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The Strategic Dimensions of Knowledge industries inUrban DevelopmentKlaus R. Kunzmann aa European Spatial Planning at the School of Planning, University of Dortmund , GermanyPublished online: 02 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Klaus R. Kunzmann (2009) The Strategic Dimensions of Knowledge industries in Urban Development,disP - The Planning Review, 45:177, 40-47, DOI: 10.1080/02513625.2009.10557034

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40 disP 177 · 2/2009

Professor Klaus R. Kunzmannheld the Jean Monnet Profes-sorship for European SpatialPlanning at the School of Plan-ning, University of Dortmund,Germany, until 2006. He hasbeen responsible for numerousresearch projects on innovativeurban and regional development,on regional restructuring and onplanning education. His researchinterests focus on urban policyand European spatial planning,regional restructuring and therole of knowledge industries, cre-ativity and the arts for spatial andendogenous local and regionaleconomic development.

The Strategic Dimensions ofKnowledge Industries in Urban DevelopmentKlaus R. Kunzmann

Abstract: After the gradual demise of traditionalindustries in the last quarter of the 20th cen-tury, knowledge industries have become the newhope for cities, policy-makers and city develop-ment agencies. Though there is much rhetoricabout the importance of knowledge industriesand knowledge workers in a city, in practice,there are few strategic visions for the develop-ment of knowledge spaces. Given the complexspatial logic of knowledge industries, and thegreat number of stakeholders in planning andrelated decision-making processes with quitedifferent interests, developing local knowledgeindustries requires special expertise. This paperaddresses six dimensions of developing knowl-edge spaces in a city and explores the multi-ple challenges policy-makers are facing whenmerging city development with knowledge de-velopment.

1. Knowledge Industries: A New StrategicElement in Spatial Development

During the search for new future-oriented tar-gets in urban policy arenas in recent years,knowledge industries have been “discovered” asa new hope for cities and regions. Hundreds ofbooks and articles in scientific journals havebeen written on the subject from various cul-tural and disciplinary perspectives and in manylanguages. Far too many to quote them here,even if we only refer to those that dominate theinternational arena, which would again be un-fair to those who only reach regional audiences,even if their thoughts and contributions couldbe valuable beyond their regional communities.After the gradual demise of traditional in-

dustries in the last quarter of the 20th cen-tury, service industries became the hope forpolicy-makers and city development agencies.It soon turned out, however, that service indus-tries could not compensate for the job lossesthat new technologies had caused. The expecta-tions by mainstream economists had been fartoo optimistic. The simple shift from industrialto service sector jobs did not happen as prom-ised. Particularly in cities and regions whereindustrial production dominated local and re-

gional economies for more than a century, suchas in the Ruhr region in Germany, service in-dustries did not flourish as expected, and localand regional economic policies had little powerto bring change.Today, at the beginning of the 21st century,

new hope has emerged. Knowledge industriesare now seen as the key to post-industrial eco-nomic development in cities and regions. Thishope is being expressed without a clear under-standing of the nature of knowledge industries.There is little knowledge about their locationrequirements and little insight into the com-plex local and regional decision-making envi-ronment in which such industries are embed-ded and where they can function and flourish.Spatial planners at the local level did not havemuch experience in dealing with knowledge in-dustries.In the past, traditional urban planning was

primarily aimed at assigning space for new resi-dential, commercial and industrial areas, as wellas setting aside land for public services, such asschools, hospitals or parks. Knowledge indus-tries did not receive any specific attention insuch planning processes,mainly because knowl-edge industries are a rather heterogeneous en-tity, with unclear location requirements andquite diverse institutional characters. It will benecessary to give knowledge industries a cleardefinition in order to explore their role in ur-ban development. Institutions of higher educa-tion (public, private and corporate universities,colleges and their related research institutions)obviously dominate the knowledge complex ina city.A second category of knowledge industries

are technology and science parks, which areeither linked to universities or independent in-stitutions, and are established and managed bylocal and regional governments or specialist pri-vate or corporate agencies. Third, there are allkinds of public and private research institutionsthat have evolved in and around a city over de-cades. Fourth is a broad knowledge complexthat ranges from think tanks, consultants, in-formation banks and brokers to news and mar-keting agencies, academies, language schoolsand a plethora of training and further educationinstitutions.

