Analysis of a city-region from the knowledge perspective: Tampere, Finland

Abstract

Purpose

- The paper aims to evaluate the knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) dynamics of a rapidly emerging knowledge city-region, Tampere region, Finland.

Design/methodology/approach

- The paper empirically investigates Tampere region's development achievements and progress from the knowledge perspective.

Findings

- The research, through qualitative and quantitative analyses, reveals the regional development strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Tampere region.

Originality/value

- The paper provides useful suggestions based on the lessons learned from the Tampere case investigation that could shed light on the KBUD journey of city-regions.

Introduction

Throughout the history, knowledge has always been a vital resource for creating and sustaining a strong economy and society (Van Doren, 1992). In the era of knowledge economy, knowledge is accorded a pivotal role, not only in economic and societal growth (Raspe and Oort, 2006) but also in institutional and environmental development (Yigitcanlar and Dur, 2013). City-regions in the course of history served the role of centers of knowledge, and today they continue serving as critical places for knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) (Storper, 1995; Yigitcanlar, 2014a). KBUD is a development paradigm that transforms knowledge resources into local development and provides a basis for bringing economic prosperity, a just socio-spatial order, environmental sustainability and good governance to city-regions (Yigitcanlar et al. , 2008a). KBUD suggests the economic future of city-regions increasingly depends on the capacity to attract, generate, retain and foster creativity, knowledge and innovation (Zhao, 2010). KBUD is widely accepted as an essential way to provide a basis for sustainable urban development in city-regions (Knight, 2008). There is no generic KBUD recipe, as the key characteristics and circumstances of every city-region are different from the next. This brings the importance of investigating unique characteristics, considering identity differences of city-regions, and then formulating tailored KBUD strategies (Yigitcanlar et al. , 2008b).

Keeping the uniqueness of every locality in mind, this paper focuses on KBUD opportunities and challenges of the second-largest Finnish city-region, which is a rapidly growing prosperous region that during the past decades has been transformed from an industrial to a highly knowledge- and supporting services-concentrated region. Tampere region represents a typical Nordic country city-region with high-quality education and skill development systems, high-intensity of knowledge generation activities and established welfare societies. Regional development in the region has been guided and supported with consecutive innovation programs on creative industries, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and tertiary education (Lonnqvist et al. , 2014). Despite the region's success so far, there is a need to pursue development forward to be prepared for the challenges ahead (Fotel and Hanssen, 2009). Regional planning vision at Tampere has so far relied on traditional regional development and innovation policy thinking. Clearly, it has been quite successful so far. However, it seems that in the present highly competitive knowledge-based environment, the fresh KBUD approach provides an insight on how to sustain the region's rather rapid growth and development path. This paper puts Tampere under the microscope from the knowledge perspective with an aim to evaluate the regional KBUD dynamics. It reports the findings of the research that collects quantitative information by using a KBUD assessment framework as an input to a qualitative analysis conducted with participation of key actors of the region to generate insightful lessons not only for the regional key stakeholders of Tampere to formulate new strategies and development paths but also for others aspiring a KBUD.

Literature review

KBUD of city-regions

Knowledge, in both tacit and explicit forms, has always been in the heart of economic and societal development (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). Carrillo (2002) promoted a new perspective to economic and social development by emphasizing on the concept of knowledge-based development (KBD), defining it as a deliberate and systematic attempt by a community to build its future value upon the balance of its own distinctive capital system. Ovalle et al. (2004) referred to KBD as a process of using knowledge management systems and approaches in developing economies and societies that are able to capture new opportunities and compete successfully in a sustainable and global knowledge economy. This new concept quickly gained popularity among the scholars with expertise in knowledge management, economy and society areas (Carrillo and Batra, 2012).

