Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Hu￩ to map, conserve and provide advice on the identification, legal protection and
adaptive re-use of heritage buildings, not only by expert-led visits to the south east
Asian city but by return visits by Vietnamese to study practices and management of
the problems in the host country.
Although the number, variety and objectives of these networks have exploded
in recent years, helped by the more rapid electronic communication systems, it is
worth remembering that there have been networks of towns and cities with mutual
interest in the past. Historically, the best known is the Hanseatic League of com-
mercial centres in medieval North Europe, towns with common commercial inter-
ests. They gave each other trading privileges and asserted their rights with feudal
lords or local states, as well as providing co-ordination over protecting trade routes
from pirates. But even the nineteenth century there were networks concerned about
improving health, such as the British Health of Towns Association from the 1840s
that agitated for improved sanitary and water facilities to reduce the horrendous
mortality rates consequent upon industrialization and unregulated urban growth. In
the 1860s European cities had regular conventions of their mayors. During the early
twentieth century there were many networks devoted to particular issues, such as
the British Committee for the Study of Municipal Institutions in 1904, as well as
many funded tours of other cites to investigate their successes in particular func-
tions (Ewan and Hebbert 2007), while European cities with socialist ideals also
established their own network (Dogliani 2002). Since World War II the number of
these networks has grown and moved away from being primarily leaders or groups
of bureaucrats from urban places discussing common problems or co-ordinating
professional management qualifications. Far more specialist forums involving ex-
perts in many fields, many international in scope and dealing with the types of
themes reviewed in the various chapters, have developed, assisted by the ease of
travel and instant electronic linkages.
Fifth, the growth of networks and their use in providing more personal con-
tacts and knowledge acquisition has led to an emerging interest in the whole
city-
learning process
, namely of how cities gather and apply knowledge to improve
their conditions. This could easily be considered another emerging urban theme of
the early twenty-first century. This changes the focus from collecting and applying
the empirical results of particular information and policy ideas, such as those as-
sociated with the various themes, to the
mechanisms
by which this new knowledge
is acquired and used. If these mechanisms of learning are deliberately studied and
applied, they take a city and its citizens away from the accidental, random or in-
dividual acquisition of either policy information in particular fields, or of problem
identification. They offer the prospect of creating a more explicit and formalized
process of what amounts to learning, not simply in one content area, but more gen-
erally across many areas. So towns and cities
may
be able to create or use their
networks and contacts to become smarter and more capable of adapting to changes,
which given the complexity and changeability of cities is always difficult. This
gives another meaning to the term Smart Cities, which has previously been applied
to new ways of 'doing things', such as smart growth in urban development, or in the
way that new technologies, such as Smart Grids, provide more effective solutions
