Simpson, Jacob Thomas; (2022) The Importance of Qualities of the Built Environment to Inward Investment in Paris Ile-de-France. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Massive public investment in new transportation infrastructure – estimated at 40 Billion Euros over twenty years – is currently stimulating new development in and around Paris including housing and commercial real estate. With investment promotion agencies marketing such investment alongside new economic policies in favour of innovation and entrepreneurship, inward investment to Ile-de-France hit historic highs in 2019. This research looks at the importance of the qualities of the built environment and the actors who shape them in inward investment. Academic literature on investment promotion and site selection have investigated the role of location and infrastructure in the attraction and development of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), focusing on knowledge and labour market externalities with limited attention to the quality of the built environment. Literature on urban regeneration, property-led development and financialisation look at the value of the built environment for real estate and economic development without explaining the contribution of the physical characteristics of spaces and places. Research on creative and cultural economies provides some understanding of the draw of urban density and cultural heritage, but analysis of the actors interested in such features is limited. By combining property and planning literature with literature on market-making, the thesis adopts an actor-centred approach to explain the importance of the built environment in the location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Exploratory data analysis techniques were used to relate the built environment qualities of 1,220 MNE locations in Ile-de-France to their investment type, facility type, economic sector, employee count and nationality. Results reveal patterns among them, such as the tendency of first-time FDI to locate in the historic urban core and of expanding FDI to favour peripheral business parks. They also indicate the popularity of urban compactness, coworking facilities and business centres, new, environmentally certified and listed buildings among several FDI types. To clarify these findings, seventy-two interviews with property consultants, developers, managers, economic development facilitators, planners, architects and foreign occupiers of commercial space were conducted to gauge perspectives on the importance of the built environment in the location decision. Results reveal the significance of the role of property market actors in framing the qualities of the built environment for MNEs and the implications of such framing for urban governance in Ile-de-France. The thesis, thus, contributes to a greater understanding of how location decisions and their impact on the built environment result from complex processes of intermediation between heterogeneous property market actors.

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