Knowledge Towns™, Knowledge Neighborhoods™ and Other Definitions
The essence of a Knowledge Town™ strategy is town and gown collaboration in developing highly productive and sustainable neighborhoods, often by evolving previously low-productivity campuses or other underutilized land. Knowledge Town™ policies combine three key elements: place-making, technology-induced growth, and talent strategies. Place-making is about housing abundance, but also about using place to drive improved health, productivity, social inclusion, and knowledge advancement. Technology-induced growth means accessing the benefits of technical advances to improve quality of life. Talent strategies are oriented around attracting, retaining, and growing talent through place-making and technology, while simultaneously unleashing the productivity required to fund and sustain place-making and technology investment. Knowledge Town™ strategies can evolve slowly, somewhat by accident, or can be induced by purpose-driven actions and investments. Typically, they are initiated by a key player with a stake in the community. A high density variant is a Vertical Knowledge Neighborhood™, in which a high density area such as a center-city financial district evolves from a low-diversity model to a higher diversity, mixed-use model.
A Knowledge Neighborhood™ is a sub-category within a Knowledge Town™. A Knowledge Neighborhood™ is characterized by the following elements. It is medium-density, typically 10 homes per acre or more, with a mix of home uses, including single-family, duplex, quadplex, and apartment buildings typically up to 8-10 stories. It is mixed-use, including hotels, local stores, Neighborhood Fabs™, higher-ed and other knowledge enterprises. Neighborhood Fab™ is as a format for making or manufacturing that is consistent with a family neighborhood, critically around minimizing pollution and negative externalities. Examples can be Maker Spaces, Laboratories, or Light Assembly. They should be designed to minimize noise, particulate emission, and risks to the community, while maximizing the potential for walkable access to working and learning opportunities associated with manufacturing.
Knowledge Neighborhoods™ prime activity (walking and biking), access to nature, and socialization. They are optimized around children, families, the elderly and the disabled, thus serving all. They aim to achieve maximum synergies in care-giving, in part by minimizing friction to access and deliver care. The success of a Knowledge Neighborhood™ is measured by a broad range of metrics, including productivity per capita and per acre, tax-contribution per capita and per acre, rate of innovation, healthy life expectancy, activity level, inward migration level, skill acquisition level, degree of life satisfaction and purpose. These are compared relative to prior levels and to the surrounding community.
Each Knowledge Neighborhood™ is typically connected into a higher-level construct. We can think of Knowledge Clusters™ and Knowledge Corridors™ as two examples. A Knowledge Cluster™ is a network of Knowledge Neighborhoods™ that extends across several communities. A Knowledge Corridor™ is a variant of a Knowledge Cluster™ that is linked by a high-transit network such as a highway, a train system, or a body of water such as a river, lake or ocean. Both are typically geographically contiguous but could include non-contiguous elements.
Knowledge Neighborhoods™ typically evolve from prior less productive formats, such as that of a traditional college campus. College campuses are often highly strategic assets, well located and of sufficient size to materially impact their surrounding city. The historical higher-ed model, however, limits the economic viability of the college campus, both for the the institution and in terms of their contribution to the host town or city. Evolving a traditional college campus into a Knowledge Neighbourhood™ involves intensifying and diversifying the uses, increasing the tax contribution and productivity per acre, expanding housing and employment options to a broader diversify of ages and skills, while retaining the academic and knowledge-economy ethos.