Scholars with urban and regional planning, urban development, economic geography and regional science backgrounds started to highlight the strong connections between the places, where knowledge is generated, exchanged and marketed, and the concept of KBD (Kunzmann, 2008). KBD is initially considered and applied for the development of industry and business clusters (Porter, 2000). May and Perry (2011) argued, today cities and regions are positioned as the most critical places of knowledge generation, where the challenges of KBD are being faced.This perspective was a clear indication of the necessity of embedding knowledge-based perspective into urban planning, development and management processes in a wider-scale that is a primary aspect of success in the era of global knowledge economy (Yigitcanlar, 2014b). This connection gave birth to the KBUD concept. In other words, KBUD has emerged as a criticism to KBD having a limited perspective to the spatial dimensions of urban development (Carrillo et al. , 2014).

Knight (1995) argued that current urban development has been viewed primarily from the perspective of city planning with a focus on the physical form. Very little consideration has been given on the knowledge resources or to the cultures that produce knowledge. In the neo-classical economy era emphasis was made on attracting tangible forms of wealth, while knowledge as an intangible asset was often ignored. With the advent of the global knowledge economy and society, now, there is a greater attention that needs to be given to the city structures and making sure that knowledge as an important input to local development. Knight coined the term KBUD as the transformation of knowledge resources into local development that could provide a basis for sustainable urban development.

Yigitcanlar (2011) redefined KBUD as the new development paradigm of the knowledge economy era that aims to bring economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, a just socio-spatial order and good governance to cities; hence, produces a city-region purposefully designed to encourage the production and circulation of knowledge, a knowledge city-region. This brought a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective and understanding on the KBUD of city-regions with particular emphasis on the balanced systems approach for knowledge-based economic, socio-cultural, spatial and institutional development domains. KBUD aims to bring together knowledge economy, society, environment and government under the same roof with its approach from the systems theory standpoint (Bertalanffy, 1969). Figure 1 illustrates the KBUD conceptual framework.

Economic development domain of KBUD constructs its conceptual foundations based on new or endogenous growth theory (Romer, 1986; Aghion and Howitt, 1998). It is a perspective that mainly places endogenous knowledge assets in the heart of economic activities, and sees knowledge as a locally embedded strategic and vital resource (Coffey and Polese, 1984) rather than exogenous, imported and supplementary (Lever, 2002). This perspective aims to build a knowledge economy within a city-region with "economic prosperity" achieved through strong "macroeconomic" and "knowledge economy foundations" (Cooke, 2002).

Socio-cultural development domain of KBUD builds its conceptual foundations based on human capital (Becker, 1994), social capital (Salisbury, 1969) and creative class (Florida, 2005) theories. It is a perspective that increases skills and knowledge of residents as a mean for individual and communal development and societal high-level of achievements (Ovalle et al. , 2004). This perspective aims to build a knowledge society within a city-region with a just "socio-spatial order" achieved through strong "human and social capitals" and "diversity and independency" (Raju, 2009).

Spatial development domain of KBUD constructs its conceptual foundations based on relational (Graham and Healey, 1999) and sustainable urban development theories (United Nations, 1987). It is a perspective that promotes conservation, development and integration of both natural and built environments and works toward building a strong spatial network relationship between urban development and knowledge clusters while driving a sustainable urban and environmental development (Yigitcanlar, 2010). This perspective aims to build a knowledge environment within a "sustainable and liveable" city-region achieved through "sustainable urban development" and "quality of life and place" (Hemlin et al. , 2004).

Institutional development domain of KBUD builds its conceptual foundations based on governance (Stoker, 1998), actor network (Callon, 1991) and strategic planning theories (Faludi, 1986). It is a perspective that democratizes and humanizes knowledge, institutionalizes interdisciplinary collective learning processes and knowledge-based organizations and plays a critical role in the orchestration of the development by bringing together actors, stakeholders and sources to prepare a civic vision, plan strategically and organize and facilitate necessary activities (Kunzmann, 2008). This perspective aims to build a knowledge government within a "well governed" city-region achieved through strong "planning and leadership" and "support and partnership" (Stoeva and Stoeva, 2009).

