URBAN COMPETITIVENESS IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: UNIVERSITIES AS NEW PLANNING ANIMATEURS

摘要

The central question this paper addresses is how can governance address problems faced by less successful regions in restructuring to adapt to the knowledge economy, and the role of universities in supporting that adaptation process. This paper explores the role of regional governance in the development of regional innovation systems in old industrial regions, where local actors often have little immediately attractive to outside partners, hindering new development policies. The paper contributes to understanding the particularities of planning for economic development in particular contexts, and the challenges of planning for restructuring for knowledge-based growth in peripheral regions. This paper addresses this question through detailed case study of two regions, the North East of England and Twente, in the Netherlands. Both regions' regional development models were predicated on the attraction of inward investment: in the late 1990s, these regional economies entered a period of structural crisis, which undermined regional support for that development model. In response, universities encouraged the development of new regional developmental models in each region, which involved efforts to build governance consensuses between regional partners and their implementation in workable regional strategies. The study follows the political decisions, the new bodies formed, the interests represented and the resources exchanged in the attempts to develop new forms of governance to support these new developmental models.