Composite Index to Measure the Performance of Today's Creative Cities: A Holistic Perspective ·

Abstract

The urgency to make today’s cities competitive has made political decisionmakers focus on strategies oriented towards creativity, intelligence and urban sustainability. This scenario has led to the need to measure, assess and monitor the effects of those strategies on cities' performance. Therefore, this study aims to present the scientific and robust weighting of the creativity, intelligence and urban sustainability dimensions in cities' holistic, integrated and overall performance. Implicit in this objective is the previous construction of Composite Indices for each of those dimensions. In this context, the Exploratory Factor Analysis was found to be appropriate to respond to this aim, with empirical evidence being obtained in Portugal. The results show a weighting of 38%, 23.4% and 39.6% for creativity, intelligence and urban sustainability respectively. The contributions and implications for theory and practice, followed by indications for future research and the conclusions are also presented.