As KBUD emerged as a response to KBD's limited focus beyond economic growth and development, development processes, balance and integration of these four domains within the "systems theory perspective" (Bertalanffy, 1969) and incorporation of the "knowledge-based view" (Grant, 1996) in the spirit of development together with "organisational and sustainability capacities" (Van Winden et al. , 2007) are central to KBUD. Likewise, "resilience" is a critical dimension for the development to become sustainable (Yigitcanlar and Teriman, 2014). In a sustainable KBUD, the resilience approach focuses on the dynamic interplay between periods of gradual and sudden change and how to adapt to and shape such change and in a way stay sustainable in the long-term (Yigitcanlar and Lee, 2014).

Although KBUD is perceived as a successful model for the 21st century urban development, it is not flawless. Albeit the abovementioned theories are widely accepted among the academic circles, some of them still receive heavy criticisms from scholars. For example, in the case of endogenous growth theory, one of the main problems is the collective failure to explain conditional convergence reported in the empirical literature. Another frequent critique concerns the cornerstone assumption of diminishing returns to capital. Some contend that this theory has proven no more successful than exogenous growth theory in explaining the income divergence between the developing and developed worlds (Sachs and Warner, 2001). Furthermore, even though scholars (Huggins and Strakova, 2012) see KBUD as an opportunity for a socio-spatial response to global change and challenges, this type of development may be viewed as an elitist approach to urban development. While it aims at a balanced development, in most cases the development occurs on the prime real estates requiring large amount of investment on the central metropolitan city locations, then it is hoped that the spill over effect to take place and expand the investment and opportunities to a wider region and population coverage (Dawkins, 2003).

Most strikingly, when KBUD is considered in the city scale, it may not be an ideal development strategy, especially for the developing nations, as KBUD requires an exhaustive level of world-class infrastructure investment and incentive schemes. Nonetheless, KBUD is an opportunity for these countries to catch up to the developed nations. For instance, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan and the UAE highly benefited from KBUD adoption. KBUD is obviously not an absolute panacea for all city-regions aiming to improve their developmental problems. Today, only the city-regions that already have a strong foundation and potential to excel in the knowledge economy and society will be successful in the KBUD journey. Austin, Barcelona, Boston, Helsinki, Manchester, Melbourne, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver are among those (Yigitcanlar, 2009, 2014b). Needless to say, a balanced development can possibly be achieved without following specific KBUD agenda. However, with highly competitive and globalized nature of today's economy and society, only the city-regions that are seeking a KBUD can secure and sustain their positions of being a desired world-class place to live, work and study (Knight, 2008).

Empirical study

Case study region

Tampere region is a good case location for a study dealing with KBUD for several reasons. First, Finland has been regarded as one of the leaders of knowledge economy and society development since the 1990s, many international benchmarking studies have included Finland among the top five nations in the world (World Economic Forum, 2011) and Tampere has significantly contributed to the successful global positioning of Finland. Second, education is the key engine in KBUD, where the region has three large universities with sizeable numbers of student and staff. Third, major ICT industries are located in Tampere region including Nokia's large research facilities that are closely located at Tampere University of Technology and provides vibrant university-industry relations (Inkinen, 2008, 2012).

Tampere region is a political administrative unit at sub-national level consisting of 22 municipalities of which 11 are cities. Close to half a million inhabitants (487,923 ppl) with a relatively high median age (41 years) live in the region (12,446 km2) in a rather low urban density (39 ppl/km2). The undisputed centre of the region, the Tampere city, is Finland's third largest city as well as the largest inland city in the Nordic countries with over 213,000 inhabitants. Tampere has an attractive image among Finns and the region was regarded as the most desirable place to live and study among Finns in 2012. The region is a heterogeneous area comprising countryside and nature along with urban areas. There are two national parks and numerous major conservation and recreational areas in the region. Tampere represents a remarkable case of renewal that is turning the former industrial heart of Finland into a visible node in global knowledge production (Kautonen et al. , 2004).

