ABSTRACT
Although there are differences in political economy between universities and cities, they share a common aspiration: that is, to become global and participate in the generation of competitive advantage. The same dynamics that work to define and shape knowledge city politics are also manifest in centres of knowledge production, especially the university. Universities are strategic partners enrolled in the game of scales. The knowledge economy challenges the idea that universities are distinctive because of their distance from the economy; instead, they are centred in its potential and must participate in its reproduction as a condition of survival. At an organisational and cultural level, we see a movement from a public service to a performance and audit-based ethos in which success can be measured by sets of indicators and ideas of urban development. This chapter argues that a ‘missing middle’ emerges between expectations, organisational structures and cultures, with consequences for the recognition and production of different forms of knowledge.
