The purpose of this chapter is to explore the connections between technology and lifelong learning and the respective initiatives of smart cities and learning cities. The Pew Research Center reports that place-based learning remains vital for pursuing knowledge especially from digital technology. This means that although learning occurs in traditional places (home, work, or community), the use of technology further enhances learner engagement across the entire society. As such, learning cities is a placed-based initiative for implementing education and lifelong learning. Smart cities, similarly, expand the implementation of education and lifelong learning, but through a broader medium of digital technology and the internet. The important connection between lifelong learning (as learning cities) and technology (as smart cities) is the aim for providing access to every individual in society. This chapter offers an analysis of two concepts representing these two cities' initiatives.
TopIntroduction Of Learning Cities
Learning cities represent one of the emerging topics in adult continuing education that contributes to changing boundaries in the field (Ross-Gordon, Rose, & Kasworm, 2017). The learning cities topic develops from historical interests in creating a learning society to more contemporary ambitions toward lifelong learning for all (Cobb, 2013; Facer & Buchczyk, 2019; UNESCO, 2016; Valdes-Cotera, Wang, & Lunardon, 2018). Over several decades, lifelong learning has supplanted other concepts such as community, recurrent, and lifelong education (Jarvis, 2004; Martin, 1987; Yorks & Scott, 2014). Hence, there are many interpretations of lifelong learning, due to its wide-ranging goals in the adult continuing education field. The concept of lifelong learning ranges from personal to professional purposes (Pew Research Center, 2016); economistic to humanistic perspectives (Regmi, 2017); neo-liberalism to social democratic political ideologies (Fuller, 2018; Lee & Jan, 2017); and from other viewpoints regarding lifelong or “life-wide” learning within formal, informal, and nonformal settings including technology and digital environments (Borkowska, & Osborne, 2018; Boshier, 2005; Marsick et al. 2016).