Introduction: Knowledge-based development of cities and urban innovation precincts

The changing and challenging conditions of the 21st century have been significantly impacting our economy, society and built and natural environments (Carrillo et al., 2014). Today generation of knowledge-mostly in the form of technology and innovation-is seen as a panacea for the adaptation to changes and management of challenges (Yigitcanlar, 2010a). Making space and place that concentrate on knowledge generation, thus, has become a priority for many nations and the concepts like knowledge region, city and precinct coined as places where citizenship undertakes a deliberate and systematic initiative for founding its development on the identification and sustainable balance of its shared value system and bases its ability to create wealth on its capacity to generate and leverage its knowledge capabilities (Yigitcanlar, 2008a). In recent years, the term knowledge precinct-or urban innovation precincts-in its most contemporary interpretation evolved into knowledge community precinct, which is a mixed-use post-modern urban setting-e.g., flexible, decontextualized, enclaved, fragmented-including a critical mass of knowledge enterprises and advanced networked infrastructures, developed with the aim of collecting the benefits of blurring the boundaries of living, shopping, recreation and working facilities of knowledge workers and their families-i.e., knowledge community (Pancholi et al., 2017a). Knowledge community precincts are the building blocks of knowledge cities. In the literature this type of development-a place containing economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, just socio‐spatial order and good governance-is referred as a knowledge-based urban development (Yigitcanlar et al., 2016). The Foreword aims to provide an introduction to this book-Knowledge-Based Urban Development in the Middle East-by elaborating conceptual aspects of knowledge-based urban development and formation of prosperous knowledge community precincts and knowledge cities