The creative city matrix: a framework for urban knowledge ecosystems

Abstract

Knowledge work, creativity and innovation have turned into major urban industries. But how do urban environments activate their potentials and production processes? What are the constituting elements of a ‘creative city’, and how are they interrelated? The article presents a theoretical framework for the post-industrial creative city as a knowledge ecosystem. A new model is presented which categorises the constitutive components of knowledge environments according to parameters of spatial, organisational, and economic value. Presented in the format of a three-dimensional matrix, the model allows a holistic representation of urban knowledge ecosystems and their creative environments. The matrix enables different applications and scales of analysis: a synchronous view of creative urban environments in total, a diachronic view highlighting the evolution of companies or micro-environments, and also a profiling of single local components. Depending on these scaling, the matrix can be used either as analytical tool to investigate properties of individual components within a city’s knowledgescape, or as a strategic device for general knowledge-based city development.