Tampere region is divided into three major areas: capital, central and outer regions. Some of the regional development activities focus only on Tampere central region, excluding the towns and municipalities that are located more on the periphery of the region. However, these periphery municipalities have their own sub-regions. All in all, the focus and activities of regional development vary considerably in these areas. Finland, as a Nordic welfare state, is characterized with a strong state and strong municipalities. The municipal self-governance regime authorizes the municipalities to collect their own taxes, independently make financial decisions, prepare their development plans and manage their own affairs (Castells and Himanen, 2003). As Jan Vapaavuori, Minister of Housing, puts forward, Finland is an internationally rare case of a country, where the municipal governance is much more powerful than elsewhere (Vaattovaara et al. , 2010). Finnish municipalities are in-charge of providing the basic services and they depend on the local taxes. This makes municipality-level extremely important, which in its part is the most noticeable barrier to both regional policies and competitiveness. Finland has cities and municipalities competing with each other; thus, each of them assesses the situation more or less from their own perspective.

In Finland, regional development plans are prepared and revised regularly, while, nonetheless, directions of these plans only provide guidance to the municipalities of the region. This is to say realization of the regional strategy and actions are based on regional policymaker cooperation and collaboration. Therefore, contrary to the strong national and local authorities, at the regional level, authorities do not have much statutory power in vision, strategy and plan implementation. Hence, in regional development, public authorities are increasingly relying on different networks and partnerships and complex network-based interaction and governance is forming (Airaksinen and Aström, 2009). As Sotarauta (2010) argued, policy networks have a crucial role in the promotion of regional development in Finland. Kickert et al. (1997) stated that the dominant mode of action is based on policy networks, which can be defined as more or less stable patterns of social relations between interdependent actors, which take shape around policy problems and programs. Regional development is a multi-agent, multi-objective, multi-vision and pluralistic process in which different actor works (Sotarauta, 2010).

In Tampere, the group of regional developers has mixed backgrounds and sector representations and situated in different institutions. Finnish municipalities are active in developing plans and implementing them by themselves or in cooperation with each other. Council of Tampere Region, established and principally funded by 22 member municipalities, has the coordination task of regional development. The mandate for Council of Tampere Region comes from the municipalities as in Finland, there is no directly elected body on the regional level, but the municipalities select their representatives to the regional bodies. There are universities, research institutions, technology centers and third-sector actors who participate in the regional planning and development processes. Tampere received the recognition of an industrial city-region "Manchester of the North" in the 19th and 20th centuries, now in the 21st century aiming for a knowledge city-region formation. So far, much has been achieved in such transformation and the region is surely moving toward an international recognition with the proud brand of "Tampere all Bright". The research conducted by Kautonen et al. (2004) provided a detailed story of the transition of the region from an industrial heartland to a node in global knowledge city-region. Rather than repeating what has been said, we highlight some of the key KBUD initiatives.

Probably the most topical one is the establishment of a novel innovation platform so-called the "New Factory", which is an open, agile and community-based innovation centre that aims to boost the endogenous knowledge and innovation bases of the region. Another achievement is the strong triple-helix partnership model cooperation among public-private-academia sectors and in some cases giving good examples of a quadruple-helix approach in knowledge generation with the inclusion of the community. In such a partnership model, "Hermia Science Park" is a pioneering example that brings Tampere University of Technology and the technology giant Nokia along with the government of Tampere city and becomes a home to the region's largest knowledge hub. "University Properties of Finland" takes KBUD and knowledge generation in a more substantial context by involving not only the development of work and education facilities but also creation of a milieu for lifestyles by constructing, maintaining, developing and leasing premises of accommodation, recreation and cybering not for exclusively for knowledge workers but for knowledge communities.

