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In a call for papers, for the special issue to be devoted to “Urban Economy” late in 2015, that the Economies editors issued recently, I noted the increased attention that has been given to urban economies during the past quarter century. This is concomitant with the increased importance and role in policy that cities have attained. This is, in part, due to the diminished capacity of national and sub-national governments to find the funds needed for urban projects and services, and in part to the understanding that cities are the key to the economies and societies of most if not all nations.[...]

For the past 150 years, architecture has been a significant tool in the hands of city planners and leaders. In Creating Cities/Building Cities, Peter Karl Kresl and Daniele Ietri illustrate how these planners and leaders have utilized architecture to achieve a variety of aims, influencing the situation, perception and competitiveness of their cities. Whether the objective is branding, re-vitalization of the economy, beautification, development of an economic and business center, status development, or seeking distinction with the tallest building, distinctive architecture has been an essential instrument for those who manage the course of a city's development. Since the 1870s, and the reconstruction of Chicago following the Great Fire, architecture has been affected powerfully by advances in design, technology and materials used in construction. The authors identify several key elements in such a strategic initiative and in the penultimate chapter examine several cases of cities that have ignored one or more of these elements and have failed in their attempt. A unique set of insights into this fascinating topic, this study will appeal to specialists in urban planning, economic geography and architecture. Readers interested in urban development will also find its coverage accessible and enlightening.

During the past decade, as trade barriers have been lowered, urban economies have been increasingly vulnerable to competitive forces emanating from the most distant corners of the global economy. Competitiveness and the urban economy are discussed.

While the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) was a major event in Mexico, it was of only sectoral interest in the US and of interest primarily to the free trade community in Canada. The major event in Canada was, of course, the Canada-United States free trade agreement (FTA) five years earlier. The combined effects of the Canada-U S FTA and several rounds of GATT trade liberalization had created a situation in which the impacts of NAFTA were expected to be rather small: tariff barriers had already been lowered (average Mexican tariffs were 13 percent and US and Canadian tariffs were about six percent); many of Mexico's quantitative restrictions had been removed; and trade diversion from other developing countries was thought to limit the impacts of low wage imports into Canada and the US from Mexico. The final estimates of the probable effects of the more significant FTA (1989) were an increase in Canadian gross domestic product in the range of only two-three percent, and one-tenth of that for the US. Nonetheless, there was considerable opposition to NAFTA in each of the three countries. Furthermore, being a trade liberalization initiative, NAFTA was treated by many as just another aspect of globalization and was subjected to the same criticism that all such initiatives receive. It is only the opposition that is related specifically to intra-North American consequences that will be considered in this paper; once this has been discussed we will evaluate those concerns in light of the actual consequences of this important trinational exercise in trade liberalization. The criticisms of NAFTA ranged from the most general and contextual to the narrowly economic to issues of sovereignty.' Each set of criticisms will be examined in this order. The narrowly economic criticisms were concentrated largely on the impact that NAFTA was likely to have on employment, compensation, and the quality of jobs. Mexico saw the agreement as a means of gaining access to the US market and the many jobs that an expansion of net exports would entail. However, labour in both Canada and the US was convinced that Ross Perot's image of \"jobs going south (to Mexico)\" had got it right. The NAFTA was introduced at the end of a period of economic stagnation in Canada and the US, before the macroeconomic expansion of the Clinton years, and this loss of employment was laid by labour directly at the feet of the FTA. The NAFTA, in this view, would only continue the erosion of employment and job quality into the next decade. In the US, labour expressed the concerns about job loss and downward pressure on wages and benefits that were discounted by NAFTA enthusiasts. It was even suggested by one enthusiast that the agreement would cause a slowdown in inmigration of Mexican labour and that the US would \"run a trade and current account surplus, thus stimulating exports.\"4 This job creation stimulus turned to naught as the US ran over-all-and US-Mexico-trade deficits throughout the period and registered deficits with Canada from 1995 on. Arguments to the contrary about likely migratory flows will be offered below but, needless to say, migration from Mexico to the US has remained a vexing problem for both countries. Thus, labour's concerns were not at all invalid, although the actual impacts of NAFTA have been far less significant than had been anticipated and have been dwarfed by the larger political issue of out-sourcing that has nothing to do with NAFTA. The issue of loss of sovereignty from further integrative steps has never become a discussion point in the US, and examination of a \"NAFTA-plus\" agreement is always limited to just Canada and the US. Nonetheless, Mexicans did raise the issue of loss of control over their economy and society during the discussions that led to the NAFTA. But this debate was largely domestic in its scope due to the fact that at the time Mexico had been under the political domination of one party for decades and it was argued that adoption of the NAFTA was itself an exercise in constraint of the sovereignty of the Mexican people. Furthermore, NAFTA was expected to force on Mexico an extensive set of economic and political reforms, reforms that would accomplish the transformation of Mexico's economy that this initiative was designed to bring. Unfortunately, few of these reforms have been introduced, in part because of the dislocation of the peso crisis in 1997, but also in part due to the political deadlock of the past five years. Mexico's presidential-congressional system has been gridlocked throughout [Vicente Fox]'s presidency. Perhaps if Mexico had had a parliamentary system, with the executive and the legislature under the control of one party, more progress could have been made. But the reality is that much of the potential for Mexico of the NAFTA has yet to be realized.