Author(s)

A. Vegara

Abstract

Cities have the ability to provide the conditions for efficient development of companies and to foster quality of life for the people who live and work in that environment.

Territorial competitiveness has traditionally been studied at a country scale perspective whilst it has an extraordinary capactity of implementation at the city scale.

This paper goes in depth to determine and explain the critical factors that have an impact on cities to become more competitive; analyzes how appropriate is to measure the competitiveness of cities on the basis of competitiveness indicators; concludes that quantitative indicators do not consider relevant qualitative aspects, so it becomes relevant to discover the complexity of the interrelations of the factors of competitiveness in specific cases to identify the critical factors of the competitiveness of cities.

Keywords

urban century, competitiveness of cities, benchmarking, city index, city profile, urban indicators, city ranking