Methods

We are fully aware of the potential limitations in investigating a city-region by mainly focusing on one of its major aspects, such as knowledge, that is so broad and to a certain degree fuzzy. Today, knowledge is embedded in almost every aspect of economic, social and territorial development. However, clearly defining the knowledge is quite a big challenge due to its intangible and complicated nature. In this research, we used the term knowledge as a key driving force for providing a competitive development edge to city-regions. In other words, in a broad sense, it is used in the context of the concept of "ba" (Nonaka and Konno, 1998). In a more specific sense, the term knowledge, similar to Asheim's (2007) categorization, at times, is referred to as scientific, technologic or artistic knowledge. Due to the complexity of the KBUD assessment of a city-region empirically, we decided to undertake a mixed method analysis involving collection of information about the key KBUD characteristics of the region and discussing them with the key actors. For this investigation, we, first, collected the quantitative empirical data regarding to the KBUD performance indictors by using an assessment framework (Yigitcanlar and Lonnqvist, 2013). The KBUD/AM model bases its indicator system on the contemporary KBUD principles, as the model is an indicator-based assessment model, where the indicator system is specifically tailored for the case of Tampere. The model consists of a composite index, indicator categories, indicator sets and performance indicators. Four of the indicator categories correspond to the four development pillars of KBUD. Eight indicator sets are derived from the literature. The selection of 32 indicators is undertaken by following the key literature's lead from a large indicator pool on the basis of measurability, analytical soundness, comparability, geographic coverage, data availability and relevance (Lin and Edvinsson, 2008; Veugelers, 2011; Grant and Chuang, 2012; Yigitcanlar and Lonnqvist, 2013; Yigitcanlar, 2014b). The model assigns an equal weightage to indicators, sets and categories. Quantitative data were obtained from the council Web sites and Tampere University of Technology and University of Helsinki databases. Table I illustrates the structure of the model and indicator values for Tampere region and national averages, which are calculated based on the top four Finnish regions of Helsinki, Tampere, Turku and Oulu.

Following to the quantitative model outputs, we undertook a qualitative study with the key actors of Tampere region. These actors are the key players in KBUD because they act as the key facilitators of the value-creation processes from regional knowledge assets to societal value, and the enabling and improvable issues concern the activities of these regional actors. Therefore, the results of the quantitative analysis of the region are shared with the key actors with an aim of getting a diverse outlook on region's development practices and KBUD challenges and opportunities. A number of key actors of the region has been approached and invited to take part in the project. Initially, potential persons were identified based on the discussion with the senior regional development officers of the Council of Tampere Region. In addition to the suggested actors by the regional council, with an intention of broadening the current focus other actors from the industry, government and academia were identified to cover a broader KBUD spectrum. Qualitative data were collected in two phases. First, a round of individual interviews was carried out to learn about regional actors' views on the strengths, weaknesses and challenges of the region. Thirteen people from the following institutions were interviewed during this first stage:

Parliament of Finland.

Council of Tampere Region (four participants).

Tampere Region Economic Development Agency.

Centre for Economic Development.

Transport and Environment.

Centre of Excellence on Social Welfare.

Council of Tampere City (two participants).

University of Tampere.

Council of Pirkkala.

Hermia Science Park.

Second, a focus group workshop was organized in June 2012. During the, workshop quantitative analysis findings were shared and an strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis exercise was conducted. Fourteen people participated in this workshop, as on top of the aforementioned institutions, the following were represented:

Tampere University of Technology (four participants).

University of Turku.

Queensland University of Technology.

The group of participants varied in the two stages, somewhat, while most of the people took part in both steps, some took part in only one of the steps. This resulted in 20 respondents altogether participating in the qualitative part of the research. Table II presents the findings of the qualitative analysis.

Results and discussion

The overall quantitative analysis findings indicate that in the Finnish regional context Tampere's KBUD shows a mediocre performance. However, such performance in comparison to four strong major Finnish regions' KBUD averages does not necessarily mean a poor or below standard performance. When the performance measure values are analyzed closely, we see the values for Tampere being very close to the national averages both when the region shows performance below or above the national averages (Table I).

In the economy domain , the region has particular strengths in keeping the long-unemployment rates lower, having higher ratio of R&D expenditure in gross domestic product (GDP) and higher ratio of patents granted. However, in all of the economy indicators of KBUD, the region performs below the national average. We know that the main reason for this not so glorious performance in this domain is the major economic performance gap between Helsinki and all other regions. Helsinki's dominance is strongly reflected to the national averages that push Tampere's economic performance below the national average. Beyond this, the main issue of the region seems to be the lack of endogenous asset-based economic drivers to place the region not only at the top of the Finnish context but also make a globally reputable one.

