Knowledge-Based City; an Essential Link to Future City

Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed major economic, social, technical, and environmental changes that have profoundly affected patterns of urbanization, human activities, and lifestyles; As the challenges of globalization, knowledge-based economics, network society, climate change, information and communication technologies, transportation technologies, digital divide, rapid urbanization, and increasing urbanization have become major issues for researchers, planners, policymakers, and managers. In this regard, knowledge-based city is one of the new concepts in the field of urban studies, which has been proposed due to the growing problems of cities and the need to manage and develop this system based on knowledge. A knowledge-based city is a development approach whose ultimate goal is to achieve sustainable urban development and economic progress. These cities can use knowledge to find effective solutions to problems and create new opportunities in the field of global competition. In addition, a knowledge-based approach will influence future planning theories. Therefore, this article presents the traces of the knowledge-based approach in planning theories in a qualitative way after expressing the influential currents on the emergence of the concept of knowledge-based urban development and introducing its features. The results show that just as rational planning and holistic planning were influenced by capitalist economics, there is a trace of knowledge-based economics in participatory planning; thus, the role of the planner has changed from the omniscient to the facilitator, and the economic foundations of planning have shifted from the capitalist economy to the knowledge-based economy. Therefore, future planning theories seem to be moving towards a knowledge-based planning approach.