City-regions are now the key source of economic vitality and innovative capacity for nation-states; innovative activity is becoming more, not less, concentrated in city-regions. It is widely recognized that the comparative advantage of city-regions in the knowledge economy rests on their social characteristics as much as their economic assets. The critical issues to be addressed in the proposed strategic research cluster are:

• How do local social characteristics and processes in city-regions determine their economic vitality and dynamism as centres of innovation and creativity? • How do the social learning dynamics between economic actors, the social dimensions of quality of place (including diversity, openness, and inclusion), and the social nature of civic engagement and governance processes shape the city-region’s economic growth, creativity, and innovative potential?

Because these questions span the economic and the social, as well as the local and the global, a multi-disciplinary perspective is required. Moreover, in a country as spatially diverse as Canada, a research design that is national in scope but attentive to local experiences is called for; the diverse, multi-perspective team approach in this strategic research cluster will achieve exactly this.