ABSTRACT
Recent decades have witnessed the development of a series of coevolutionary processes between knowledge and society and between societal organizations. This has entailed the enhancement of interaction dynamics and their particular competence-base. These processes considerably strengthened the role of knowledge – in its many forms and innovation cycles, with its dramatically decreasing validity times and differentiated institutional arrangements. In this way knowledge has become a key resource, crucial catalyst and reflective medium not only for economic developments, but for socio-spatial processes and therefore sustainable development approaches in general. The up-and down-grading of creative versus industrial cities, intensified interrelations between universities, R&D and economic stakeholders on the regional and global level are vivid examples of this. These co-evolutionary processes are caused by, or at least strongly linked to expertise, creativity and the timely adoption of technological changes; in other words they are due to progress in knowledge, education and research. As these types of knowledge become more and more important for making a living, creating jobs, founding enterprises or sustaining a city’s or a region’s economic position, many authors conclude that knowledge itself is changing its nature or character. As we spend increasing time in utilizing, sharing or creating new knowledge, the value and relevance of certain ‘bits’ of knowledge may change rapidly and significantly.1 The overall effects of this development on society and its sustainable development represent a central topic of current debates on knowledge, sustainability and space (Amin and Cohendet 2004; Meusburger et al., 2008; Meusburger et al., 2009; Matthiesen 2009b and 2009c).
