HOW INNOVATIVE ARE THE CITIES? A MULTI-VARIABLE APPROACH TO MEASURING INNOVATION IN TURKEY

Abstract

There are a couple of essential indicators of an innovative city. Besides technological and economic developments, there are qualities such as institutional capacity, strong collaborative dispositions, and an excellent physical and social infrastructure which make a city genuinely innovative and they create a push for the rest of the region and, in some cases, for the entire country. This study aims to measure the innovation level of the cities in Turkey with a multi-variable approach. In total, 27 variables were used for 81 cities of Turkey, with a 0-100 scale. The results showed that 68 cities are below the average value of innovation (1.23%). Overall, most of the cities in Turkey performed poorly in the analysis, and this reveals that using innovation as a means to achieve regional development is yet not fully acknowledged by the public authorities in Turkey.

Keywords

• innovative city
• regional development
• policy development
• turkey