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TopBackground
To date, the development of most knowledge cities has proceeded organically as a dependent and derivative effect of global market forces (Cooke & Leydesdorff, 2006). Urban and regional planning has responded slowly, and sometimes not at all, to the challenges and the opportunities of the knowledge city (May, 2011). That is changing, however. KBUD brings both economic prosperity and a sustainable socio-spatial order, as its goal is to generate conditions to produce and circulate abstract work—i.e., knowledge generation—to achieve a sustainable urban development that is a development type that improves the quality of life in a city, including ecological, cultural, political, institutional, social and economic components without leaving any burden (Yigitcanlar, 2010a, 2010b). In other words, with KBUD the knowledge city (trans)formation can be planned, engineered and orchestrated.
The globalization of the world in the last decades of the 20th century was a dialectical process. On one hand, as the tyranny of distance was eroded, economic networks of production and consumption were constituted at a global scale (Huggins, 2010). At the same time, spatial proximity remained as important as ever, if not more so, for KBUD. Mediated by information and communication technology (ICT), personal contact, and the medium of tacit knowledge, organizational and institutional interactions are still closely associated with spatial proximity (Cooke, 2002). The clustering of knowledge generation is essential for fostering innovation and wealth creation (Yigitcanlar, 2011c).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Knowledge Society: A new society formed as a result of the contemporary societal change pushed by technological innovation and institutional transformation, which is not only about technological innovations, but also about human beings, their personal growth and their individual creativity, experience and participation in the generation of knowledge. The primary role of cities in a knowledge society is to ensure that their knowledge sources are passed on and advanced by each generation.
New Economic Geography: Differs from traditional work in economic geography mainly in adopting a modeling strategy that exploits the same technical tricks that have played such a large role in the new growth theories; these modeling tricks, while they preclude any claims of generality, do allow the construction of models that are fully general-equilibrium and clearly derive aggregate behavior from individual maximization. Most importantly it serves the important purpose of placing geographical analysis squarely in the economic mainstream.
Knowledge-Based Urban Development: The new development paradigm of the knowledge economy era that aims to bring economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, a just socio-spatial order and good governance to cities and produces a city purposefully designed to encourage the production and circulation of knowledge in an environmentally conserved, economically secure, socially just and well-governed human setting, a knowledge city.
Industrial Clustering: A geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field, and clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, regionally, nationally and globally.
Knowledge Precinct: An urban cluster that knowledge is generated, exchanged and marketed by talented knowledge workers. The contemporary practice moves from work focused knowledge precincts—e.g., science and technology parks, innovation parks—multi-activity focused knowledge community precincts—i.e., work, live, play, and cyber.
Knowledge City: A city that searches for the creation of value in all its areas and develops high standards of life, cultural support and economic development, among other aspects including higher level of income, education, training and research, at the same time it is a regional knowledge economy driven city with high value added exports created through research, technology and brainpower and purposefully designed to encourage the nurturing of knowledge.
Endogenous Growth Theory: Sees economic growth as generated from within a system as a direct result of internal processes, and the enhancement of a nation's human capital that will lead to economic growth by means of the development of new forms of technology and efficient and effective means of production.
Knowledge Community Precinct: A mixed-use post-modern urban setting—e.g., flexible, decontextualized, enclaved, fragmented—including a critical mass of knowledge enterprises and advanced networked infrastructures, developed with the aim of collecting the benefits of blurring the boundaries of living, shopping, recreation and working facilities of knowledge workers and their families—i.e., knowledge community.
Knowledge-Based Development: A humanistic perspective and development process uses variety of knowledge management systems and approaches based on a shared vision and value sets to capture new opportunities, advance the economy and society, compete successfully in sustainable and global knowledge economy and achieve progress in the evolution of human civilization.
Sustainable Urban Development: Improving the quality of life in a city, including ecological, cultural, political, institutional, social and economic components without leaving a burden, e.g., the result of a reduced natural capital and an excessive local debt, on the future generations—and thus forming the sustainable city.
Knowledge Environment: The environment that supports the knowledge-based development of individuals, firms, cities, societies and nations; more specifically, it is the environment—i.e., built, environmental and social—that consists of social practices, technological and physical arrangements to facilitate collaborative knowledge generation, exchange, marketing.
Knowledge Worker: Someone with an occupation in a post-industrial economy that is the most portable work of all, in which knowledge is of the higher value than any mere product or commodity, and is the most highly paid of all workers because s/he knows stuff. Knowledge worker can also be seen as someone who is computer adept, scientist, symbolic analyst, financial wizard, writer, artist, and later-day Bohemian and someone who gets to decide what s/he does each morning.
Knowledge Economy: An economy that encourages its organizations and people to acquire, create, disseminate and use knowledge—i.e., codified and tacit—more effectively for greater economic and social development and it is also regarded as a separate section of the economy, the one in which new and in most cases technological knowledge is generated.