COGNITIVE CITY

© 2000, 2011 by Robinson Antonio Vieira Borba

www.robinsonborba.com.br
prof.robinson@gmail.com
São Paulo, Brazil

What would the “Cognitive City” be?

The Cognitive City presents a new way of formulating local

development processes institutionalized by governmental
and/or non-governmental organizations. By structuring
strategic plans and actions, it stimulates the connections
between the urban and regional economy with that of the
world.
In the Cognitive City, economic models will be based on
the original social, environmental and economic
characteristics. They will be conceived and structured
through the individuals’ perception. Skilled citizens, with
creativity, will build an innovative strategic framework,
triggering the collective cognitive process necessary for
the endogenous planning actions to attain sustainable
implementation.
The Cognitive City emergence derives from the
observation of the global scenario, in which two
fundamental trends are detached:
The technical-scientific-informational environment, which
will show to have increasingly more complexity in the
future, directs and permeates all human activities, in a
successive chain of social and economic transformations
that materialize in the communities territorial space;
The knowledge and intellectual capital of that environment
will validate the use and operation of the regional space as
a locus of global productivity, guaranteeing the
combination between the latent possibilities and the
opportunities created by the New Economy for the
municipalities and regions, especially in the creative
sectors, which minimizes the perverse effects globalization
may cause to local development.
The Cognitive City will comprise:
> Local economic development process, founded on
theoretical concepts as well as on international and
Brazilian experiences. It is applied by means of regionally
articulated local actions, the aim of which is to potentialize
the community creative and productive capacity;
> Observatory of decentralized industrialization trends, or
global des-industrialization. The outcomes of this historical
process induced by institutions created by communities or
by governments. The aim is to connect the local
economies with the emergent global economy, by
qualifying the pre-existing industrial base and by attracting
new enterprises identified as being of strategic interest;
> Monitoring the impact of the transformations resulting
from globalization in both regional and local spaces. The
complexity imposed by the economic-social phenomenon
is a result of the conditions provided by the open circuit of
the new world economy.
The Cognitive City facilitates the understanding of these
collective activities and will make possible building a
model for local and regional governance, which allows:
> Building the local economy capacity in a proactive,
cooperative and competitive way, so that it can be inserted
in the global scenario, in evolution today, with permanent
adequacy and as fast as the information flows that cross
the continents permeating regions;
>Incorporating the technological civilization achievements,
pulling down barriers in the communication between
developed and developing societies, and thus preventing
the exclusion that may occur with the communities unable
to understand the complexity of the international affairs
under constant mutation;
> Overcoming the knowledge gap, beating the greatest
challenge to localities and regions sustainable economic
structuring;
> Identifying opportunities in the creative destruction
imposed by the new globalized economy, by means of a
permanent cognitive process;
> Learning for not dying is the new paradigm established
by globalization in localities in the knowledge era.
> Acquiring knowledge means stimulating creativity and
flowing into innovation, which is a vitality and survival
factor in the new economy organizations and in the
dynamic communities of the globalized world.
> A radical change in the collective mentality is urgent, just
as the one that determined the importance of technology
in the Industrial Revolution during the process of
transforming the agrarian society into an industrial one.
Now, with the metamorphosis of this digital society, the
relevance is cognition.
These verifications demonstrated that:
First, the need of establishing a policy model for local
economic development within an endogenous strategy
constructed from a perception of the regional reality;
Second, that technology turned into an inducer of
economic activities. However, so that it provides them with
sustainability, it should not be seen as an end, but as a
means to provide the integration of the local development
system to the global economy with the
comprehensiveness and complexity required by the
contemporary society.
And considering that:
By materializing in the regions, where possibilities and
opportunities are combined, the so-called “New Economy”,
in which science, technology and information are the
technical base of social life, makes knowledge an
essential resource to validate the use of the regional
space as the locus of global productivity;
The intense information complexity, permeating all the
human activities under the impact of the successive chain
of transformations, materializes in the territorial space of
local communities, which have to build capacities to
conduct a model coherent with their tradition and culture,
as they are the foundation for creativity and innovation,
dominant elements in the knowledge era;
Assessing the natural, cultural and technological regional
asset is a requirement for inserting regional productive
chains into the new productive mode and should be
evaluated in a framework that preserves the local
production spaces.
It can be concluded that:
Understanding the entwining of the locality microcosm with
the world dimension is vital for a development model;
The sustainability of this model can only be achieved
through the society capacity of planning and conducting its
own local experience.
And the proposition of the Cognitive City is finally
presented:
This capacity building, normally a function of the
institutional development deriving from a historical
process, should start from a collective cognitive process
making it possible for knowledge, in which there are
elements that allow for understanding the complex and
abstract relations, as are those of the “New Economy”,
establish the forms of organization and assessment of the
ideas and concepts necessary for building an assimilable
original model by the region where they will be applied,
enhancing the population cultural characteristics,
contributing to sustainable global development with
creativity and innovation.
With this, it is expected that:
Civility processes are established in the Brazilian
communities, building their capacities for the countless
collective tasks posed by the knowledge era challenges,
with complexity, thus meeting the institution need for an
innovative collective mentality. Thus, the hundreds of
years of history of civic practice that were necessary for
developing nations and localities by their collaborative
societies are not hence indispensable to trigger - in
countries without this tradition, such as Brazil - processes
that result in original economic development models, as
these would be elaborated with creativity and innovation
by the ones that could then be called cognitive cities.
 Governance, Productive Chains and Collaborative
Model
The industrial conglomerates, when reformulating their
investment policies for new operational modes, in which
flexibility prevails, both in the productive mode and in the
logistical aspects, provide new perspectives in regions
peripheral to the industrial development process.
The reformulation of these entrepreneurial policies
provides the localities with a strategic status in the nations
economies, thanks to the reformulation of the productive
industrial mode and the relocation of the productive
infrastructures determined by the decentralization of the
flexible industrial plants.
