Strategic Economic Policy: Milan, Dublin, Toulouse

This chapter compares three European cities with well-established and successful creative and/or knowledge based economies - Milan, Dublin and Toulouse . However, each economy has different sectoral strengths and has different associated historical development paths and economic trajectories developed over varying time periods. As national capital of Ireland, Dublin possesses several conditions that are only partly present in the regional capitals of Lombardy and Midi-Pyrénées. Dublin’s economic growth in both creative and knowledge sectors has been significant in the past two decades (Murphy and Redmond, 2009); Toulouse’s development relies mainly on knowledge-based activities such as aeronautics, space and electronics; Milan’s success in the creative industries occurred over a prolonged period of time. Over the centuries Milan has gained national primacy by becoming the financial, economic, innovative and creative capital of Italy.