In the society domain , the region shows a balanced performance again in comparison to the national averages. In four KBUD indicators, the region performs above the national averages, and in four, performs below. Largely, in this domain, the main issue of the region seems to be the lack of a socio-culturally vibrant and diverse social scene to form an internationally attractive urban environment for different lifestyle options of international knowledge workers and their families.

In the environment domain , the region displays a similar performance to the society domain. Basically, for this domain the main problem of the region seems to be the urban form and density. Such low-density and highly rural-urban nature of the region, while providing quality of life to citizens, is also lacking to form a more densely urbanized Tampere region; thus, contributing in potential unsustainable outcomes, such as sprawling development, higher level of car dependency and high demand on spreading urban infrastructure.

In the governance domain , the region demonstrates the poorest performance in comparison to national benchmarks. We interpret this as an outcome of the past old-school governance practices of the region, and, fortunately, in recent years, with changing approach to regional development and close collaboration of the regional actors, the performance in this domain is quickly improving. The success in the strategic planning and city branding and marketing indicators can be seen as evidences of the changing regional development and governance trends in the region.

The key regional actors were highly satisfied with the accuracy of the KBUD/AM outputs in representing the KBUD characteristics of the region. They, especially, acknowledged the capability of the model in providing a big picture view with its composite index, while generating insights about the specific area performances through its large indicator base. KBUD/AM is particularly found as an effective assessment tool for places with low regional coordination, such as Tampere, as rather than other KBD models, it picks up the planning, development and management issues.

The overall qualitative analysis findings of the model driven from the SWOT analysis indicate that the key actors of Tampere are enthusiastic about the future of the region to develop as a prosperous knowledge city-region, even though most of them have concerns due to the global financial crisis, global climate change and social unrest in both developing and developed worlds (Table II).

The perspectives of the regional actors in terms of strengths of the region indicate that economy of the region is basing its development more and more on investing on knowledge-generating areas to further increase the economic diversity. As for society, the region has its skilled people and university and R&D institutes that represent the open culture for new ideas. Environmentally, with the nature and established quality of life, the region is clearly a desired destination for families. As for governance, Tampere has good network, communication and collaboration between key institutions and regional actors.

The perspectives of the regional actors in terms of weaknesses of the region demonstrate that although regional economy, due to large corporations' success, has been on the incline during the past two decades, lack of or limited small- and medium-sized enterprises'(SMEs) success is a concern for the near future. In the last years, the regional economy has started to show the symptoms of a potential decline due to major challenges of large corporations in keeping their global competitive edges, particularly in the field of mobile technology solutions. The main societal issue is that Tampere not having an urban scene to attract international talent and even perhaps facing a brain drain. Inward-looking society and the limitations of Tampere city are probably the main reasons to limit the internationalization of the region. Not many weaknesses are recalled for natural environmental aspects of the region beyond potential impacts of climate change. However, the constraints of built environment are among the contributors to the very limited attraction of the region for international brain gain. For governance, a couple of key important points are mentioned repeatedly that are the lack of national level lobbying and regional leadership.

The perspectives of the regional actors in terms of opportunities of the region show that in the case of the region that further invests and develops the existing knowledge assets along with correct strategies, a KBUD in the global scale can become a possibility. Economy-wise, continuum of internationalization efforts is crucial. Society-wise, societal contribution in further developing the existing knowledge and skill pool is important. Environment-wise, existing place branding and marketing policies with a particular focus on providing space and place for alternative lifestyle options is an essential opportunity worth dwelling on. Governance-wise, expanding international connections and collaborations particularly via universities with Nordic countries and beyond is a potential opportunity.

The perspectives of the regional actors in terms of threats of the region reveal that still there are many obstacles for Tampere to become a globally recognized knowledge city-region. Economically, there are serious threats that are widening the gap between the region and the competitors all across the world. Socially, starting from losing local identities to aging population, there are many potential threats ahead. Environmentally, negative effects of human activities and not being able to fully mitigate the impacts of global scale climate change are the two major threats. For governance, fragmentation of governance and policy-making in the region and not being able to team up with new allies nationally and internationally are among the major threats the region needs to take actions accordingly.