The place is seen as a territorial configuration and now as
an organization with regulation regimes. The region is no
longer the result of an organic solidarity, but of a regulated
and organizational solidarity.
Organized from the inside to the outside of the localities,
endogenous development provides mobilization to
optimize capital, work and institutional resources as well
as physical infrastructures and causes a rupture with the
global structuralism and space theories in which stages of
economic development would come in a succession of
stages classified as pre-industrial, industrial and post-
industrial.
The hierarchy of central places, of the homogeneous
space presupposition, is broken, as the non-homogeneity
of regions is the condition for the success of a flexible
economy, dependent on regional dynamics.
Invisible community attributes are determinants in the
location of enterprises - of high technology, for example -
for which innovation is a vitality and survival factor.
The territory, with all its intrinsic, material and immaterial
characteristics, serving as the economic space of
productive activities, ceases to be a mere space support
and turns into an active development agent.
New forms of regulation emerge from the urban economic
and regional space in which norms established more by
the civil society than by the market or by the State
predominate.
The return of the local policy dimension in economic
development is verified by the fact that productive chains
operate more and better under governance and
collaboration than under market laws.
Governance in local policy defines the development model
which, materialized by the territorial socio-economic block,
determines a productive chain and human resources that
will be required by the regional dynamics.
Local cultural, economic and social conditions establish
the innovation capacity of governance to absorb the new
paradigms for economic development.
Governance nourishes elements that make innovation
viable, making it possible, such as: intellectual
infrastructure; qualified workforce; quality of life; business
environment; risk capital; a receptive market for new
products and processes; a commitment with industrial
modernization; culture for industrialization with flexibility
and cooperation; and a social system in which innovation,
founded on diversity, flows.
Small diversified industrial nuclei account for increasingly
customized products for segmented markets, allowing
larger companies to decentralize their productions in
smaller productive units.
Large companies, when acting supportively and in
networks, not necessarily located in the same country or
region, are integrated to an international fabric based on
small and medium-sized companies in different regions of
the planet, strengthening regional economies, since they
are capable of positively reacting to this restructuring.
For the local productive structure to respond to these
stimuli, issues such as integration and cooperation, which
allow for articulation and complementarity to integrate the
productive chain of a serial industrial product in the
localities, have to be assimilated by the communities
which are to intervene in this transformation process so
that their local productive bases correspond to the needs
of the production cycles.
Political orientations with no social commitment, when
seeking competitive industrial production in a predatory
way, disarticulate cooperation in the industrial base
existing in the regions, extracting the collaborative
element, a fundamental factor of a real regional
competitive advantage.
Economic growth does not guarantee political,
environmental, cultural and technological development
processes, indispensable for the human society
dimension, once the progressive inter-relations of these
processes limit the unique motive capacity of economy for
the complex contemporary society.
 Civic Entrepreneurship:
Government, Society and Companies
The aware absorption of economic complexity in a
competitive and collaborative strategy, providing localities
with conditions for structuring their productive bases,
qualifies regional leaderships for greater analysis capacity,
broadening the view of the economy with more
comprehensive focuses, involving environmental, social
and technological issues.
Community leaderships have to struggle to overcome the
old paternalistic vision - which predominates both within
and without municipal administrations - of the community
strategic management, since this vision prevents the full
institutional and organizational capacity of the public
sector, hindering the articulation of society and
compromising local development.
The public sector reluctance in adopting local
development policies as they do not usually provide the
community with immediate visibility of their benefits, which
are better perceived in the medium and long run, should
be fought by the entrepreneur community.
Identification of entrepreneurship capacity in the locality
Characteristic Environment Configuration
Local economy Open and fluent Without barriers
for new
businesses
Social structure Dynamic Outsiders are
welcome
Business Competitive Without large
employers
Finances Competitive Access to venture
banks investments
Labor Specialized and Will for innovative
professional initiatives
Government Support to small Differentiated
and new taxes for small
businesses and medium
companies
Innovation University Supply by means
of research center
Local media Attention to Dissemination of
entrepreneurs innovative
businesses
Job generation Stimulus Basis for new and
small businesses
Local atmosphere Amenities Good quality of
life, culture,
education and
leisure
In those localities, the governing person is also required to
have an entrepreneur performance in the local economic
development policy, with characteristics such as:
transparent use of finances; budget guided towards
investments; and thinking visionary administrative and
executive echelons, with professional style guided towards
results; innovative, competitive and high quality public
services; culture of participation of citizens, seen as
consumers and stakeholders of the development program.
This causes the implementation of a wide mentality
transformation, which should occur not only to politicians,
but also to private managers, since the entrepreneur
community, while requiring a new public management
model, more active in the economic field, places the
entrepreneurial community in a new productive dimension,
in which the efficacy of its operation in the territory is
connected to the effective cooperation with local
development agents.
A minimization of the military origin of the term strategic
occurs, as this type of planning efficiently and
systematically identifies the advantages and
disadvantages of an area. When determining opportunities
for its development, this planning provides a sense of
direction for local programs, providing a scenario for
assessing and modifying the development program of the
locality and its region, and also allowing the integration of
independent actors to the planning action, which is no
longer exclusive of the public sector.
The emergence of a fundamental actor in the
communities, to conduct the execution of this process
towards capacity building is identified: the civic
entrepreneur.
The civic entrepreneur’s innovating role requires the will to
build efficacious connection and integration between
his/her region and a global economy.
The actuation of this local development agent will mold the
locality for internationalized relations, in which a culture of
shared vision, work, decisions and actions is the motion
force of the community economic development, founded
on collaborative competitivity.
From this perspective, the conduction of regional
development processes under the support of planning
backed by the logic of an external central coordination
gives way to management plans by the local initiatives.
These are made possible through the local development
agency concept.
The agency has its attention directed to the conduction of
projects under a territorial vision that guides the
dissemination of economic growth and job generation by
managing regional endogenous potentials.
There is an alteration in the centralized standard of
formulating and operating policies, traditionally marked by
verticality in the State-Society relations, due to space
generality and sectorial segmentation. A decentralized
standard occurs, characterized by horizontality in the
social agents’ relation and by the space selectivity,
integration and territoriality of a regional policy.
