Financial Engineering & Risk Management

The First Iranian Conference on Financial Engineering & Risk Management
http://www.ims.ir/gatherings/iran_france.htm

Knowledge Management

The First Iranian Knowledge management Seminar
http://www.kmiran.com

Delft: From Industraial City to Knowledge City

Delft is located in The Netherlands, in the province of south Holland. The city has a long tradition in industrial activity, in sectors like metal industry, chemical industry, construction, food and drinks. Especially before 1975, the industry employment was an important feature. However, in the decades of 1970s and 1980s, the difficulties that the industrial companies faced, resulted in a significant drop of employment in the industrial sector. Unemployment used to be a main problem for local authorities as well as for national government. The local government of Delft responded to this decline in employment in a way that can be distinguished in three phases:
Phase 1. In this phase, placed chronologically at the end of the decade of the 1970s, the objective was to maintain the number of jobs. The local government had the opinion that an active policy was necessary and recognized the importance of the local University of Technology and of TNO (research institute) in the direction of offering business in Delft. However, the local government did not translate this into specific policy measures.
Phase 2. Unemployment increased considerably in the beginning of the 1980s. Much attention was paid to social and cultural activities for the unemployed. At the end of the decade the local government realized that the city needed to have a clear vision for the future. The project known as “View of Delft” set a new direction for the local government. Delft, as a modern center of knowledge, was considered to be one of the strong points for future development.
Phase 3. The development of Delft, the knowledge city. A study implemented for the city, by TNO-INRO (TNO-INRO, 1990; Knight, 1995), named “Delft, the knowledge city”, offered an extensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Delft economy. The main conclusion was that knowledge was one of its strongest points. About one-third of jobs in Delft were knowledge-intensive. According to the report, the local government had the responsibility of taking the initiative to transform Delft into a knowledge city, through the promotion of networks linking local business, the university, research institutions and the local government as partners. In order to bridge the “traditional Delft” and the knowledge sector, a change in culture was needed. Citizens, companies and social organizations should be actively involved in this cultural shift. Knowledge was no longer an abstract meaning, but it was regarded as a production factor like labor and capital. In 1996, Delft City Council adopted the main strategy in order to further develop as a knowledge city. This strategy could not be accomplished by the city on its own. Practitioners from the “knowledge industry” were invited to take part in the planning process. Knowledge players in town were asked to help define the mission and develop an action plan, financed by the $3 million fund that was made available. Since then, 60 projects have been carried out. At the beginning of the 1990s, 30 percent of the economy was knowledge-based and had grown to 40 percent by the end of the century. The city clustered its knowledge intensive projects, included in the “Delft Knowledge City” initiative, in five streams, which reflect Delft’s strengths: (1) water and soil; (2) design and architecture; (3) information technology; (4) innovative transport systems; and (5) environmental technologies.
During implementation of the strategy, the intention was to strengthen these points and thereby increase employment levels in Delft as well as the familiarity of Delft as a brand.

Barcelona, City of Knowledge

According to the third strategic plan for the development of the city of barcelona (Barcelona, 1999b): “In the new context of globalization and the European Union, Barcelona, as the metropolitan region and capital of Catalonia, should press forward with a social and urban economic transformation process in order to place itself amongst the leading group of urban regions in the new information and knowledge society of the 21st century ...”. The general council and the executive board responsible for the implementation of this strategic plan, chose five strategic lines, with main points being “knowledge” and the “own strengths” of Barcelona. Strategic line 3 involved the concept of “city of knowledge”. A new councilor was added to the city’s political structure, who works horizontally within the city administration and is responsible for the project called “City of Knowledge”. The new councilor’s task is to make this concept an integral part of the policies of other departments – culture, tourism and urban development – with the concurrent support of the important agencies in knowledge production, transfer and application.
The success of the concept is particularly dependent on the private sector’s initiatives and actions. In this respect, Barcelona attempts to stimulate private sector with two types of measures: on the one side, by providing the basic infrastructure which is considered necessary – energy infrastructure, communication infrastructure, transport systems etc. – and on the other side by encouraging, through the appropriate regulations, the development of buildings for “knowledge” businesses.
Moreover, the offices of economic promotion, employment, tourism and commerce use the concept of “city of knowledge” in its activities, mostly through Barcelona Activa, which is an autonomous company fully sponsored by the City Hall and responsible for the overall economic development of Barcelona. Some of Barcelona Activa’s latest projects are related to the “City of Knowledge” strategy:
Barcelona Net Activa, a virtual community based on Internet/intranet/extranet technologies. It provides support to business people, accommodating a virtual community of enterprises and promoting the creation of enterprises through co-operation, innovation and continuous learning.
Cibernàrium, an “Internet multispace” for the professional and business community. Its main objective is to bring new technologies closer to enterprises, professionals, students and all the people interested in the opportunities offered by a knowledge society.
Infopime, a project that pursues the objective of creating an efficient communications system between Barcelona City Council and businesses, via a web site.
Barcelona Emprèn, a venture capital company addressed specifically to satisfy the financial needs of small innovative enterprises, for their development. The financing is derived from the municipality of Barcelona, financial institutions, insurance companies and large enterprises of the city.
It must be noted that the concept of knowledge city has quickly gained interest in Barcelona. All agencies involved in the implementation of Barcelona’s strategic plan, including local authorities, participated with equal power in the process of setting the priorities. In this way, the relations between public and private parties were strengthened. In addition, the appointment of the councilor mentioned above, made clear that the city wishes to use its innovative capacities to their full potential. The remaining question is whether the investments in knowledge and new innovative firms will eventually result to the anticipated economic success story that is anticipated. It is hoped that the presence of many small knowledge-intensive companies in certain sectors will make the city an important economic center and that bigger companies will be attracted by this environment.