In addition to these results, the qualitative findings suggest that knowledge assets are the main strength of the region for its KBUD. There is a multitude of knowledge assets in the region. The concept of regional knowledge assets was often understood as sources of information in the region, which was regarded to be in very good condition. Weaknesses related to the knowledge base itself were not identified in more detail beyond the SWOT analysis. However, the ability to keep touch on significant international knowledge flows and uncertainty about the future were identified as challenges related to the development of regional knowledge assets. International contacts were also brought out as an asset, but then again getting rid of the parochial attitude toward internationalization was among the improvable issues.

The findings stress that Tampere is a multifaceted city-region and some of the actors stated how the region is like "Finland in miniature". Knowledge-based economic development appears to be the prevailing paradigm of Finnish regional development. This seems to be in line with the notion that the business-oriented discourse dominates the regional development discourse, also depoliticizing it (Fotel and Hanssen, 2009). Maybe there lies an assumption that when the direct focus is pointed on economic development, the other perspectives would follow. This is much aligned with the traditional KBD perspective (Veugelers, 2011). However, in many parts of the world, this approach failed as building prosperous knowledge city-regions cannot be solely based on economic development (Huggins and Strakova, 2012), and if other enabling conditions are not provided, failure is inevitable.

The perspectives of knowledge-based economic, socio-cultural, spatial and institutional development are not fully interrelated in the regional development of Tampere. However, this relates to the fact that there is not a person or an institution in-charge for the entire regional development. In other words, Tampere lacks of KBUD coordination, orchestration and leadership. Good news is that some municipalities are trialing to combine these aspects to provide a balanced KBUD in their local jurisdiction areas. Some projects are initiated within different regional development networks that support the knowledge-based socio-cultural and spatial development as well. However, these projects are still either in small scale or at trial stages, and in terms of institutional development, improvements in network management and leadership practices are urgently required. Even though, great attention has been paid to sustainability and resilience issues in the region, the focus is mostly concerned of environmental aspects of the development. These issues should be considered comprehensively in all domains, as the lack thereof puts the future of Tampere at risk.

In terms of research limitations, we acknowledge the restrictions of both quantitative and qualitative approaches adopted for this empirical analysis. For the quantitative model, indicator data gathering and weighting issues have a problematic nature. These issues are elaborated lengthily in literature, reporting previous applications of the model (Yigitcanlar and Lonnqvist, 2013; Yigitcanlar, 2014b). However, as this study aims to surface the big picture view for the region, comparative figures serve their purposes in providing benchmarks for the region in the Finnish context. For the qualitative approach, we concede that the perspective provided through the fairly small sample of participants might be seen as constricted. However, the field of regional development is so wide-ranging that the sample would inevitably be somehow biased. We claim that the participants are key actors in the regional development in Tampere. In our prospective studies, to address these limitations, we are planning to take quantitative analysis to a more advanced level that involves provision of further and more detailed information on regional development achievements and potentialities of Tampere. This will include a comparison of the region not just with the national average, and also with the figures of other major Finnish regions. Additionally, relevant data will be collected for a more precise measurement and evaluation of the region by examining the collective actions and policy trajectories. Likewise, in future studies, a larger number of participant groups of regional actors will be involved in the qualitative evaluation of the region.

Conclusion

The research reported, in this paper, evaluated the dynamics of Tampere by putting the region under the KBUD microscope. The methodology of the research included a thorough review of the literature and a mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses method undertaken with the participation of the key regional actors, where Tampere region provided an interesting test bed for this analysis. The case-specific findings of the research reveal the following.

Literature and global best practices confirm that knowledge city-regions are complex entities and their attempts in transforming city-regions would likely result in failure unless they are guided by a sound strategic vision. As KBD has its limits in the city-scale, the strategic vision should incorporate various KBUD policies. Suggested by Yigitcanlar (2009), implementing these policies require competent organizations, organizational skills, expert teams, community support and strong financial foundations. Planning for KBUD requires understanding the diverse spatial forms, where a large number of knowledge clusters are particularly important in the promotion of the spill-over effects found to be vital for long-term prosperity. Most importantly, building the development on the endogenous assets of the region, particularly the skill base (Yigitcanlar et al. , 2007) and achieving a balanced development are critical in achieving a thriving KBUD.