Managerial and interpretative resources, more adequate
to economic development, are acknowledged to be found
in the private sector, yet companies count on a limited
territorial coverage, short time and few resources to
understand and tackle social responsibility issues.
Development agencies represent an effective form of
support, as they allow incorporating essential business
world characteristics to the collective, economic, social
and cultural development aim of a community as a whole.
An agency constituted with the participation of the public
sector in a partnership with the private sector is the most
flexible structure a community can count on to acquire
regional, viable competitivity by the collaboration between
the economic and social agents of its actuation region and
by inter-institutional cooperation.
A vigilant position on the economy, on the social and
cultural life of the development agency region requires a
deep understanding of the problems and potentials of the
geographic area of its actuation.
The agency is required a strong ability of working with the
economic, political, cultural and social structures already
existing in the region, following a concrete intervention and
operational standard, useful and both economically and
socially important, by stimulating the creation of new jobs,
of new opportunities and new solutions, which enhances
its focus on technological development and innovation.
Continuous complex tasks are required for implementing
these cooperation and strategy structures, in which
institutional development is the foundation of their
decentralized operation.
Insufficient institutional development of communities and
discontinuity in the State policy were the main problems
for implementing the decentralized economic development
plan "State Competitive Strategy" elaborated by the IPT
for the SCTDE/SP.
With tactics based on regional seminars in some
administrative regions of the State of Sao Paulo, aiming to
raise interest in the political and entrepreneurial
leaderships of the municipalities, this State of Sao Paulo
government plan did not gain significant adhesion from the
State communities for creating their local development
agencies: the ADLs.
The Ourinhos agency, one of the few ADLs implemented
under the SCTDE/SP stimulus, for example, was not
granted credibility by the community due to the resistance
of local political and entrepreneurial segments which saw
it as a competitor in the struggle for political space, and
not as a community agency that would be working to carry
on its projects and which sought resources, both financial
and human, besides political support for the region
economic growth.
The ADEO actuation in Ourinhos, however, should not be
seen as a failure, as it guided the community discussion of
the local problems towards economic development and
forced the leaderships to reflect on the future of the city
and to formulate actions to explore its potentialities
viewing growth.
The Ourinhos agency, considered by SCTDE/SP an
innovative initiative in community development for
orienting the local policies in the macroeconomic national
and international scenario, provided strategic meaning to
investment decisions, both by the public and the private
sectors; as it created a progressive atmosphere of
entrepreneur city, the agency stimulated the emergence of
other community participation tools, such as the
Participative Budget and the Bank of the People,
contributing to the civic development of its citizens.
The great ADEO flaws were the assessment of its own
inter-institutional articulation capacity, the weak actuation
of its managers for mobilizing the productive segments
and low academic participation. This led to the emptying of
the organization as an entity capable of making resources
viable to the municipality at external level and of gathering
common efforts towards local development.
By connecting the two initiatives, that of the Ourinhos City
and that of the State of Sao Paulo, one verifies the need
for an effective central decentralization policy to stimulate
the flow of local efforts to overcome the apparent paradox
that occurs in function of the interference of central
governments in eminently regional and endogenous
actions, characterized as the exclusive ambit of the local
policy and subjected to particular pressures by the local
politics.
This paradox has to be overcome with decentralized
planning, respecting the relevance of the regional social,
economic, political and cultural context as observed in the
plan put into practice by the Italian federal government.
Concentrating on continuity and changes in the Italian
regional policies, the differences in the local governments
performance were perceived to have deep connections
with the history of each region, which explains specific
aspects of their civic life and, therefore, of the regional
economic development.
The performance of the regional institutions, established
by the Italian central government, was dependent on the
economic, social, cultural and political environments that,
in turn, depended on the institutional development
dynamics and ecology.
In Italy, industrialization has been a process determined,
in its spatial and economic organization, by the regional
society that generated it, being a market social
construction of a development supported and molded by
cultural and historical regional characteristics.
The acknowledged efficiency of the productive mode of
the Emilia-Romagna region, for example, is propelled by a
complex system of relations between companies and
horizontal service centers that act as sectorial interfaces
among companies, and by the productive chain, in which
external suppliers are the greatest strength of a
manufacturing system that provides the possibility of
progress for smaller companies, usually family ones,
which work in production networks.
This type of structuring is observed in the formation of
industrial agglomerations in the South and Southwest
regions of Brazil where, although family relations of
European immigrants prevail, regional and local,
entrepreneurial and political leaderships have sought to
implement some autonomy in the local industrial policy.
In surveys, it was noticed that in the industrial
agglomerations identified by IPEA, the models are similar
among themselves, seeking to involve traditional labor
qualification institutions, such as SENAI, management
ones, such as SEBRAE, besides fostering agencies such
as BNDES and educational ones, usually technical
schools and universities in the region, yet they keep
regional particularities.
In Brazil, there are initiatives with positive results:
Blumenau, where a textile company network established
the Blumenau Fashion Foundation, institutional
arrangement aimed at technological capacity building for
the apparel sector; Criciúma, where local producers
implemented the Ceramic Technological Center; Vitória,
which stimulates the interaction of the local university with
metallurgical companies through the Capixaba Center of
Metal-Mechanical Development; Santa Rita do Sapucaí,
where Luiza Rennó Moreira, with articulations with the
Federal Engineering School of Itajubá and with large
companies in the telecommunications sector, managed to
generate spin-offs of the local educational institutions and,
consequently, the formation of small and medium-sized
companies in the electronic and telecommunications
areas; São Carlos, which, through the ParqTec
Foundation, established the Technological Companies
Incubator Center with companies in the instrumentation,
precision mechanics, microelectronics, robotics,
automation and new materials areas, and Votuporanga,
with its AIRVO, established a furniture pole in the region,
managing to insert local companies in the international
market.
