Theory and Practice in Private and Public Sector Spatial Planning

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James SimmieDownloaded by [James Simmie] at 03:09 21 May 2012that, if anything, these gaps were ‘diverging’ rather than ‘converging’ (Chatterji &Dewhurst, 1996; Dunford, 1997; Martin & Sunley, 1998; Rowthorn, 1999;Roberts, 2004; Henley, 2005; Simmie & Carpenter, 2008). In the face of suchevidence, new polices were clearly required. These sought to address the issue ofhow to accelerate the generation of knowledge and innovation in LFRs. It wasargued in this context that what they needed was a set of institutions that couldgalvanize local learning, knowledge and innovation.Starting from this policy perspective, a second policy definition of the learningregion has emerged. This is that ‘A learning region can be defined as a regional (orurban) innovation strategy in which a broad set of innovation-related actors(politicians, policy-makers, chambers of commerce, trade unions, higher educationinstitutes, public research establishments and companies) are strongly but flexiblyconnected with each other and who stick to a certain set of ‘policy principles’’(Hassink, 2001 quoting OECD, 2001, p. 24). Here, the focus is on regional andurban innovation strategies.Thus, there are two distinct definitions of the learning region. The first is atheoretical definition that focuses on the processes of regional learning and howthey may lead to regional economic renewal. The second is a policy-baseddefinition and focuses on strategies needed to generate innovation and itsunderlying learning requirements as new practical bases for the redevelopment ofregional economies. The first offers an alternative understanding to that of neoclassical,free market economics on what drives regional economies. The secondsuggests policy principles that follow from this alternative theory for thedevelopment and renewal of regional economies based on the encouragement ofendogenous innovation and learning.Critics of the Theory and Policy of the Learning RegionThe learning region both as a concept and as a policy prescription has attractedconsiderable criticism. Critics include Hudson (1999), Simmie (1999, 2003),Hassink (2001) and Cooke (2005). Hudson (1999) argues that the social andstructural constraints imposed by the capitalist system of production set the limitsof what is possible in such a system. One important feature of this system isspatially uneven economic development. This is partly based on carefully guardedeconomically valuable tacit knowledge. Hudson (1999) sees the development andthe use of new knowledge in a capitalist system as a zero sum game in which onefirm or locality’s gain is another’s loss. He argues that the prospect of generatingconvergence between different regions (or cities) on the basis of a policy focus onlearning is unlikely to succeed in the face of the forces driving uneven economicdevelopment.Hassink (2001) argues that, from a conceptual perspective, the learning regionsuffers from definitional fuzziness, its normative character, the fact that it overlapswith other TIM concepts and its uncertain position between national innovationsystems and global production networks.Cooke (2005) argues that the learning region is unlikely to last as a policyframework because of asymmetries rather than equality in local collaborationsusing different forms of economically valuable knowledge. He distinguishes6
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