Editorial: Evolving definition of knowledge cities

The last few decades witnessed the rise of knowledge economy as the main driver of global and local economic development. During this period, the notion of ‘knowledge city’ has evolved from similar concepts such as ‘knowledge clusters’ (Arbonies & Moso, 2002; Huggins, 2008), ‘ideopolis’ (Garcia, 2004), ‘technopolis’ (Smilor et al., 1988; Scott, 1993), ‘science city’ (Anttiroiko, 2004), ‘learning city’ (Larsen, 1999), ‘intelligent city’ (Komninos, 2000), ‘sustainable city’ (Camagni et al., 1998), and ‘smart city’ (Yigitcanlar, 2016). The earliest reference on knowledge cities dates back to 1990 to a report prepared by the Institute for Spatial Organisation of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO-INRO, 1990). With only about three and half decades of research and practice, knowledge city is still a relatively new concept with no clear definition that is fully agreed on by scholars