There are also initiatives with negative results, such as the
Colatina one that, despite having invested in the creation
of its Technological Center of the Apparel Industries of
Espírito Santo, little used it. This difficulty may be
attributed to the deficient managerial structure of the
sector, basically constituted of small and family apparel
companies.
In Brazil, in the agglomerations considered technological
poles, such as Campinas, São Carlos, São José dos
Campos, Rio de Janeiro and Florianópolis, the necessary
innovation process undergoes difficulties for not attaining
a growing synergy, the so-called spin-off, in which
academic researchers would feel stimulated to participate
in concrete projects in large companies, possibly due to
the non-commitment of companies, usually multinational
ones, headquartered in other countries.
It was verified that structuring an international
technological pole, such as the Sophia Antipolis model, a
successful development strategy of a region with
traditional tourist vocation, apparently without attractive
locational factors for the logistic of high technology
enterprises, the major success factors in the innovation
process were: international airport with several
destinations; advanced telecommunications infrastructure;
cooperation among companies; greater productivity by
professionals; availability of high qualification
professionals; presence of high level university centers;
social and cultural life with diversity and quality; large
green spaces neighboring companies; good supply of
health professionals and of international schools with
bilingual education.
Problems also exist in Sophia Antipolis; mainly due to its
fast growth, some services are deficient: the international
schools do not offer new places, public administrations
have no representation in Sophia and the cost of life
turned very high.
Another growing difficulty in the internal development of
the French Technopolises derives from the inexistence of
spin-off in the teaching and research centers with the large
companies. This makes it very dependent on the
establishment of new companies to keep growing and
absorbing the qualified labor formation in the region.
This lack of synergy is a problem mainly generated by the
attraction of companies, the centers of decision of which
are in the USA. They are not free to foster collaboration
opportunities with local companies, which makes Sophia
Antipolis have some similarity with the Brazilian
technological poles.
Therefore, capacity building for technological innovation in
a pole is not only a result of integration between
companies and the academic community, but it also
depends on a regional cooperation atmosphere among
companies that favors productive synergy, an identifiable
exemplar competitive advantage in the Emilia-Romagna
region, as previously discussed.
It can be concluded that this phenomenon is not only
characterized as a result of an articulation between
potential partners of a community interested in a
dynamization of its productive base by incorporating
technology-based enterprises; there is a greater
complexity in it.
Isolatedly, the pole does not manage to trigger a regional
economic development process, as a project that aims at
local development founded on technology-based
enterprises must consider the regional territory as a
productive space full of innovation.
This paradigm carries the hope for a real sustainable
development, and the regions in which it is applied are
called Technopolises, where knowledge development
occurs.
Balanced architecture, buildings enveloped by light and
agreeable air amidst impeccable sceneries, where people
work happily in pure and healthy environments, with
urbanism and infrastructure working as a support to an
atmosphere that favors knowledge exchange and
stimulates creativity. This utopian image of a “New
Economy” is represented by an icon that is being printed
in our minds: the Technopolises.
Globalization, information technology, emerging markets
and reorganization of governmental management,
generating new information and new knowledge, basic
materials for innovation, may be in the same place - the
Technopolises - thanks to the partnerships that form the
cooperation matrix, at local and regional level, aligned to
work with the challenging forces of the “New Economy”.
It was also observed, however, that the complex social
and economic interactions caused by the impact of the
informational economy within regional urban spaces,
coexisting with intense information and communication
flows, may cause imbalance in the communities.
That is the case of Bangalore, in India, which has
presented a growing urban tension caused by chronic
deficiencies, such as growing poverty and unequal
income, together with a chaotic real estate market,
deriving from massive migration from neighboring regions
with social imbalance.
This migration problem was also detected in Japan, which
made Tokyo and its metropolitan area swell, due to the
concentration of high technology industries, which led to a
national encompassing plan which aimed at providing
technological development conditions to several regions,
some of them apparently having no vocation for that, so as
to revert the migratory flow.
A balance in regional development by means of equal
shares of opportunities provided by the global “New
Economy” was the goal of the Japanese Technopolises
program. Yet fully attaining this goal would depend on a
solution for serious problems, such as the integration of
peripheral cities to the research and development
educational facilities, and the use of the infrastructures for
the local companies to implement high technology
industries; the operational arm syndrome i ; feeble
integration between universities and industries, due to the
regulation of the public universities actuation and lack of
high-level professionals for the researches. These
professionals preferred to remain at the top universities
located in the metropolitan regions, since the latter provide
better work opportunities owing to the nearness to large
industries headquarters.
The main difficulty was to establish spin-off in the regions
out of the Tokyo-Osaka area, having as the main cause
the formal inflexibility of the Japanese researchers, but
also caused, as in Sophia and in the Brazilian poles, by
the limited autonomy of the branches of global high
technology companies to start the innovation process.
The result is that the Japanese strategy of promoting the
building, structuring and operation of branch plants of
large industrial conglomerates did not guarantee
technological innovation capacity to the regions and did
not significantly improve the regional development more
broadly and nationally, as was aimed by the program. The
reason is that these plants did not provide stability to the
regional economic and technological development.
These initiatives in Japan, of adequately
structuring its peripheral regions in the technological
scenario that is emerging, are pioneering. Despite
susceptible to errors, they push forward the regional
development concept based on technology, serving as a
model for the industrial decentralization policy issue for its
territorial comprehensiveness and political continuity,
going through many governments with no significant
alteration, an essential condition for the project credibility.
The combination of local and national initiatives
to keep its global technological position makes of Japan
the center of attention for its magnitude and ambitious
perspective. However, a great difficulty will be to
overcome the extreme structural inflexibility of its
economy, founded on the traditional alliance between
companies and the federal government. This ends up
establishing a sort of innovation “monopoly”, discouraging
the dissemination of the technology-based enterprises to
the peripheral regions.
In the creative process necessary for inducing
technological innovation, the agility of the productive
structures plays a fundamental role, since there is an
imposition for permanent flexibility to adapt to the new and
constant transformations deriving from global
competitivity.
