Knowledge in Cities

摘要

This study identifies clusters of US and Canadian metropolitan areas with similar knowledge traits. These groups-ranging from 'Making regions', characterised by knowledge about manufacturing, to 'Thinking regions', noted for knowledge about the arts, humanities, IT and commerce-can be used by analysts and policy-makers for the purposes of regional benchmarking or comparing the types of programme and infrastructure available to support closely related economic activities. In addition, these knowledge-based clusters help to explain the types of region that have levels of economic development that exceed, or fall short of, other places with similar amounts of college attainment. Regression results show that 'Engineering', 'Building', 'Enterprising' and 'Making' regions are associated with higher levels of productivity and/or income per capita; while 'Teaching', 'Understanding', 'Working' and 'Comforting' regions have lower levels of economic development.