Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Critical review Re-making urban economic geography. Start-ups, entrepreneurial support and the Makers Movement: A critical assessment of policy mobility in Rome Stefania Fiorentino Bartlett School of Planning, UCL University College London, Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, WC1H 0NN, United Kingdom ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Makers Policy mobility Urban economies Cities Urban regeneration Start-ups ABSTRACT A new type of urban economy is emerging in many cities of the world based on innovation and soft-technology among micro and small enterprises. This movement back to the city has been promoted by both bottom-up and top-down interventions. The Maker Movement, start-ups tailored policy agendas and shared service accom- modations set ups are all different facets of business regulations oriented to promoting entrepreneurial ventures as a way to trigger new economic growth in lagging urban environments. This paper looks at the case of Rome and compares it with other cases and policy interventions around the world. The results raise concerns about the efficacy of policy mobility in this connection. The planning system still fails to address the impact these activities might have settling on an existing urban fabric and giving new life to derelict areas of the city. The few im- plemented regeneration strategies that exist have mainly emulated past experiences of creative cities and clusters. Yet, from an economic point of view, start-ups have become the new panacea in neo-liberalised job markets. The remaking of new urban economies is influencing contemporary processes of regeneration in cities of both developed and developing world and a better understanding of its dynamics is needed to inform future policy making processes. 1. Introduction A new type of urban economy is emerging in many cities of the world. Its development is largely exemplified by the dissemination of the Makers Movement, born in the Bay area in 2006 as a community of hobbyists and then grown and exported as a new entrepreneurial style. Its diffusion worldwide has corresponded to both an increasing interest in start-ups and new entrepreneurial activities from many world busi- ness institutions going through the necessity of facing a general downturn and a shortage of traditional job offers. Since then, digital entrepreneurs have spread in many countries of the world creating in exchange a network of new professional figures, intermediaries and facilities associated with a new conception of innovation led from the bottom up by very small firms or individuals. As a result in last decade, the start-up panacea has therefore in- vested both developing countries and traditional capitalist contexts, such as Italy or even cities like Detroit, USA, are struggling to find an economic vocation after a general downturn (cf. Phelps and Wijaya, 2016). Under the economic point of view, the problem has been as- sessed as one of adapting innovation policy agendas to foster new job creation by supporting new ways of mobilizing venture capital and regional funding or granting fiscal benefits to new activities and even educational tools for new entrepreneurs. However, despite ‘start-ups’ and ‘entrepreneurialism’ becoming the watch words to promote and re- instil economic growth in large urban areas, very little has been done with respect to these processes from the planning side. Most of the relating policies are mainly the result of copy-paste approaches of policy mobility that pick upon policies coming for the previous wave of creative and tech cluster experiences and translating them into a more technology-oriented language. In other words, an investigation of the planning dimension targeting specifically makers or the new sector they represent is missing. How, then, do we address this economy that is establishing itself on already existing urban fabrics? Are there real repercussions for the built en- vironment coming from “start-up urbanism” (Rossi and Di Bella, 2017)? If so which ones and how can we use them to regenerate urban areas and maximize growth as well as their social value? Answering these questions means finding new ways through which planning policies could really address the issue and developing new tools to tackle those urban changes. Shared service accommodation, international fairs and events dedicated to start-ups and the Makers Movement are all elements of this potential story – a tale made of the emergence of new urban economies but also a story of socio-economic struggles in the city. This article examines the seeds of this new urban economy looking at the city of Rome and the measures in place there. The Italian city has undergone some deep socio-political tension in the last few years as https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.05.016 Received 15 January 2018; Received in revised form 9 April 2018; Accepted 14 May 2018 E-mail address: stefania.fiorentino.14@ucl.ac.uk. Geoforum 93 (2018) 116–119 0016-7185/ Crown Copyright © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T