The search for innovative solutions does not only involve
the individual, but requires a reflection that involves the
community structure as a whole within a wide collective
context. In it, the territory is the field for a constant
assertion of the population that interacts with it, proactively
participating with its endogenous resources, viewing
flexibility and creativity, based on the historical and cultural
development of the local society.
There is some concern about this connection in the
Londrina strategic positioning, in which the resumption of
the enterprising initiatives in the early North of Paraná
colonization in the mid-1940s can be observed. This
occurred after the perception of local politicians and
entrepreneurs that there was an inefficient use of the
Londrina potential for development, which led to their
hiring an international consultancy to re-qualify the city
through an industrialization guided by the community
common sense.
When seeking the correction of its history course,
Londrina makes a correct recovery of its entrepreneurship,
characterized by the communitarian establishment of the
major public services companies. They have supported
the growth of economic activities in this region ever since
its foundation, guiding collectivity efforts to the belief
prevailing in the contemporary global scenario: technology
as a base for regional development.
However, if on the one hand, Londrina found the right
route, on the other hand it has not yet found the way to
fulfill the community expectations, as shows the present
situation of its IDP. Its implementation ended up in the
bureaucratic ambit of a municipal organism instead of that
of an autonomous development agency, as suggested by
the consultants and communities to ensure a continuous
collective interference process in the local development.
An attempt at reintegrating the IDP to the community is
conducted by the non-governmental organization
ADETEC, as the Londrina “technological map”, idealized
by the entity aiming to identify technological competencies
existing in the region so as to integrate the academic
environment to the regional productive chains, starting
from the industrial diagnosis elaborated in the IDP, intends
to re-establish a cooperation environment between
universities and companies in the region. With this, it may
countervail the apathy occurred in the industrial
development management, but which was not actually
occurring in the ambit of the local municipal administration.
To the idea of removing technological bottlenecks and
generating innovation in the products and services
produced in the North of Paraná, projecting the city as the
headquarter of an international level Technopolis, the
discussion on structuring an inter-institutional network,
technologically based, and inserted in the regional
productive environment in the region should be added, a
challenge to a society traditionally identified with
agribusiness.
The development agency, as seen in the Londrina IDP,
elaborated by Andersen Consulting to manage the work
program, would meet the permanent need for strategic
adjustments in the IDP. It was not possible, however, to
make it happen in the municipal ambit, bureaucratic by
nature, in which the plan was inserted; therefore, to attain
the necessary efficiency, the institution concept should be
expanded and disseminated to the region which actually
interacts with the Londrina metropolitan region, re-thinking
the comprehensiveness of the plan.
The point is to know whether the concrete formation of a
Technopolis in this city in the North of Paraná is viable,
since it implies a society and an economy intrinsically
receptive to innovation, as this requires: an educational
system that stimulates creativity and the quest for
scientific and technological knowledge; a laboratory
network capable of conducting team work to develop and
acquire knowledge as from information coming from
outside; a structure for developing and controlling the
quality of products, abiding by international norms;
technical resources, such as equipment, precision
machinery and computational stores; an industrial
structure to support a productive “industrial ecology”, in
which small suppliers, potentially innovative and
technologically-oriented supply large companies which
have access to resources and to the market; institutions
and programs that connect researchers and inventors to
potential users of the knowledge they generate, as well as
to investors; a legal system to protect both local and
imported technological innovation; an economic political
environment that stimulates research, development and
investment in innovation; a reliable energy system with
good frequency and amplitude control; an adequate
infrastructure for telecommunications, communications
and transport; besides an excellent urban life quality,
which implies sophisticated leisure and cultural facilities,
including a professional level theater, which, however
difficult it is to believe, the city still does not count on.
Faced with the complexity of these recommendations, it
can be seen that, so as to create the ideal Technopolis
atmosphere in Londrina, mobilization of material and
intellectual resources is mandatory. Yet it goes beyond the
local ambit, echoing in the decision spheres of the federal
and state governments, also being related to an
interaction with the national and international academic
and entrepreneurial communities, in which there would be
financial resources capable of taking on a project of such
magnitude.
It is concluded that, even counting on competence to
implement the necessary local actions, sufficiently proven
with the organizations that show to be able to make them
operational, such as ADETEC, besides founding them on
well elaborated strategic plans, which is the case of IDP, if
there is not a commitment of the public sector at all levels,
from local to federal, very little will be attained so that
Londrina can actually be considered a Technopolis in the
competitive international scenario of the complex “New
Economy”.
This conclusion on the experience of that city in Paraná is
applicable to others that have to face the amazing number
of variables manifested with the globalized economy that
grows at the same rate as it expands beyond the national
territories and of the regional technological poles that
established the base for its development at global scale,
which causes an interdependence in the globalization
process of localities.
It will be necessary to reflect on how to understand the
economic system as part of a world social system with
structural constraints, with groups, members and
coexistence rules, seeking a possible coherence from the
result of conflicting forces which keep the socio-economic
system balanced.
Thus understood, it is similar to an organism, in which
there is a time that defines the path of life; this will be
observed to change in some aspects whereas others keep
unchanged in their permanent evolution.
The urbanism of the early XXI century has its core
penetrated, with urgent issues such as the destruction of
the familiar structure which causes the emergence of new
beings, generated by the city itself: the mother city, a
place where one gets intoxicated with speed, with alcohol
and now with the Internet.
Connected, the world society thinks and works
cybernetically, weaving a physical and emotional network
that goes beyond territories. Being here or farther on,
where it is possible to find someone like us, is a question
of being online.
Life dynamics turns global, yet the day-to-day universe of
human beings is in the locus. Therefore, the great issue is
the city. There, all wishes are amalgamated, as are all our
expectations for our short existences, while temporal
beings.
Time is a tyrant; it imposes conflicting, convergent
temporalities. In this sense, all times are global, yet there
is not a world time. “Space is globalized, but it does not
belong to the world, except as a metaphor. All spaces
belong to the world, but there is not a world space. Those
that really globalize, are people and places”, said Milton
Santos (1998).