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disP 177 · 2/2009 41Knowledge development, knowledge man-agement and knowledge dissemination is thecommon good they are all dealing with. Whiletheir location requirements differ, the peopleworking in such industries have much in com-mon when it comes to housing, leisure, enter-tainment and mobility, albeit their individualpreferences may differ with age, cultural back-ground, status and values, as well as their fieldof activity.As a rule, public and private universities,

technology and science parks, research cen-ters and think tanks, the main componentsof local knowledge industries, have their ownlocal traditions and complex location ratio-nales. This may be one reason why local au-thorities seem to have only limited influenceon the spatial development of knowledge in-dustries.With the gradual transition from tra-ditional land-use planning and zoning to stra-tegic planning, however, knowledge industrieshave become a key element in strategic urbandevelopment.Given the multitude of factors and the mul-

tiplicity of stakeholders and actors involvedin knowledge-related planning and decision-making processes, the spatial development ofknowledge industries is not an easy policy arena.There are six dimensions that have to be consid-ered in strategic planning for knowledge spacesin a city-region:• The specific location requirements of knowl-edge industries• The location preferences of knowledge work-ers• The image dimensions of knowledge indus-tries in a city• The integration of knowledge industries intourban neighborhoods• The policy arenas of knowledge development• The nature of strategic planning processespromoting knowledge industriesThese six dimensions will be explored in the

following sections of this paper.

2. Location Requirementsof Knowledge Industries

Around 150 years ago, the first efforts were un-dertaken to plan the industrial city. A much ap-praised and often quoted concept for such anindustrial city was designed by Tony Garnier, aFrench architect, who lived in Lyon from 1869to 1948. In reality, however, most industrial cit-ies in the world have just developed without anymaster plan or blueprint. They have evolved,

more or less unplanned, following selectedfunctional criteria and reflecting the rationalesand vested interests of large industrial corpora-tions. Nevertheless, up until today, cities aroundthe world include industrial lands in their zon-ing and land-use plans in order to prevent thedevelopment of an uncontrolled mix of housingand industrial areas, with mutually negative im-plications. However, over the years, structuraleconomic change, new information and com-munication technologies, conditions and infra-structure requirements have changed.Modern knowledge industries have quite

different location criteria and different infra-structures than a steelworks or an automotivefactory. What’s important today when planningfor a knowledge complex, is a balanced mix offunctional and political criteria, e.g., a technol-ogy park or a university expansion. With a fewexceptions, placing knowledge industries onGreenfield sites or in urban or semi-urban en-vironments, with little or no endogenous knowl-edge potential, have not been quite successful,at least not from the perspective of the knowl-edge workers. To accommodate knowledge in-dustries in a city, more holistic approaches haveto be undertaken.It requires more than a rational land-use

plan to turn a city or a single urban districtinto an attractive knowledge environment forknowledge complexes and knowledge workers.So far, however, very few cities have elaboratedcomprehensive strategies to prepare the groundfor further development of knowledge indus-tries. Cambridge,Vienna and Zurich are the fewpositive examples. Silicon Valley, the successfulprototype of a knowledge complex is not theoutcome of a master plan and covers several in-dependent agencies, i.e., counties and cities.As a rule, the location decisions for large

knowledge complexes are rather the outcomeof a multitude of political, economic and socio-cultural factors that seldom follow a rationalset of location factors formulated by local ad-ministrations. They are the result of decisionsmade for whatever motivation, sometimes com-pounded by decisions made in another centuryunder another zeitgeist. The major reasons forthe respective decisions have often been theavailability of land at a certain moment, a win-dow of political opportunity, property endow-ments or political directives and programs toreuse derelict land in strategic locations.Whenexploring the spatial pattern of knowledge quar-ters in cities or city-regions, it becomes obviousthat, to date, knowledge-intensive industrieshave not followed a particular spatial logic.

