Knowledge intensive regeneration for knowledge societiesand economies

Regeneration is deemed as the enabler to transform for societies from industrial age to knowledge. Knowledge intensive regeneration is one of the latest urban regeneration models, called “Ideopolises”, to make progress and achieve the transformation towards knowledge societies and economies. Unleashing the concealed or internal economic potential of cities and districts is a challenging one in urban regeneration and can be possible by improving the knowledge base, via encouraging enterprising and partnerships between universities and industries, and creating cluster businesses in urban regeneration programmes, in which sustainable communities vision has been very topical in UK’s regeneration experience in the last and current decades. Therefore, it is also necessary to articulate if there is any overlap between ideopolises and sustainable communities approaches. Accordingly, knowledge intensive regeneration approach can be validated or discounted towards its contribution to sustainable communities vision. Thus, paper aims i) to review the knowledge intensive regeneration context with examples around the world, ii) elaborates on the Mediacity case study project in Salford Quays and iii) critically compare the Mediacity project with the Egan wheel to explore its contribution to sustainable communities vision. Analysis from the research shows that the knowledge intensive regeneration can help significantly in achieving sustainable development and through its philosophy of strategic visioning rather than rigid master planning, it can enable continuous iterative development to address economic, physical, environment and social challenges in regeneration.