How can we work with this persistent maze posed by our
modern pluralistic society and its increasingly more
autonomous values, in which a vast uncertainty, not
simply economic, is created? We will certainly be sailing
seas never before navigated, with the need of an
economic focus comparable to the quantic uncertainty of
the physicist Max Planck.
Development is a process, the planning of which should
never be a product delivered in a cast, a final one.
Inserted in this context, globalization - with its emerging
paradigms - should be understood as a continuous
challenge deriving from the human beings’ need to go
beyond their physical and territorial boundaries. This is
something that has occurred ever since the beginning of
civilization, but that now occurs at a speed never before
observed.
This process is verified to be altered and to undergo
constant operational mutations in function of the
technological innovations pushed by man’s longing to
leave behind the old site, seeking to break away from the
past, from that already conquered.
Being in many places simultaneously, and pulling down
the oldest of fears: time. This may be the true
accomplishment that globalization, forged by the XX
century civilization, leaves as a legacy to the following
century.
Time. Velocity. Supports for the wave of a global level
competition based on the expansion of information
technology, which makes viable a “New Economy” that
emerges at high speed, making communities bloom and
connect to the transformations, competent as they are to
understand the complex process required by this
connectivity.
Localities provide occasions in a world that provides
possibilities and that “globalizes people, their places and
their regions”. However, it is in the diversity of the locus
and in creativity that their cultures may provide that lies
the cradle of knowledge, as well as new perspectives for
the future of sustainable global development.
It is thus necessary to elaborate new models so as to
conduct the economic development of the XXI century
localities, composed of collective activities such as:
1. defining strategic visions so as to understand the local-
global relationship;
2. creating planning processes so that communities may
conduct this relationship;
3. adopting a market attitude in relation to products and
clients in their regions;
4. establishing quality in programs and services in order
to compete with other regions;
5. counting on ability to efficiently transmit and
disseminate their competitive advantages;
6. diversifying their economic base and creating
mechanisms to get flexibly adapted to the new
conditions;
7. developing and nourishing entrepreneurship
characteristics;
8. stimulating the private sector so that it takes on social
responsibility;
9. elaborating their own project of economic
transformation, as a result of the cultural, political and
leadership processes differences;
10. establishing organizational and executive mechanisms
that support its implementation and maintain the
strength of the initial enthusiasm for the local
development project, once it is started.
The reflection on these actions should stimulate the
establishment of instruments to carry them out. The
reason for this are the powerful forces, both external and
internal, which interact in the localities, raising the
importance of the regions to the same level as that of the
nations in the competitive global challenge, imposes an
urgent capacity building in the community collective and
individual resources.
Regional competitivity will depend on the capacity of its
community to exercise complex functions, such as:
a. integration, seeking the logic of the region
together with its needs and potentialities, as
well as supporting the articulations between
the sectorial and the global, among the
economic, social and cultural sectors;
b. mediation, by supporting several actors for
conceiving and for conducting a project; by
favoring conditions for decision-making and
ensuring the permanent flow of information
and connection among actors;
 c. innovation, by surveying the population
needs and by translating them into a
feasible development project, accepted by
all;
d. mobilization, by promoting the community
initiatives and by ensuring the participation
in the institutional and human resources
projects.
In sum, it can be concluded that there is a need to
establish civility processes in the community so that it
builds capacity to deal with the complex challenges of the
knowledge era and with chances for success.
The question is how to conduct such local development
projects, the model of which was created and developed in
nations and localities where society counts on civic
practice, where the various collective tasks depend on
participation and on cooperation, as a habit that
sometimes goes back by centuries of years of the history
of a country, when the country does not count on such a
tradition, as is the case of Brazil.
 Founding of The Cognitive City
As from the perception that:
The technical-scientific-informational environment, which
shows to have increasing complexity, guides and
permeates all the human activities in a successive chain of
social and economic transformations that materialize in
the communities territorial space;
Knowledge, being a resource from this environment,
would validate the use and operation of the local space as
a productivity global locus, ensuring the combination of
latent possibilities and the opportunities provided by the
“New Economy” for the regions. It would also allow a
reaction to the perverse effects that globalization might
bring to the local development;
The local economy shall never be stagnant in order to be
competitive, as its scenario is permanently changed and
today this is as fast as the information flows that cross
continents;
Contemporary technological civilization achievements
have created barriers in the communication among
societies, excluding communities unable of grasping the
complexity of relations under mutation, which means a
noise in the sustainable global development.
The knowledge gap is the challenge for structuring regions
and localities;
And considering that:
Acquiring knowledge means stimulating creativity and
flowing into innovation, which is a vitality and survival
factor for the “New Economy” organizations and for the
dynamic communities in the globalized world.
It may be stated that:
A radical change in the collective mentality urges, as the
one that determined the importance of technology in the
Industrial Revolution, during the transformation process
from an agricultural society into an industrial society. Now,
with its metamorphosis into digital society, the relevance is
cognition.
“What we call Information Revolution is actually a
Knowledge Revolution. What has made it possible to
routinize processes is not machinery; the computer is only
the trigger. Software is the reorganization of traditional
work, based on centuries of experience, through the
application of knowledge and especially of systematic,
logical analysis. This means that the key to maintaining
leadership is not electronics; it is cognitive science”ii.
It is established that:
To learn not to die is the new paradigm determined by
globalization in the localities in the knowledge era;
Local development is not and will no longer be as it used
to − the creative destruction imposed by the globalized
“New Economy” requires an original posture in the
communities: a permanent need of acquiring and
processing information and knowledge.
 Proposition
The fundamental idea is that, in information economy, the
challenge of the regional or entrepreneurial competitivity
depends on innovation, and innovation requires
knowledge creation.
Innovation, knowledge and competitivity are sustainable
only where they can count on an adequate national
innovation system, a strategic factor in the competitivity of
regions and their organizations, by means of an efficient
permanent mobilization in the companies, in the
educational complex, in the governmental organisms and
agencies.