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42 disP 177 · 2/2009 Whether a knowledge complex in an urbandistrict is embedded in a multi-functional envi-ronment or not largely depends on the long his-tory of the location and the success of strategicurban planning and local community concerns.Heidelberg, Germany, is a good example. Therethe university is in the city and surrounded byan urban quarter full of lively shopping and en-tertainment establishments,where students andstaff meet after work or before they enter theuniversity premises, which are scattered aroundthe university area. It is the Heidelberg mythosthat Mark Twain promoted and which has madethe city renowned worldwide.When the univer-sity had to expand and built a second campuson the city fringe, the functional environment ofthe new out-of-town campus could not accom-modate all the places desired for non-functionalactivities. To do that in a newly built environ-ment is extremely difficult in many ways. Theconsequence is that many new campuses are of-ten more much like factories. Once the classesor work time is over, the campus precincts aredeserted. Such examples can be found in manyGerman cities, such as Bochum and Dortmund,Munich, Frankfurt/Main and Kaiserslautern.However, what are the essential location fac-

tors for knowledge industries? At first sight,knowledge industries do not have different lo-cation requirements than most other modernindustries.Accessibility and connectivity are theforemost factors: accessibility by car, train andpublic transport, also by bicycle or even walkingto work. Next is the nature and reputation of theknowledge complex in a city, such as the qualifi-cations of the knowledge workers. The more in-ternational the knowledge production, themoreessential it is that an ambitious knowledge cityis linked to the international air transportationnetwork. As with other businesses, a one-hourlink to the airport, to allow one-day roundtripsfor conferences, fund raising or research co-operation, is almost indispensable. That is whyknowledge industries thrive better inmetropoli-tan city-regions, unless the scientific reputationof a university town outside a metropolitan re-gion is so strong that time costs are negligible.Göttingen and Constance are two such exam-ples in Germany.One particularly important location factor

for knowledge industries is proximity. Thoughinterdisciplinary research and inter-firm coop-eration have their own interpersonal rationales,physical vicinity to other establishments andinstitutions is a much-acclaimed factor oftenraised in decision-making processes. Followingcluster theories and concepts of sticky places,

the spatial concentration of a knowledge in-dustry is certainly a key criterion, though theremay be limits, once certain levels of functionalmonopolies are reached. Once a mixed-use cityquarter is transformed gradually from a resi-dential area to a knowledge quarter by profes-sional university property managers, the quar-ter may lose some of its unique character. Inthe end, this kind of “knowledge gentrification”could even be counterproductive when aimedat the preservation of the specific character ofan urban district. Only such dense knowledgeenvironments make it easier for academic cou-ples to settle down, and the number of suchacademic households is growing in the post-industrial “creative” society, which has becomethe paradigm of the early 21st century.A third factor is the quality of the built envi-

ronment, something which is often raised as acriterion during decision-making processes onthe local development of knowledge industries.Unless enlightened leadership promotes goodarchitecture and urban design, commissionsand political committees rarely putmuch weighton aesthetic issues when it comes to knowledgedevelopment sites, following fashionable main-stream post-modern architecture and designrather than future-oriented functional design.There is another aspect to be considered.

As functional concerns often dominate the de-velopment of knowledge complexes in Europe,the open space in between functional build-ings tends to be neglected. The public spacesin elite universities of the United States, such asthe campuses of Californian universities or thelandscape of Stockley Park at Heathrow airport,show how important such spaces are for the vi-sual appearance of knowledge compounds andthe image of a university or a technology park.The Technology Park in Dortmund is another(low cost) example of how the aesthetic qualityof a technology park can be achieved throughambitious strategic planning.One more aspect is essential: The intellec-

tual environment of a city is an important factorfor the development of knowledge industries. Itmakes considerable difference whether a city isthe home of a significant proportion of highlyeducated citizens, who are politically committed,active in local networks and initiatives of the civilsociety, and who continuously participate in lo-cal discourses. German cities, such as Augsburg,Kaiserslautern, Dortmund or Oldenburg, weredeliberately selected and developed in the 1960sas locations for new universities in order to fa-cilitate access of working class children to nearbyhigher education. However, the intellectual mi-

