Spatial Distribution of ICT in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Region

Information and communication technologies, and the Internet as one of their most prominent uses, are adopted on a massive scale around the globe. Although we do not know much about their pattern and impact, these technologies exert substantial influence on our daily lives and environments. The main objective of this chapter is to empirically explore the spatial distribution of ICT infrastructure and activities and local planning responses to ICT in the Washington, DC metropolitan region. The existence of an ICT cluster suggests the spatial unevenness of ICT infrastructure and activities in the study region, and reveals the tendency of ICT to concentrate within certain urban areas. The findings will provide valuable insights for planners to capture the opportunities offered by ICT and manage the impact of ICT -related developments.

Social Networking and Knowledge Transfer in Collaborative Product Development

Software product development requires connecting of specialized information and know-how. Therefore, planning and production are widely done in networked projects. This chapter studies inter-firm collaboration to explore the role of face-to-face meetings and information and communication technology in knowledge transfer in product development by using case studies of software companies in Oulu, Finland. Clusters are important in forming trust and mutual understanding. Thus, a compact city region and effective social networks are beneficial for inter-firm collaboration. However, information and communication technology is very valuable for routine communication and documentation, but also in distance collaboration. Geographical distance affects inter-firm collaboration in terms of practical arrangements, such as working hours, yet cultural differences bring additional challenges. This chapter considers and scrutinizes social networking in collaborative product development, and the role of clusters and information and communication technology in such development, as among the key success factors.

Municipal ICT Policy Goals and Technology Choices

This study reviews the literature of the available research to develop a policy framework for understanding the key decisions facing municipal information and communication technology policymakers. This chapter provides a clear understanding of the interdependent choices regarding municipal ICT goals, initiatives, and technology choices. With each decision, a municipality risks choosing a sub-optimal goal or technology for its particular environment, resulting in a reduction or plateau in ICT adoption. For example, by creating a public sector operator in a highly competitive retail market, a municipal government may in fact dampen private sector investment and result in a net negative for the area’s ICT penetration rate. In addition, these poor choices cannot be easily rectified. With the large sunk costs of ICT deployments, future options are constrained by past choices. Therefore, it is vital that policymakers understand their range of options for ICT goals, initiatives, and technologies before beginning the process of implementing their policies.

Urbanization, Knowledge and Competitiveness in Developing Economies

The production and use of knowledge are intended to be benefiting from the economies of scale provided by urban agglomerations that often refer to universities, research centers, and businesses. The linkage between cities and knowledge is consequently considered to be the major engine for the promotion of growth and development in every economy, starting with its urban segments. The analysis conducted in this chapter has shown the existence of possibilities for a better promotion of urban livelihoods through the acceleration of adoption rates in each knowledge economy component, with special emphasis on developing economies. Furthermore, the processes of production, diffusion, and use of knowledge for urban development have to be monitored by urban executives and all city stakeholders. These are continuously invited to help accelerate the processes of knowledge production, use, and diffusion as they are directly concerned with the welfare of current and future urban populations. This emphasizes the issue of the governance of urban knowledge. These overall recommendations are based on the relationships between urbanization, knowledge, and competitiveness measures. Other drivers that are also important and related to tacit knowledge and other human abilities are not directly considered in this study. Implementation, monitoring, and evaluation have appeared to be key elements to ensure immediate and long-term benefits to both cities and their regions.

Spatial Transformations in Istanbul CBD

Now with the intensive use of information and communication technologies, many cities around the world are competing to become a global city. Istanbul is enumerated within the first 50 cities in the globalization process, other than the triad of New York, London, and Tokyo. This chapter explores urban space transformation of Maslak, the contemporary central business district of Istanbul, with respect to information and communication technologies, by using deconcentration and economic restructuring approaches of urban theory. Compared to other global cities, Istanbul has distinctive characteristics, since it has been passing through a unique transformation process. More specifically, its economic, political, and social characteristics distinguish Istanbul from other cities within the same category (Gamma) of world cities. This study has revealed that transformations in Istanbul were not primarily driven by information and communication technologies. In contrast information and communication technology’s role in the transformation of the Istanbul central business district is only a contributing factor.

