adapting to future change, and adding to the competitiveness of the wider urban economy. Nationally such activities remain focused into the London region where, if anything, they have increased their concentration is recent years.