The terrain of knowledge-based urban development currently is confused by a plethora of competing, implicit and unarticulated assumptions that have resulted from differing interpretations of knowledge and the urban, and the relationship between them. This chapter offers a conceptualization of the role of academic knowledge and, by extension, the university in processes of urban development through the lenses of theory, policy, and practice. A distinction between knowledge-based urban development as process-, product- or acquisition-driven is developed. It then assesses the relative balance of these roles in policy and practice through a case study of Manchester, North West England, and, in so doing, distinguishes between the rhetoric and the realities of attempts to do knowledge-based urban development.