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disP 177 · 2/2009 43lieus were largely absent, and it took at leasta generation before the new university and theknowledge workers were integrated into city life.Dortmund is another pertinent example. A

former engine of considerable economic devel-opment based on coal and steel, the city sharesa common experience with many other citiesthat established a world class new university.The city lobbied hard to get a local universityfor almost 100 years. Finally, a university wasbuilt in 1964 by public sector technocrats on agreenfield site at the edge of the city as a cam-pus – without a campus life or soul – to accom-modate 25,000 students and 3,000 academicand non-academic jobs. Subsequently, inter-est in the university vanished gradually and thelong-desired academic institution was treatedlike an industrial plant at the fringe of the city.Formore than three decades the university sleptlike Dornröschen, the famous sleeping beauty,a long and undisturbed fairy tale sleep. The re-sult: the university was not an institution that thecity felt proud of. It was just seen as a new pieceof urban infrastructure offering higher educa-tion for the sons and daughters of redundantminers and steelworkers and the new upwardlymobile working class. Only when the last coalmine closed in 1987 and the local steelwork wassold to China in 2001, did the university becomethe new hope for the local political class, thedesperate unions and the economic businessestablishment, an anchor for future economicdevelopment.Not overnight, though within a few years,

the university and the technology park in itsprecincts became the image-profiling factor forurban marketing and the infrastructure policyof the city. However, after almost 40 years ofexistence, it is still too early to say that the cityhas become a university city. Not because tra-ditional academic separatism was never intro-duced in the liberal university, which has beenthe stronghold of social-democratic politics forover half a century, but because the universityand its various spin-offs were too distant to gen-erate new academic lifestyles in the city. Con-sequently, the university is still an island in anaffluent middle class society, where business,leisure and conservative class values dominateover intellectual discourse environments.

3. Location Preferencesof Knowledge Workers

Knowledge industries are the working milieusof knowledge workers. Their requirements and

concerns are as important as the concerns ofpublic and private investors. That is why thetalent, skills and competence of knowledgeworkers and their support staff are essentialin attracting these industries or investmentsto a knowledge location. Thereby, it tends tobe forgotten that, as a rule, knowledge work-ers also have a family life. They have spousesand children, and parents or grandchildren.Hence, like all urbanites, they rely on socialand family-related infrastructures that play anessential role for household decisions, primar-ily on the existence of good kindergartens andexcellent international schools, quality hospi-tals and other community facilities. Moreover,they are concerned about an easily accessibleand affordable cultural and leisure infrastruc-ture.All these factors, including their manifold

implications for family time budgets, influencethe decisions of knowledge workers to stay ina certain city or to move to another one, or toleave a job and accept a new one in another ur-ban district. For the growing number of dou-ble academic households, with or without chil-dren and parents, decision-making is evenmorecomplex. Obviously, all this, in turn, is linked tothe local housing market and the opportunitiesto buy or rent a house or apartment that is nottoo far away from the work place. In short, con-venience and housing affordability play an es-sential role. Housing in Milan, Rome or Paris,for example, is so expensive that universitieshave difficulties attracting highly qualified in-ternational students and knowledge workers.However, since the reunification of the city, Ber-lin seems to be benefiting from its comparablyaffordable housing market.In addition, knowledge workers are certainly

not a homogenous group. Hence, their loca-tion preferences in a city can be very specific,depending on age, cultural background, sta-tus and values, as well as their field of activ-ity. Knowledge workers in creative professions,such as design, art,music or literature, prefer tolive in city quarters near cultural activities in thecore of a city, where they can experience urbanliving and combine working and living space.In contrast, science and technology knowledgeworkers may prefer to live in residential quar-ters where they can relax from stressing brainwork or functional laboratory environments,and where they can benefit from proximity toleisure and sports facilities and unspoiled na-ture at the city fringe.In every city, academics in universities and