The literature findings have shown strong evidence of Tampere's regional potential in repeating another major transformation once again as it did right after World War II. However, as Kautonen et al. (2004) adamantly stated, the current transformation process cannot be reduced to the technical or economic dimension only; it also involves fundamental organizational innovations to improve the diffusion of knowledge, indicated by the new network paradigm. The growing KBUD literature complements and completes this knowledge-based economic and institutional development perspective with knowledge-based spatial and socio-cultural development perspectives and, most importantly, their balanced and sustainable integration and implementation as suggested by systems theory.

For the empirical investigation, we developed an invaluable methodology to scrutinize performances of city-regions seeking KBUD. The quantitative analysis supported the qualitative analysis and provided a much clearer big picture view on the current KBUD prospects and constraints of the region. Tampere's notable prospects include:

rich knowledge assets;

open and good relations between key regional actors;

strong domestic knowledge network connectivity and triple and quadruple-helix partnerships;

being a transparent democracy open to grassroots and community involvement in KBUD policy-making; and

being attractive to Finns as a desirable region to live and study in.

Tampere region's primary constraints include:

lack of regional KBUD orchestration;

strategic coordination;

leadership and a powerful regional authority;

rather a narrow view on KBUD with mostly an economic development focus;

bureaucracy and red tapes in knowledge sharing and policy-making;

lack of strong international knowledge network connectivity; and

not using the region's potentials to the fullest.

In the light of these findings, we draw a conclusion and consider the knowledge city-region transformation journey of Tampere as still in progress. However, contrary to all barriers in front of the KBUD orchestration, the, overall, direction of the development is deemed to be toward a promising future. In other words, the emergence of Tampere knowledge city-region has already started; however, the region has a long way to achieve a prosperous and sustainable KBUD. We advocate the following as a good stating point in their journey of a thriving KBUD for Tampere and other city-regions to invest on.

Economy:

good business climate;

rich endogenous asset base that attracts global investment and talent;

formation of creative environment and urban innovation engines; and

competitive edge, support, inter-sectorial partnership and strategic investment.

Society:

good people climate;

education and research excellence;

value creation to citizens; and

multicultural, diverse and equitable socio-cultural urban scene.

Environment:

good spatial climate;

human- and natural environment-oriented development;

quality of life and place; and

mitigating impacts of climate change.

Governance:

good governance climate;

political and societal will, good governance and organizational skills;

strategic vision and dynamic long-term development planning; and

leading agencies orchestrating planning, development and management.

Figure 1. The KBUD conceptual framework

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Table I. KBUD characteristics of the region

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Table II. SWOT analysis findings

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About the authors

Tan Yigitcanlar is an Associate Professor at the School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, and an Executive Director at the World Capital Institute, Brisbane, Australia. He has been responsible for research, teaching, training and capacity building programs in the fields of urban and regional planning, development and management in esteemed Australian, Finnish, Japanese and Turkish universities. The main foci of his research are advocating and promoting KBUD and sustainable urban, infrastructure and transport development in city-regions. He is an Associate Editor of the "International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development " and "International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology ", and the Chair of the "Knowledge Cities World Summits". Tan Yigitcanlar is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]

Antti Lönnqvist is the Dean of School of Management, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. He also holds the position of Adjunct Professor at Tampere University of Technology, where he previously worked as a Professor of Information and Knowledge Management. His research interests focus on understanding how performance measurement and management practices are applied and create value in knowledge-intensive and service-oriented environments.

Henna Salonius, MSc (Administration), is a Researcher at Novi Research Centre, Tampere University of Technology, Finland. Her main research interests include regional knowledge management, knowledge creation and intellectual capital.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Tampere University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology in funding the sabbatical of the first author in Finland. The authors cordially thank the regional authorities and experts that participated and supported this research with their in-depth knowledge and insights on the region and its prospects. The authors also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript.

References

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