Tehran's EarthQuake - On Behalf of Ehsan

The city of Tehran, with its vulnerability to earthquakes, has been planning a master disaster programme considering different aspects. It is hoped that, by activating all objectives. The city will achieve a better earthquake disaster management policy. A detail study based on available data only, was done to determine the seismic vulnerability of the mega-city of Tehran with a population of about 10 million people. About 640,000 residences out of 1,100,000 seem to suffer collapse or serious damage while 1,450,000 people are killed with about 4,330,000 suffering injuries. A total of 14 parameters were considered for each sub-division. Relative rating for each of the parameters considered was investigated and summarized in a table. This matrix of vulnerability indexes identified in more detail the severity of the problems for given sub-divisions. Total and then relative vulnerability for management priority attention was also considered. This indicates that relatively speaking from the worst to the least vulnerable divisions in city of Tehran are as follows: 20, 19, 16, 15, 17, 7, 8, 10, 6, 18, 14, 11, 12, 3, 2, 4, 5, 9, 13, 1. Of course this is the overall vulnerability.
Disaster management is a complex form of management which requires many disciplines and specialities. It requires a detailed allocation of tasks and a good knowledge of the domain of the disaster itself. In Iran, through many years of first-hand experience with disasters, a good knowledge of events and what to expect is well known. Also, a system has been established for handling situations. It works well but it is believed that it needs adjustment and modification. The number of earthquake disasters has increased due to the urbanization of the country, especially in earthquake-prone areas. Therefore, serious consideration of the management of these disasters is needed now more than ever. As stated, a more systematic and general approach to this phenomenon is proposed in this paper. The most important factor is that this plan considers all aspects of an earthquake disaster. It includes the problems and solutions to the general disaster cycle with little duplication of duties and tasks allocated to the respective responsible national bodies. Tehran should be redesigned and reconstructed in order to earthquake management. Most importanat and vital information should not only be at Tehran. Tehran citizens should learn how to face the earthquake.

The 1st International Conference on E-Municipality

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The 1st International Conference on E-Municipality