“Competitivity is only viable through an adequate national
policy for innovation, requiring the formulation of a plan
that lies without the scope of market economy.
Nevertheless, can economic goals be met without giving
up the comfortable framework of the traditional national
development plans? The beginning may be something
such as seeking the competitivity based on the
transformation of mentalities, embedding it in the
symbiosis of economic policies into cultural policies, in
which the purpose is to understand that a society
competence is only possible with knowledge acquisition
through stimulating creativity. The economists’ monopoly
is broken in this new type of economic policy as there is
the need for “interdisciplinary teams in which economists,
anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, managers,
entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and... artists coexist”iii.
Now, when we are faced with the concrete need of
stimulating regional development, it is possible to believe
that kindling local, biological and cultural diversity provides
a wealth of possibilities that may raise the community
importance to the level of knowledge society.
The greatest asset of innovation is creativity, which is not
attained solely by means of multifunctional teams, but also
through cultural diversity, enhancing the role of knowledge
in the regional space as a factor of competitive advantage
of enterprises, once it creates the adequate atmosphere
for entrepreneurial synergy and the strengthening of local
activities.
Local productive agglomeration creates entrepreneurial
collaborative advantage. Small, medium-sized and large
companies may cooperate for the same projects and later
get involved in new projects, establishing a continuous
network process. Firms share talents and intellectual
capital throughout a common geographical area in which
enterprises of all sizes develop relations nets so as to help
one another a obtain speed, quality, flexibility and
knowledge that are essential factors for competitive
advantage at global level.
Competitive advantage is acquired through collaborative
advantage. Collaborative advantage derives from the fact
that knowledge is the new material resource of companies
and, incorporated by people, turns into intellectual capital
which is the source of competitive advantage.
In the “New Economy” knowledge, abilities and experience
incorporated by individuals has greater value than capital
and, for this reason, it is believed that it may be
considered a post-capitalist economy.iv
And if:
Technological integration spills over the countries
geographical boundaries, it determines a growing
decentralization of national development policies;
The new globalized “New Economy” incorporates
productivity factors, such as flexibility and innovation, and
it depends on local development policies;
The fall of the space barrier in the economic and social
relations of humanity reveals to human beings the
richness of their cultural diversity and the cultural
complexityv of the global society;
Technique for the sake of technique cannot ensure the
participation of individuals in a technological society in
which difference is not a synonym of inequality;
The human capacity to manipulate new pieces of
knowledge emerges in permanent evolution, a result of
findings and researches at global level, which are
incorporated to the day-to-day of people and
organizations. It will be a reality in the localities;
The human cultural scale for acquiring knowledge, vital for
making the world economic integration process viable,
cannot be left aside.
It should then be considered that:
There is an urgent need for an operationalized policy with
participation, decision and support mechanisms in the
communities that have to be organized for local actions
aiming to stimulate the connection between the regional
and the world economy by strengthening the civic
behavior of the individual as an intellectual being and by
legitimating his/her role as a world citizen.
It may hence be concluded that:
The importance of understanding the intertwinement of a
locality microcosm with the world dimension is critical for a
development model; and
The sustainability of this model is obtained by the society
capacity of conducting its own local experience.
And, finally, we get to the author’s proposition:
This capacity building, until then a particular function of
historical institutional developments, should have as a
principle a collective cognitive process, making it viable for
knowledge. In it one finds the elements that allow
understanding the complex and abstract relations, as
those of the “New Economy”, to establish the forms of
organization and judgment of the ideas and concepts
necessary for building an original model assimilable by the
region it will be applied, enhancing the population cultural
identities, and for contributing to the sustainable global
development with creativity and innovation.
With this, it is expected that:
Civility processes are constituted in Brazilian communities,
building their capacity to perform the numerous collective
tasks required by the knowledge era challenges, with
complexity;
By means of perception, understanding and knowledge
production, regional cultural characteristics enhancement
is obtained to meet the need of conducting the community
along the unsure way of economic globalization by
instituting a collective innovative mentality; and
The hundreds of years of civic practice history that were
necessary to model the development of nations and
localities by their collaborative societies may not thus be
indispensable to trigger processes that result in original
economic development models in a country without this
tradition, such as Brazil, as they would be elaborated with
creativity and innovation by those that could then be called
cognitive cities.
In the early 1990s, the Londrina economy was faced with
challenges. A pole of the agricultural-economic activities in
the North of the State of Paraná, the city was losing its
dynamics, with unemployment and lack of diversified
productive investments. The perception that this fact
derived from the exhaustion of its economic model,
anchored in the traditional agricultural products market,
pointed to the logic reformulation of this model as
essential for resuming its development.
Having identified this issue in my birthplace, I aimed to
share my observation of its economic decline in informal
talks with local entrepreneurs, which resulted in the idea of
taking advantage of the global industries relocation
phenomenon, stimulating the international capital flow to
direct its industrial investments to the city. The view was
that industrialization, still incipient in the region, could
perform a more important role to rekindle the economy in
Londrina.
So as to conduct marketing actions with large national and
international companies, it was deemed necessary to
conduct a high quality diagnosis, with entrepreneurial
reliability, of the regional vocation for industrialization.
 From Cognitive to Creative City
In December 1994, after articulations of entrepreneurs
with the Municipal Government, the Andersen Consulting
company was hired to elaborate the Londrina Industrial
Development Plan (IDP). The work was conducted by
means of several meetings, debates and seminars,
discussing issues so that a strategic plan was applied to
the city.
The analysis of this methodology and others, similarly
applied in many cities, intended to adjust its local
development policies to the new conditions deriving from
the global economy. This would justify the proposal, based
on local economic development studies, for my doctorate
thesis at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the
University of Sao Paulo (USP), under the advisory of Prof.
Ualfrido Del Carlo.