research institutions have their preferred city

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44 disP 177 · 2/2009 quarters, where they can find affordable hous-ing and benefit from a mix of good restaurantsand cafés, specialty shops or galleries, and achoice of good schools and international kin-dergartens. Moreover, the community spiritmay be important to them as well as the safetyand image of the quarter. As a rule, knowledgeworkers are not suburbanites, rather they seekmulti-functional, high-density environmentswith easy access to public transport, adjacent totheir work places.

4. The Image Dimensionsof Knowledge Industries in a City

To attract talent to a city from other regions inGermany, or elsewhere, the reputation of goodlocal knowledge industries, particularly the ac-ademic status of the local university, is essen-tial. Unless there is a locally well-embeddedresearch and technology complex of nationalimportance, it is the university that is the mostvisible flagship. However, the image of a uni-versity goes hand-in-hand with the image ofthe city. In a prominent American universityranking publication, all the universities in Pariswere ranked as a group to be the most excellentuniversities outside the US. This does certainlynot reflect the quality of all the universities inParis (though at least the Grandes Ecoles areamong the best institutions of higher educa-tion in France). It rather points to the immenseattractiveness of Paris for American studentsand fellows as place to be, to study or to spenda sabbatical.In the statistics of the Humboldt Foundation

in Germany, Berlin and Munich are listed as theleading targets of international scholars. In con-trast, the universities inDuisburg,Osnabrück orChemnitz are not really targets for internation-ally mobile knowledge workers, a fact that maynot be linked to the quality of the university, butrather more the image of the city as a touristspot. In individual decision-making processes,the quality of the work place and the role in ca-reer formation processes are weighed againstthe quality-of-life considerations, which are of-tenmore important criteria for familymembers.Though some of the reputed academic institu-tions may disappoint expectations upon a closerlook, it is still the external image that adds to thevalue of an academic CV.In addition to this rather more impression-

ist evidence, a complex bundle of location cri-teria linked to the knowledge environmentalso plays a critical role, for example, aca-

demic traditions, profiles of local institutionsof tertiary education, academic reputation, in-ternational connectivity, image and innovative-ness of research institutions, local knowledgemilieu and accessibility to the local knowledgeinfrastructure, such as libraries or specializedlaboratories. These factors cannot be plannedand implemented within a short time, not evenwithin a generation. Either these are alreadyan essential feature of a knowledge locationor they require a holistic understanding andapproach, as well as comprehensive strategicpolicies and investments, initiated and pro-moted by far-sighted, visionary, creative andcommunicative political and professional lo-cal leadership.As a rule, knowledge industries find themost

appropriate production conditions inmetropol-itan regions, although the location pattern ofknowledge-intensive industries may vary withinthemetropolitan region,which usually stretchesout more than 100 kilometers to the hinterland.Depending on the long-established urban sys-tem within the metropolitan region, medium-size towns adjacent to themetropolitan core canaccommodate concentrations of knowledge-in-tensive industries, for example, Heidelberg andDarmstadt in the Greater Frankfurt region andOxford and Cambridge in the Londonmetropo-lis. In other metropolitan regions, such as Paris,a polycentric system of decentralized and newlyestablished suburban knowledge hubs on theurban fringe has evolved over the last three tofour decades. Similar development patterns canalso be observed in the Kansai region in Japan,in the Seoul metropolitan region and in Taiwan.

