Entrepreneurship and governance in cosmopolitan cities: lessons learned

This concluding chapter draws upon the learning points from the experience of governments and entrepreneurs in cosmopolitan cities and draws insights from the discussion offered in this book. The principal aim is to identify lessons for urban governance. The challenges facing cosmopolitan cities include gender differences; opportunity generation as a continuous need; maintenance of the sources of prosperity; creation of favourable conditions for inhabitants’ personal life; the impact of religious norms and cultural traditions on entrepreneurship; difference in access to resources; and mitigation of contextual vulnerabilities that undermine the cities’ cosmopolitan nature. By offering a detailed discussion of each challenge, the chapter delineates the tasks for governance in cosmopolitan cities. The chapter also makes recommendations for further research by identifying the most salient questions that still require answering, e.g. how to design processes and structures to ensure coherence, consistency and effectiveness of urban governance to better serve cities’ cosmopolitan focus.