Promoting urban clusters or the role of cities as global agents.
By integrating the theories seen in previous articles and their confrontation with local reality. In this case, with the 22@ project in Barcelona, a new city of knowledge model has been developed. It is an open model, born out of the dynamics of that project during the 2003-2007 period, thus resulting from the work of a group of professionals who have enthusiastically participated in it and that I had the privilege to lead.
We have devoted some articles to knowledge economy without going too deeply into this concept. In this article and in the following three we will discuss three reference models related to the knowledge-based economy. There are three theories that we will develop in later articles: the triple helix (now quadruple), the theory of the three T and the theory of clusters. The latter will be discussed in two articles: in the 45th, in which we will present the theory and in the 46th in which we will apply it to urban clusters.
The industrial culture has made relevant contributions to humanity such as the sense of time or efficiency in production processes, but it has also implied some deficiencies that have manifested in a historical moment of change such as the current one. One of the most significant ones could be the difficulty of having a systemic focus when it comes to facing complex problems. In industrial societies, besides assuming that value lies in physical objects, we have gotten used to associate each problem to an instrument that solves it (maybe because of this sense of efficiency and time), which is clearly derived from the mechanism characteristic of the industrial revolution. Machines and instruments solve problems. If we have a problem, we solve it with the appropriate instrument. For example, if we want to solve the issue of entrepreneurship, we create an incubator.
On March 25th, the newspaper La Vanguardia published an article titled: Barcelona gains international attractiveness. That same day, the newspaper Ara published another article titled “Barcelona falls 14 positions in two years in the competitiveness raking”. In summary: Barcelona gains attractiveness but loses competitiveness. How can this be explained? Let us analyse the sources of each article.
Barcelona gains international attractiveness