5. The Integration of KnowledgeIndustries into Urban Neighborhoods

In contrast to traditional industries, knowledgecomplexes are much more interwoven into thefabric of the urban districts where they are lo-cated. Such interrelationships are usually ne-glected when planning for campus extensionsor new technology parks, or when taking strate-gic location decisions for such complexes. Thishappens in contrast to the experience of allthe persons involved in such decision-makingprocesses. They know how important the hous-ing market is for knowledge workers, they arefamiliar with their mobility patterns, and theyknow that the entertainment and sports dimen-sions should not be underrated. These and otherhousehold-related requirements of knowledgeworkers call for more holistic and long-term

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disP 177 · 2/2009 45strategic approaches to spatial development.Knowledge complexes in a city are not ivorytowers in the urban jungle, nor communitiesgated against visitors and burglars. They arecatalytic locations for urban life. They are exper-imental life spaces of the next urban generation,laboratories for testing new forms of work-lei-sure-home lifestyles. Characterized by a highlymobile population that often experiences a lim-ited time span of their biography in such knowl-edge environments, it is the memory of suchspaces that characterizes their spirit. Similar torailway stations, such knowledge complexes arestations in a city for a limited time. This clearlyrequires a different approach to strategic urbandevelopment.Knowledge complexes,mostly banned for fi-

nancial reasons from greenfield sites on the ur-ban edge, are like factories, where the workersarrive in themorning, and then return home af-ter working hours, leaving the knowledge com-plex to security guards, rabbits, lonely hikers,and dog-walkers. The students in the city ofPotsdam are complaining that the new uni-versity facilities, which are scattered aroundthe city for political and financial reasons, arehardly integrated into the city. Consequently,students and university-related life spaces arenot a visible feature of city life and the cityhardly benefits from the presence of the knowl-edge workers. Many of them leave the city af-ter classes or work and return to cheaper resi-dences in Berlin, or to more exciting urbanenvironments. In Zurich, residents and cityplanners were alarmed that inner city residen-tial areas were gradually being “knowledge-gentrified” by the strategic property develop-ment policies of its two universities (ETH andUniversity of Zurich), which were buying up oneproperty after the other to meet the seeminglyinsatiable need of university departments andrelated research centers for spaces to think, ex-periment and write.The City of Bochum, together with the State

Ministry of Science and Technology, plannedsuch a complex in a comprehensive way, in-cluding many elements of social engineering inits spatial strategy. Both invested considerablepublic funds in the ambitious project. In theend, however, all these efforts could not preventthe knowledge complex in the southern part ofthe city from becoming a kind of extraterrito-rial academic island. In order to overcome theproblems of campus isolation, the Swiss FederalInstitute of Technology (ETH) Zurich is plan-ning to add housing and household-related ser-vices to the existing greenfield campus, but the

chances that such extensions will change thecharacter of the isolated knowledge complexvery much are limited.There is no single, easy solution to the lo-

cation challenges of knowledge complexes ina city. Planning an integrated knowledge com-plex, along with residences and leisure envi-ronments that offer a rich variety of housingfor students, senior professors, young scientistswith families and visiting scholars from abroadwould not really work. And, providing spacefor start-ups and university-related services andbusinesses on a greenfield site is then an ad-ditional, hardly manageable challenge. In theend, it remains a difficult task to keep the bal-ance between isolation and integration, betweenmono-functional city quarters and the loss ofknowledge milieus.A city aiming to become a credible and con-

vincing knowledge city has to explore how newmulti-functional knowledge functions can bestbe integrated into the existing city fabric andhow existing knowledge spaces can be openedto the community. In general, there are five ar-eas of action to be investigated:•Highly accessible city quarters could be iden-tified, whether it is feasible to integrate newknowledge activities.• Traditional knowledge spaces in the inner cityhave to bemodernized by adding non-academicuses. They have to be opened up and better in-tegrated with adjacent urban quarters. Compli-mentary commercial functions have to be care-fully selected.• Knowledge spaces at the urban fringe,whetherthey are out-of-town university campuses ortechnology parks, have to be enriched by multi-functional activities, including residences andsports and leisure facilities. Accessibility bypublic transport has to be optimized.• Brownfields in the city have to be scrutinizedas to whether they are suitable for the develop-ment of new knowledge spaces, whether theseare campus extensions or new science parks.Long-term strategies to develop such areas un-der public-private partnerships have to be ini-tiated.• Suitable areas for start-ups have to be identi-fied near existing knowledge spaces, wherebyinterim and temporary uses of existing struc-tures should be preferred over new develop-ments.Organizing processes to address these chal-

lenges is in itself a challenging task. It requiresmuch political support, good moderators, andperseverance.

