Learning Cities, Learning Regions, Learning Communities

Lifelong Learning and Local Government

Norman Longworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134195121
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book explores the mental and social landscape of the city of today and tomorrow; the way in which people think, interact, work together, learn and live with and among each other. Written to address the urgent need for a guide to the principles and practices of lifelong learning, the topics covered include:

• an introduction to the idea of learning cities
• policies and strategies for the learning city, including examples form around the world
• how to activate learning, involve stakeholders and encourage citizen participation in a learning city or region.

Written by one of the world's foremost thinkers in the field, this book is highly readable and easily accessible to anyone interested in the issues addressed. Workers in local, regional and national government, academics and students of lifelong learning, in addition to anyone with an interest in the future of cities and communities will find this a truly invaluable resource and guide to a way of thinking that many see as the way to a better tomorrow.

Chapter 1
Renewing, researching, refining

Making sense of learning cities and regions

A new phenomenon is hitting the world of cities, towns and regions and it is potentially one of the most powerful and important movements of our turbulent times. Most city managers will have heard of it; some are taking active steps to accommodate it. Not everyone understands its significance, nor its nature, nor its implications, nor the actions that need to be taken to incorporate it into city and regional life. But the fact is that learning cities, learning towns, learning regions, learning communities are terms now in common use throughout the developed and the developing world, mostly because local and regional administrations have recognized that a more prosperous future depends on the development of the human and social capital in their midst. And the key to that development is encapsulated in three words—learning, learning and learning. That means to instil the habit of learning in as many as possible of their citizens and to empower them to assist in the building of their own communities as communities of learning.

All member states of the European Union subscribe to the words adapted from the Lisbon summit,

Lifelong learning is no longer just one aspect of education and training; it must become the guiding principle for provision and participation across the full continuum of learning contexts. The coming decade must see the implementation of this vision. All those living in Europe, without exception, should have equal opportunities to adjust to the demands of social and economic change and to participate actively in the shaping of Europe’s future.

(Commission of the European Union 2000)

This is not just because lifelong learning is the flavour of the time, but because it has beneficial economic, social, political, cultural and environmental implications for everyone’s quality of life. And, in the same way that a whole continent sees lifelong learning as its potential salvation, so too do many cities and regions within that continent, and in other continents too. But some pertinent questions remain. What does lifelong learning mean in the context of the city, the community and the region? And how would cities and regions know that they had become ‘learning cities’ and ‘learning regions’, as opposed to those that simply support and encourage learning? What are the imperatives driving this movement? How can they develop a culture of learning within their boundaries? What are the tools and techniques that can be mobilised to assist in this process? How will these learning cities and learning regions trigger real, dynamic progress into the 21st century?

The answers to these questions are not so simple that they can be explained in a series of one-line statements. We have definitions galore and several of them will be articulated in Chapter 2. Moreover, definitions of a learning city and region tend to differ according to the provenance of the definers and their own interpretation of the purpose of lifelong learning. Where it is based in the urban development departments of universities and cities a learning city or region will emphasise the physical and technological infrastructure of city regeneration. Where the focus is on employment, employability organisational management and training for industry, the development of human and social capital for economic gain and competitive edge tends to predominate. Where the motivation is based on education methodology, curriculum and assessment, it will concentrate on e-learning, classroom management and the psychology of how people learn. And still we have not reached the social, environmental and cultural rationale, which provides it with a heart and a soul.

Truth to tell the learning city or region is not any one of these, but a glorious mixture of all of them, allied to the release of the health-giving creativity and imagination which every place needs to harness in order to progress into a more prosperous and stable future. Working together, they produce a developmental paradigm shift in countries, cities, regions and communities in which the age of education and training—which has served western society well in the late 20th century in satisfying the needs of a growing, upwardly mobile proportion of the population—is now giving way to the era of lifelong learning, in which new methods, tools and techniques are employed to target and motivate everyone in a community, city, town or region as a lifelong learner. The European Policy Paper on the local and regional dimension of lifelong learning is quite explicit. It says that ‘those cities that achieve success in this will be the winners in the paradox where intelligent local action leads to success in a globalised world’.

It will be a very different world. We live in momentous times. Richard Eckersley, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, suggests that the twin spikes of technological change and populations growth might lead to ‘A new universalism and, because of the global threat they pose, help drive the emergence of a universal culture, a new sense of human solidarity and destiny, a resurgent spirituality’. Almost four years later he detects ‘a thousand brushfires of revolution breaking out as more people re-assess their priorities and explore different ways of thinking and living their lives. What we are seeing are parallel processes of cultural decay and renewal, a titanic struggle as old ways of thinking about ourselves fail and new ways of being human strive for definition and acceptance’.

Such musing is given a more practical vision in the journalist Toffler’s ‘practopia’. ‘Neither the best nor the worst of all possible worlds,’ he says, ‘but one that is both practical and preferable to the one we had—not ruthlessly undemocratic, not inherently militarist, not reducing its citizens to faceless uniformity, not destroying neighbours or degrading environment. A civilisation that is not frozen in amber but pulsing with innovation, capable of directing great passion into great art, facing unprecedented historical choices—about genetics, biotechnology, environmental salvation—but inventing new ethical or moral standards to deal with such complex issues’.

By contrast Botkin, author of No Limits to Learning, predicates a ‘wisdom society’. ‘By wisdom society, I mean societies that have a tolerance for alternative values and value that diversity. I mean cultures that break out of the arrogance and monopoly of believing they know the answers and should tell others how to live. I mean a society that has a large number of people with the ability and capacity to accept more than a single viewpoint. They can understand multiple perspectives and generate multiple solutions to complex problems. How do we get from here to there? First we must become a learning society. Only then can we move toward wisdom. Becoming a wisdom society involves a process of learning, learning to become more tolerant, more respectfu...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Renewing, researching, refining
• Chapter 2 Defining, dissecting, deepening
• Chapter 3 Constructing, contracting, commemorating
• Chapter 4 Measuring, monitoring, managing
• Chapter 5 Equipping, empowering, enriching
• Chapter 6 Participating, partnering, profiting
• Chapter 7 Consulting, convincing, contributing
• Chapter 8 Imagining, internationalising, interconnecting
• Chapter 9 Summarising, strengthening, sustaining
• Annexe
• Bibliography
• Index