Risk, Resilience and the 'Knowledge City'

Abstract

The ‘knowledge city’ (‘KC’) enriches regional development with institutional and environmental domains. Its competitors in the new-economy regeneration discourse include the ‘creative’, ‘green’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘smart’ cities. All suggest planning foresight but contention surrounds their philosophical underpinnings and specific recipes are disputed. Certainly, new-economy discourse condemns disconnected 'McMansions’ and advocates for integrated, precinct-orientated and community-focused property development. But, extra outlays increase costs and only make financial sense if KC projects are de-risked. Hence the need to look for some indication that KCs do actually inoculate against recession induced market risk. Here we investigate the KC resilience claim, noting conceptual ambiguity, statistical issues and spatial concerns. Our preliminary findings suggest that knowledge-city score, however imperfect, does confer some post-GFC economic resilience but no more than a burgeoning middle class.