Challenges to Digital Governance

This chapter discusses a local effort to generate a citizen-centered knowledge society. The empirical evidence is from the city of Tampere, Finland. Particular interest of the chapter is focused on the fiveyear information society initiative “eTampere,” which was implemented between 2001 and 2005. The program was targeted to combine technology-, business-, and citizen-driven features of informational city development. The empirical evidences include two citizen surveys and the final evaluation, including results of a stakeholder survey. Obtained results suggest that technological development and enhancement of local governance requires recognition of the social conditions underlying the access, skill, and motivation of citizens to beneficially use the provided digital services. These issues are related to the whole of society whose scope of change is much longer than it is for that of technological development. The chapter argues that successful and purposeful development of digital governance is thus a question of integrating technology into a social structure.

(Re)thinking Urban Planning

Planners and planning departments are increasingly losing their importance within contemporary public administration, as exaggerated reliance on technical and design practices continue to fragment the public treatment of space. Koolhaas and Mau (1995) argue that planners and, in fact, urbanism are outdated, and that both failed to keep pace with the rapid modernization of urban space. Many studies show that ‘proactive’ planning initiatives related to information and communication technologies tend to appeal to the ill-grounded utopianism of technological deterministic approaches. This chapter aims to explain what has been changing in the world of spatial and urban studies as a response to new patterns of communication supported by information and communication technologies, as well as to shed some light on the challenges posed to planning and governance. This will be done together with the observation of real case scenarios in medium and well-developed cities in Brazil.

Intellectual Assets and Knowledge Vitality in Urban Regions

Recent studies have shown that universities and similar public sector research institutions differ in their relationships with user organizations both in relation to the type of new knowledge transferred and to the mechanisms of such transfer. Both the relationships and knowledge transfer are critically affected by the level of sophistication of the receiving companies. The creation of ‘urban knowledge’ has many dimensions, which means that spatial proximity to the sources of new knowledge does not automatically encourage firms to take advantage of what is on offer. Thus, the knowledge generated by universities has a critical function on the availability of local and international knowledge to the city and region where it is located, but much needs to be done for this knowledge to become relevant and absorbed in its geographical area. To show these dual processes, this chapter analyzes the region of Western Sydney at two levels: the knowledge demanded and the knowledge produced and transferred. Ultimately, the answer to the question of how universities can best contribute to the intellectual vitality of the place where they are located and which knowledge is relevant.

Understanding the Supply Side

Marmara region’s local governments in Turkey are setting the benchmark for the country in the implementation of spatial information systems and e-governance. The chapter aims to shed light on organizational realities of recent practices of information systems and technologies based on the evidences from selected local government organizations in the Marmara region. This chapter scrutinizes these practices and discusses the pivotal relationship between the information and communication technologies and its local organizational context within the region. The chapter also exemplifies challenges and opportunities of the Marmara as an emerging information and communication technology-supported region by illustrating the specific information and communication technology supply instruments. The chapter reveals that the particular success in supply side does not guarantee the sustainable information and communication technology implementation. There are other concerns including demand side that are strongly linked to a realistic understanding of end user demand, the institutional capacity of respected organizations, public-private partnership, and the joined-up policy efforts at both national and local levels.

Online Participatory Decision Support Tools for Knowledge-Based Urban Development

Particularly in the last decade, there have been a number of efforts to develop and then integrate planning support systems into existing geographic information systems. This integration brought a new technology called WebGIS, which enables geographic information systems functionalities through the Internet for decision support. No doubt there is a growing demand as more and more individuals want to use online government services to express their views and most importantly to take part in decisionmaking processes interactively. At this point, WebGIS offers a challenging opportunity for online participatory planning since the public could easily access alternative plans and the existing information in geographic information systems databases. This technology enables individuals to be able to take part in plan-making processes and contribute. This chapter explores how these new technological advances could achieve truly transparent plan-making process based on online participatory planning support tools that knowledge-based urban development could benefit from.