Philadelphia is a “Thinking Region,” says new Knowledge in Cities study

Philadelphia is a “Thinking Region” with “high knowledge about arts, humanities, IT and commerce and low knowledge about manufacturing,” according to a new study called “Knowledge in Cities” (behind a paywall) published in the May issue of Urban Studies.

The classification lands Philly in one of the 11 total knowledge clusters the researchers identified in a look at how educational attainment and employment correspond with regional growth and development. The other ten regions include Innovating, Engineering, Understanding, Farming, Enterprising, Making, Teaching, Building, Working, and Comforting Region.

“Thinking Regions” like Philadelphia, as well as New York, San Diego, and many other smaller cities were associated economic growth indicators, like GDP and educational attainment, somewhat better than the national average. In comparison, “Innovating Regions” like Boston and San Francisco had “the highest levels of human capital and innovative activity,” and levels of GDP and educational attainment that were significantly higher than the national average, according to the study.

“…[T]he clusters of Thinking and Enterprising Regions, which also have average standardized GDP and income per capita [standardized] values that exceed zero, are also noted for a significant presence of IT, commerce and engineering, which have been found in other studies to be important for economic growth and development.”

While Philadelphia knowledge cluster may not be quite on par with cities it hopes to compete with, the study suggests it has the industries and knowledge-base in place to positively affect economic growth.

As Richard Florida notes in a post on the study at Atlantic Cities: ” Mayors, economic developers, and city-builders can use the study’s methodology and results to learn more about the knowledge profile of their own economies, identify other regions to study and to benchmark, and determine their underlying economic strength and weaknesses, and opportunities for future growth.”