Developing Knowledge Cities

Abstract

There has been a new valuation on the importance of knowledge in creating urban economic development in recent years. This is not knowledge for personal development, or in making things, but in creating the new intellectual capital which leads to inventions and innovation. After a review of the alternative meanings of knowledge, the study shows how inventive and innovative activity is concentrated in a limited number of urban centres. This can be explained by the varied locational imperatives that create such concentrations, linked to: innovation characteristics; uncertainties to solve; support and encouragement; and access to knowledge, in which tacit knowledge is especially important. So the old paradigms explaining the location of economic activity based on differential access to land, labour and capital is no longer enough. Instead a more comprehensive approach to understanding a city’s capacity to create knowledge comes from the use of an adapted Capital System Inventory model, which views each city as a system of past and current activities and characteristics. These conditions provide the seed bed of value elements that can aid or repel new knowledge-based development in an area. A review of these various elements is followed by a summary of the stages necessary to create a knowledge economy in urban places, although there cannot be one path to success.