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46 disP 177 · 2/2009 6. The Policy Arenas of Knowledge Spaces

In the beginning of the 21st century, local uni-versity and knowledge complexes have becomean essential element of city image campaignsand marketing. Nevertheless, the functional in-terconnection between city development andthe knowledge community remains weak. Uni-versities and cities are quite different policyarenas. Both arenas have their traditions andtheir own rationale when it comes to makinglocation decisions. The rationale of guiding ur-ban development and the rationale of manag-ing a university are significantly different. Thisis particularly true in a policy environment, likeGermany’s, where universities are public insti-tutions, largely dependant on the budget of astate government and, as a rule, regulated bystate legislation on issues from examinationrules to constitutional regulation to labor laws.Moreover, any physical extensions are designedand controlled by a powerful state-owned andstate-controlled property development institu-tion, which reports directly to the Minister ofFinance of the state.In the past, at least in Germany, city politics,

as a rule, did not pay attention to campus plan-ning, while universities were not “authorized”and did not have the qualified manpower todevelop visionary campus development strate-gies. Local politicians have difficulties in iden-tifying partners at the universities with whomthey should communicate. The university, onthe other side, does not have easy access to thelocal politicians and urban development admin-istrators, and have no interest in developingsuch relationships and networks. Moreover, theuniversity is only one actor of a local knowledgecomplex. Others are the manifold public orga-nizations and semi-public and private researchinstitutes, which are typically located in a city.They do not form one voice and have no man-power to deal with location challenges.University management is usually overbur-

dened with higher education and research re-lated policies, with university assessment andfund raising, and it is understaffed when itcomes to strategic campus development andprofessional imaginative propertymanagement.Decisions on campus extensions are made onan ad-hoc basis by academic standing commit-tees, by ad-hoc committees, and by coalitionsof vested academic interests. Both the ambi-tion and commitment of the academic knowl-edge community for dealing with campus devel-opment issues are limited. Individuals are lessrooted locally, and do not form part of the local

Lions, Rotary or political party establishments.Due to themobility rationale of academia, thereis not much local embeddedness among theknowledge community, which would foster city-university relationships and cooperation. Expe-riencing this distance from the local community,local governments and individual opinion-lead-ers are thus not really encouraged to strengthenthe bridges between the two communities andprepare the ground for more intensive campusdevelopment visions. Often these are two differ-ent worlds, which more than once have madeknowledge complexes into gated islands in thearchipelago of a city-region.Bridging these two worlds will require con-

siderable effort and learning processes amongthe various actors involved and the willingnessof these actors to learn and accept other view-points, understand the needs of others, alterattitudes and rethink strategies. It seems, how-ever, that the divide has finally become an issuein city politics.Cities like Berlin andHeidelberg,and the city-region of the Ruhr have started toexplore how they could address the issue, anddevelop appropriate strategies for better spatialintegration and development.

7. The Nature of Strategic PlanningProcesses Promoting KnowledgeIndustries

Quite diverse stakeholders are involved in stra-tegic spatial planning processes in a city. Theinstitutional responsibilities are well defined.In German cities, strategic spatial planning is,as a rule, a responsibility of the city planningdepartment. Occasionally, and this has oftenshortened decision-making processes, the re-sponsibility is given to the office of the mayor,where a small group of highly qualified andcommitted planners, moderators and commu-nicators, manages the strategic developmentprocesses. However, when it comes to strategicplanning for knowledge environments, the spe-cial expertise needed is often not available in acity government. For a long time, and in con-trast to housing, shopping or airport develop-ment, this field has not been considered to beessential for the city.Hence, a need for expertisein developing a knowledge city has never beena reason to establish the respective positionswithin the administration, nor to recruit quali-fied staff to do the job. Recently, a few cities havestarted to recruit specialists for university – cityrelationships in strategic planning processes.However, another piece of information is es-

