Resumen de Variations of the Entrepreneurial City: Goals, roles and visions in Rotterdam’sKop van Zuid and the GlasgowHarbour Megaprojects
Both Rotterdam’s Kop van Zuid and the Glasgow Harbour waterfront developments areexamples of different forms of European urban entrepreneurial megaprojects. They areboth situated on formerly vacant land in older industrial cities. In Rotterdam, themunicipality has taken the initiative in planning and developing the megaproject, whilein Glasgow, this task has been left to the private sector, with the City functioning as afacilitator. While urban entrepreneurialism and megaprojects have been discussed inacademic literature for almost three decades, there are too few case studies which delveinto the specific visions guiding these projects, the goals which they are meant to achieveand the positions which different actors play. The aim of this article is to analyze therelationship between these visions, goals and positions of actors in megaprojects andwhether these relationships can explain how the different outcomes are produced. Whatwe see is that in municipally-led projects, entrepreneurial goals are more easily formedand implemented than when the public sector acts only as a facilitator to privatedevelopers. It will also argue that it is not only structural contexts which are importantin determining the types of megaprojects which get built and the success which theyachieve, but also the specific values, visions and goals that different stakeholders have
