Charles Leadbeater: Education Innovation in the Slums

The Future Cities Forum Website

The Future Cities Forum website provides many interactive features to our visitors and members, including groups, forums, events, blogs, comments, opinion polls, tagging, advanced search, connections to other social networking websites, all with rich content including embedded video, audio, and photos.

Future Cities Forum website is preparing online groups to facilitate Future City games, which will take place in collaboration with the British Council Czech Republic. The games will have an online presence on this website, before, during (with live streaming video), and after the actual events.

Our visitors can create their own new accounts on the Future Cities Forum website, however all accounts created are subject to approval by the website administrator. If you have already successfully created an account and you would also like permission to blog about Future Cities concepts on our website directly from your account, please send an e-mail to admin@futurecitiesforum.com with some information about yourself and the topics you would like to blog about. We encourage active participation by our knowledgeable global members from government, industry, academia, and the general public who have expertise and experience they would like to share.

Developing Knowledge Cities - drivers and approach.

In November 2009, Manchester in the UK won recognition as the world’s most admired knowledge city-region.  The award recognises “… progress by urban communities around the world that are implementing knowledge-based development (KBD) strategies.” Manchester made a deliberate decision to embrace a new focus and approach to economic development through which to drive its further transition from a post-industrial city to one positioned for the challenges and opportunities of the global knowledge-based economy and society of the 21^st century.

Manchester: The Original Modern City

Manchester is a city-region in transformation, with much made today of the re-born city centre, its transport links, sporting and cultural facilities. The city’s architecture tells the tale of its past as the world’s first industrial city, built on mill based mechanised mass production. ‘Cottonopolis’, the birthplace of the industrial revolution grew from a small market town to a major world city in the 19^th Century at the centre of global manufacturing, engineering and cultural and political thought.

The decline in manufacturing from the 1950s onwards led to a severe loss of population, which continued until recent years. By the mid-1980s Manchester was at its nadir like many other cities reliant on traditional manufacture.

Driving Transformation:

In the closing decades of the 20^th century, the acceleration of knowledge creation, application and its widespread and fast communication have signaled a sea-change in the nature of the global economy. In this context, cities by their very nature, become engines of economic development. Marshall’s³ agglomeration advantages in cities can be seen to apply even in a world where geographical location per se may be less important. To be successful, cities need to create an innovative milieu in which continuous interaction can take place.Success is rooted in ‘real’ places: places that attract a disproportionate number of the world’s most creative individuals.

The transformation to this knowledge-based development has consequences for the approach to economic development. Knowledge communities tend to cut across the boundaries of conventional organisations such as business, government agencies and universities,⁴ bringing partnership working to the fore and knowledge exchange and sharing become the agents of change. Manchester recognised this early and established a specialised partnership to address this transformation.

Manchester: Knowledge Capital

In 2003 Manchester created a dynamic partnership of the ten Greater Manchester authorities, four universities, the regional development agency, the strategic health authority, other key public agencies and leading businesses.

The Manchester: Knowledge Capital partnership acts as a catalyst to:

• Increase innovation using research, science and knowledge;
• Benefit the people of Manchester through their connection into a growing economy;
• Ensure that the outcomes are sustainable.

The partnership works by aligning partner actions and by enrolling people and organisations to champion new ideas and new ways of living and working. In particular, the partnership draws on the strengths of the city’s universities. It was the Manchester: Knowledge Capital partnership which led the drive to become the most admired knowledge city-region.

In November 2009, Manchester¹ in the UK won recognition as the world’s most admired knowledge city-region.  The award recognises “… progress by urban communities around the world that are implementing knowledge-based development (KBD) strategies.²” Manchester made a deliberate decision to embrace a new focus and approach to economic development through which to drive its further transition from a post-industrial city to one positioned for the challenges and opportunities of the global knowledge-based economy and society of the 21^st century.

Manchester: The Original Modern City

Manchester is a city-region in transformation, with much made today of the re-born city centre, its transport links, sporting and cultural facilities. The city’s architecture tells the tale of its past as the world’s first industrial city, built on mill based mechanised mass production. ‘Cottonopolis’, the birthplace of the industrial revolution grew from a small market town to a major world city in the 19^th Century at the centre of global manufacturing, engineering and cultural and political thought.

The decline in manufacturing from the 1950s onwards led to a severe loss of population, which continued until recent years. By the mid-1980s Manchester was at its nadir like many other cities reliant on traditional manufacture.

Driving Transformation:

In the closing decades of the 20^th century, the acceleration of knowledge creation, application and its widespread and fast communication have signaled a sea-change in the nature of the global economy. In this context, cities by their very nature, become engines of economic development. Marshall’s³ agglomeration advantages in cities can be seen to apply even in a world where geographical location per se may be less important. To be successful, cities need to create an innovative milieu in which continuous interaction can take place.Success is rooted in ‘real’ places: places that attract a disproportionate number of the world’s most creative individuals.

The transformation to this knowledge-based development has consequences for the approach to economic development. Knowledge communities tend to cut across the boundaries of conventional organisations such as business, government agencies and universities,⁴ bringing partnership working to the fore and knowledge exchange and sharing become the agents of change. Manchester recognised this early and established a specialised partnership to address this transformation.

Manchester: Knowledge Capital

In 2003 Manchester created a dynamic partnership of the ten Greater Manchester authorities, four universities, the regional development agency, the strategic health authority, other key public agencies and leading businesses.

The Manchester: Knowledge Capital partnership acts as a catalyst to:

• Increase innovation using research, science and knowledge;
• Benefit the people of Manchester through their connection into a growing economy;
• Ensure that the outcomes are sustainable.

The partnership works by aligning partner actions and by enrolling people and organisations to champion new ideas and new ways of living and working. In particular, the partnership draws on the strengths of the city’s universities. It was the Manchester: Knowledge Capital partnership which led the drive to become the most admired knowledge city-region.

Dr. Cathy Garner, Chief  Executive Officer, Manchester: Knowledge Capital