Hired by the Sao Paulo Institute for Technological
Research (IPT), between 1996 and 1997, I had the
opportunity to participate in the elaboration of the "State
Competitive Strategy" plan of the State of Sao Paulo
Secretariat of Science, Technology and Economic
Development (SCTDE/SP), focusing on technological
poles and local economic development, counting on
excellent literature provided by the IPT and USP libraries.
At the same time, I improved my knowledge giving
lectures on Local Development Agencies in seminars
promoted by the SCTDE/SP within the State of Sao Paulo,
besides participating in meetings with regional leaderships
aiming to create a local development agencies forum in
the State of Sao Paulo.
During the works for the IPT, I could verify the importance
technology could have as a factor to induce regional
development, which led me to believe in a viable
economic development model to be implemented in
Londrina. It presented the characteristics of a
technological pole, some of them with national
acknowledgement, such as the State University of
Londrina (UEL), the Londrina Telephone Communication
Service (SERCOMTEL), the Agronomic Institute of Paraná
(IAPAR) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research
Corporation (EMBRAPA).
Stimulated by my advisor, I started to work on concepts
and theories that could be applied to the regional
development conditions of the "capital" of the North of
Paraná, seeking to direct researches towards the
identification of a local economic development model
founded on technology-based industries.
This led me to study the conditions found in Emilia-
Romagna, with which Londrina had permanent contact,
thanks to the Paraná-Europe Program existing in the city.
There were regular visits by Londrina local leaderships to
that region of Italy, internationally known for its economy,
founded on a network of small and medium-sized
companies.
The investigations extended as far as Japan, a country
which used to welcome a large number of "dekasseguis"
from Londrina who, after working in factories of all sectors,
including high technology ones, went back to Londrina
with resources to invest in the region. However, for a lack
of alternatives, investments were restricted to urban and
rural real estate. Technology and innovative productive
processes transfer could be assimilated by the local
culture, since these workers, serving as facilitators, would
be potential entrepreneurs. The Japanese regional
development model is based on the implementation of the
Technopolises Program, regions that have their productive
structure founded on technological innovation.
The identification of productive chains in industrial
segments in the food area and apparel "clusters" by the
Londrina IDP, made me direct the researches towards
industrial agglomerations, seeking an industrial
development model analogous to the spontaneous
organization process, then identified in Londrina. Excellent
surveys on Brazilian industrialized regions and medium-
sized municipalities were found at the Institute of Applied
Economic Research (IPEA).
In 1997 and 1998, the establishment of the Ourinhos
Economic Development Agency (ADEO), by means of a
contract with the local Municipal Government, was an
excellent opportunity for applying the concepts and
theories approached in my studies. I acted as Technical
Director at ADEO, accounting for the formulation of its
strategic planning. I identified cultural and institutional
hurdles to stimulate managerial and technological
innovation, not only for the micro and small local
companies, but also in the public sector. Hence, even with
the support of important institutions, such as the Brazilian
Micro and Small-Business Support Service (SEBRAE) and
the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), the failure of the
ADEO main project, an entrepreneurial incubator, could
not be avoided.
The work in Ourinhos allowed a greater approximation
with Londrina. Thanks to the nearness between the two
municipalities, I could closely follow the efforts for
formatting a technological pole in the North of Paraná
region, inspired by the IDP conclusion and developed for
industrializing the region. In 1998, at the end of the work
with ADEO, I was hired by the Londrina Municipal
Government for establishing a regional development
agency, viewing at the implementation of the Londrina
Metropolitan Region.
Until late in 1999, the coexistence with the Londrina
community was intense, and I participated in two
technological journeys promoted by the Technological
Development Association (ADETEC): in 1998, as a
representative of the Municipal Planning Secretariat and,
in 1999, with a lecture on the development agency.
After these observations and analysis, based on
significant literature and document surveys, personal
observations in my professional experience, researches
and theoretical studies, I came to the conclusion that it is
not possible to build an economic development model that
is not original. That is, if there is a model, it is unique and
cultural, applicable solely to the society in which it was
originated. That is a paradox.
The predominance of a world development model, as the
one existing so far, results from a strong institutional
articulation, broad organizational power and
homogenization of localized cultural values that, among
other factors, such as the technological one, seeks to
guarantee its expansion throughout the global market.
Globalization is the coming winter and there is no way of
avoiding it, but the simple assimilation of its model does
not guarantee the Brazilian regions competitivity.
The problem of peripheral economies exclusion cannot be
faced without first transforming the mentality of the agents
accounting for the governance of the localities and also
that of their citizens. The use of technological evolution
has to be taken care of to stimulate regional economies,
but a broad collective cognitive process must be
undertaken so as to allow endogenous development
capacity.
Economic development, more than a mere technological
issue, is a cultural problem.
The cultural problem, as today presented to the
knowledge society, through the emergence of a
sustainable social diversity, has its best guidance by
means of the Creative Economy.
Creative regions and classes, by means of innovative
communities, will make of cognitive cities the networks for
the global creative economy, ensuring more sustainable
social and economic prosperity of regions.
i
The same problem is faced in the Brazilian technological poles
and also detected in Sophia Antipolis. Yet, if, on the one hand,
in Japan the decision centers are the Japanese industries
headquartered in the Tokyo-Osaka axle, both in France and in
Brazil this syndrome derives from multinational companies
headquartered in other countries, where investment and research
decisions are taken.
ii
Drucker, Peter – Beyond the Information Revolution, The
Atlantic Monthly, p. 27, October, 1999.
iii
Schwartz, Gilson – Nova competição global exige política
cultural, Tendências Internacionais, Folha de São Paulo,
December 12, 1999.
iv
Henton, Doug & Walesh, Kim – Linking the New Economy to
the Livable Community, The James Irvine Foundation, April,
1998. In http://www.coecon. com /ahwahnee.pdf, May, 2000.
v
The fact of this complexity being cumulative, the rapid
advancement of knowledge power and the network created to
facilitate the growing digital economy, make Max Weber’s
considerations on the importance of culture and civic values of a
society for its economic growth even more relevant, as these are
the abstract conditions and non-material factors that support the
information flows that make a region development viable.