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disP 177 · 2/2009 47sential here: local governments are acting in anenvironment where higher tiers of governmenthave considerable influence and power when itcomes to knowledge development, particularlywhen issues of financing knowledge facilitiesand industries are at stake or when urban de-velopment projects rely on funding from upperlevels, including the European Union.The local knowledge complex is a multifac-

eted entity of many stakeholders with quite dif-ferent interests and values. The local university,or the various local institutions of higher edu-cation are easily identifiable voices of the localknowledge complex, the multitude of public,semi-public or private knowledge establish-ments, in turn, are difficult to address. The lo-cal chamber of commerce could not act as alegitimate speaker, nor are there professionalassociations that could represent the knowledgecommunity.Moreover, as is the case inGermany,many local institutions depend upon institutionsat the state or federal level, where a complex setof committees and advisory boards develop theirown logic, beyond the local rationales.Usually, there is not one representative who

is delegated to speak for the whole complex,nor any established standing committee of thevarious institutions that could be addressed asa counterpart to the city. Given the fact that lo-cally embedded universities, as spearheads oflocal knowledge-industries and the local gov-ernment, are quite different institutional enti-ties and have different agendas, it is necessarythat the means of maintaining how continuouscommunication can be established between thetwo main actors has to be explored locally. Eachcity has to develop their own rules of the game.Experience shows that this would require

personalities at both sides who organize com-munication processes beyond the daily businessroutines as a full time job. Together with quali-fied support staff, they are responsible for thecontinuous monitoring, benchmarking and re-view of the mutual implications of institutionalpolicies on the respective partner. And, theyhave to address two things: a clearmission state-ment, how to improve the knowledge dimensionof a city, and, a consistent strategy on how toimplement and program the vision.A recent competition of the Stifterverband

der Deutschen Wirtschaft has given cities,which wished to benefit from the prize or evenmore so of the image of the prize, the stimulusto develop such a vision. Most cities presenteda well-written document that gave reasons whytheir city is a knowledge city and documentedthe kind of activities the city has planned for the

Year of Science, along with a statement of theirlong-term vision and related strategies on howto integrate knowledge as an overriding themeinto city development policies. Often though,when the competition was over,much of the ini-tial impetus and commitment eroded, and citiesreturned to day-to-day political routines.

8. Outlook

Together with health and food, knowledge willbe a cornerstone of future strategic local andregional development in European cities. Thesethree fields, with all their forward and backwardlinks and regional economic circuits, providemost of sustainable local employment in anyurban territory. They are and continue to bethe local territorial capital of the city and theystrengthen local identification, profiles and em-beddedness. Such complexes will have to bethe main concern of local economic politicsand they will strongly influence local agendasto maintain the quality of life of citizens.Whilehealth and food mainly serve local communi-ties, the knowledge complex is the externallyvisible flagship. That is whymuchmore politicalattention has to be given to the crucial role thatknowledge industries will play in urban devel-opment. In the past, the spatial dimensions ofknowledge industries have oftenbeenneglected.The policy passion for attractive landmarks, re-markable architecture and international publicevents in cities has shown that the quality of ur-ban space plays a critical role in continuouslyattracting talent, tourists, industries and invest-ments. For these reasons, knowledge-based ur-ban development is a key planning approachfor attracting and retaining knowledge workersand knowledge-intensive industries and also forthe nurturing of knowledge cities. Knowledge-based urban development provides an impor-tant collaborative development framework forall parties (public, private, academic, and com-munity) committed to the development of fu-ture strategic (and knowledge-intensive) urbanpolicies aimed at maintaining the quality of theEuropean city.

AcknowledgementsThe author is very grateful for the comments madeby two anonymous referees, who pointed out es-sential shortcomings in a previous version of thepaper.

Prof. Dr. Klaus R. KunzmannLindenstrasse 42D-14467 Potsdamklaus.kunzmann@udo.edu.

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