The way forward? Theorizing knowledge-based development?

This volume introduces an important new social science - KBD, the knowledge-based development of cities and societies. It arises at the convergence of an urban planning tradition that, as Edvinsson reveals in our Foreword, goes back many centuries, with the economists' concern with knowledge as the factor of production whose predominance characterizes the contemporary world. We live, we are told, in the Knowledge Age, so it is not strange that we are looking for knowledge-based theories to illuminate our situation and guide our actions. History plays its own tricks on us, of course, for this talk of knowledge seems to imply everything previous took place under conditions of ignorance. This is not the point; the term knowledge is simply a label for the change from the 19th century socio-economy dominated by materials, commodities, physical work and tangible products to that of our time, with its predominantly mental and symbolic work, and slippery sense of things valued like Facebook or medical tests. Older economies and societies depended on knowledge and skills too, so the deeper point is to see how the balance of tangibles and intangibles has changed and, with that, the qualitative nature of the human condition.