Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Developing Knowledge Cities
Wayne KD Davies
A knowledge city is a city that aims at a knowledge-based
development, by encouraging the continuous creation, sharing,
evaluation, renewal and update of knowledge. This is achieved
through the continuous interaction between its citizens
themselves and at the same time between them and other cities'
citizens. The citizens' knowledge-sharing culture as well as
the city's appropriate design, IT networks and infrastructures.
support these interactions
Ergazakis et al. (
2004
), p. 5
111
Introduction
The development of the Knowledge City (KC) as a distinctive theme for the
economic and social growth of cities has been a rapidly evolving concept in the last
two decades. Originally created from extensions to traditional urban and regional
growth theory by economists and geographers, it is being increasingly expanded
by contributions from management theorists. All have recognized the increasing
importance of intellectual capital (IC), or knowledge-based value, in the creation of
new types of growth in particular urban areas, especially in or close to large pros-
perous cities. The mixture of ideas from different fields of study means the concept
still lacks any definite methodologies of study or any complete theoretical structure.
There is also some loss of focus because the term overlaps with several related
ideas: Intelligent Cities (Komninos
2002
), Learning Cities (Holden and Connelly
2004
), Cities of Knowledge (O'Mara
2005
), Technopolis (Okubo
2012
), Creative
Cities (Florida
2002
; Landry
2005
), Creative Regions (Cooke and Schwarz
2007
),
or the hybrid Creative-Knowledge Cities (Musterd et al.
2010a
,
b
). But the Knowl-
edge City concept does seem to be emerging as a more comprehensive approach to
understanding, developing a new type of urban growth which subsumes these re-
lated ideas. However, it must be remembered that the idea that knowledge is vitally
