文章基本信息

标题：Long-Term City Innovation Trajectories and Quality of Urban Life
本地全文：下载
作者：Alina Irina Popescu
期刊名称：Sustainability
印刷版ISSN：2071-1050
出版年度：2020
卷号：12
期号：24
页码：10587
DOI：10.3390/su122410587
语种：English
出版社：MDPI, Open Access Journal
摘要：The main aims of this paper are to examine the technological trajectories of city innovation, to provide a picture of the current state in the most significant technologies, and to propose an explanation for the long-run evolutionary trajectories of technological developments that contribute to the quality of urban life through innovation. In the conceptual part of the paper, we develop the argument that the explanation may rest on the interrelationships between the concept of urban transformative capacity and the theory of path dependence. In the empirical part, we analyze patent data on city-related innovations to examine the trajectories of technological developments over the period 1980–2020. Our main findings at a technological field level (i) confirm the path dependence theory in general and the institutional approach in particular, (ii) acknowledge the rapid transformation towards ‘smart cities’ through the explosive growth of digital technologies, and (iii) confirm the environmental sustainability concerns when developing new technologies. In our study, we focus particularly on the technological sectors (‘clusters’) that provide a significant contribution to quality of urban life, namely environment, public services, and leisure and participation. Our findings provide theoretical, managerial, and policy implications for future research activities on the technological developments that benefit quality of urban life.