knowledge City

Definition of the city:
"An inhabited place for greater size, population, or importance than a town or a village" is the Meriam-webster dictionary entry for "city". Most definitions for the city, unless referring to a very particular usage, convey the concept of a status granted to a relatively permanent, organized human settlement. Conurbated regions, sections of large metropolis, suburban areas, even highly urbanized rural or industrial areas that are home to relatively large and established communities and provide fundamentally an urban experience to its habitants called city. Urbanization experienced a great leap during the industrialization revolution; massive urbanization took hold in most countries, throughout the 20 century. It is only with the advent of 21st century that for the first time in human history over half of the worlds population is becoming a city resident.
Definition of the knowledge:
Is what is known. Like the related concepts truth, belief, and wisdom, there is no single definition of knowledge on which scholars agree, but rather numerous theories and continued debate about the nature of knowledge. The Longman Online Dictionary Definition for knowledge is the information, skills, and understanding that you have gained through learning or experience. Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association, and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose. Knowledge in the Knowledge management context consists of information augmented by intentionality (or direction). This conception aligns with the DIKW model, which places data, information, knowledge and wisdom into an increasingly useful pyramid. COLLOCATIONS The origin of the DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) hierarchy is in both the Knowledge Management and Information Science domains. Although references to the DIKW hierarchy were made by both Zeleny (1987) and Ackoff (1989) in the Knowledge Management domain, the closest reference to T.S. Eliot’s original hinting appeared in a Futurist article by Cleveland (1982). Conspicuously, data was not in the original information, knowledge, wisdom hierarchy suggested by Eliot or Harland but was added by others. Since then others have also proposed extensions to the ‘top half’ of the hierarchy; Ackoff includes understanding (and some use intelligence) as its own level before attaining wisdom, and Zeleny proposes enlightenment as the final stage beyond wisdom.
The field of KM can be seen as an integral part of the broader concept ``intellectual capital'' (Roos et al., 1997). In literature there are three kinds of intellectual capitals proposed by Stewart (1997) including every knowledge resource. The first is human capital which refers to the capability to solve a problem and is the source of creativity. This is similar to the terms “employee knowledge, “employee competencies” and “professional intellect” proposed by Leonard-Barton (1995), Sveiby (1997) and Quinn, et al. (1996) separately. This is relevant to employees and their experience, competencies, know-what, know-how, know-why, and self-motivated creativity (Mayo, 1998; Davenport, et. al., 1996). The second intellectual capital is structural capital; it is the organizing capability of an organization in order to satisfy the needs of the market. The organizing capability refers to organizational structure, processes, systems, patents, culture, documented experience and knowledge, and the capability to leverage knowledge through sharing and transferring (Stewart, 1997; Holsapple & Joshi, 1999; Mayo, 1998). This is similar to the terms “internal structures,” “organizational capital” proposed by Sveiby (1997) and Petrash (1996).The third kind of intellectual capital is customer capital. It concerns the relationship between an organization and its stakeholders, such as a supplier or customer relationship, brands, and reputation (Stewart, 1997; Holsapple & Joshi, 1999), Sveiby (1997) called it “external structure.”
Knowledge management is managing the corporation’s knowledge or intellectual capital by means of a systemic and organizational specified process for acquiring, organizing, sustaining, applying, sharing and renewing both tacit and explicit knowledge by employees to enhance the organizational performance and create value (Davenport, et al., 1998; Allee, 1997; Alavi & Leidner, 1999). For sustaining these processes both ‘hard’ conditions and ‘soft’ environments have to be created and nurtured. Hard sides mean technological platforms and including facilities and necessary devices. Soft sides consist in trust, team spirit and learning climate for contributors’ productivity. At organizational level, distinctive visions and strategies are formulated to guide and regulate knowledge management, relevant evaluation and reward institutions are to be created to define responsibility and liability of individual and organization.
Tacit and Explicit knowledge:
Within the field of knowledge management there exist two quite distinct and widely accepted types of knowledge: tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge as identified by Polanyi (1962, 1967) is knowledge that is hard to encode and communicate. It is ephemeral and transitory and “cannot be resolved into information or itemized in the manner characteristic of information” (Oakeshott). Further, tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific and hard to formalize (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Towards the other end of the scale, explicit knowledge is exactly that kind of knowledge that can be encoded and is transmittable in language, once again via the conduit metaphor. It is explicit knowledge that most current knowledge management practices try to, and indeed are able to, capture, acquire, create, leverage, retain, codify, store, transfer and share.
The importance of knowledge management:
It has been observed that the major competitive advantage for a corporation lies in the corporation’s knowledge (Drucker, 1968; Bell, 1973; Toffler, 1990, Nonaka, 1994). Knowledge has limited value if it is not shared. The ability to integrate and apply the specialized knowledge by organization members is fundamental to a firm to create and sustain a competitive advantage (Grant, 1996).
The knowledge management (KM) is very important in the 21 century because it helps organizations to gain competitive advantage and effective working through sharing and re-using knowledge. In the market place of e-business, KM initiatives are used to systematically leverage information and expertise to improve organizational responsiveness, innovation, competency and efficiency (RICE) (Lotus, 2001). There are many reasons why knowledge should be managed properly especially using the collaborative technology. Among these are information overload, technology advancement, increased professional specialization, competition, workforce mobility and turnover, and capitalization of organizational knowledge. In the business world, knowledge management (KM) is considered as the process of creating value from intangible assets of an enterprise. Knowledge is considered as a valuable asset of an enterprise, which has to be managed. The essence of KM is to provide strategies to get the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and in the right format (Nonaka, 1991; Wiig, 1993, 1997; Wilkins et al., 1997: Milton et al., 1999; Ergazakis et al., 2004). It deals with how best to leverage knowledge internally in the enterprise and externally to the customers and stakeholders. However, over the last few years KM evolved into a strategic management approach, finding application not only in business but also in other human organizations and areas such as education, governmet, and international organizations etc. The fact that major international organizations - such as the European Commission (2000), the World Bank (1998), the united nations organization (2001), and the OECD (2001) have adopted KM frameworks in their strategic directions regarding global development clearly indicates that a new link was created between KM and Knowledge based development (Carillo, 2002; komninos, 2002; metaxiotis et al., 2004).
Rethinking cities in the knowledge based development
Knowledge has been the critical source of progress since the origins of the human kind on earth. What is new and rapidly evolving nowadays, is the explicit and purposeful management of knowledge as a strategic resource.
Figure 1 briefly depicts the evolution of ‘‘knowledge city’’ (KC) concept during the last years. It is a subfield of knowledge-based development (KBD) and refers to all aspects of social, economic and cultural life of a city. It can be defined as follows:
A knowledge city is a city that aims at a KBD, by continuously encouraging the knowledge management (KM) processes. This can be achieved through the continuous interaction between its knowledge agents themselves and at the same time between them and other cities’ knowledge agents. The city’s appropriate design, ICT networks and infrastructures support these interactions (Ergazakis et al., 2004).
The term ‘‘knowledge agent’’ refers to any entity (human, organization, company, university, technology park, research center etc.) that manage knowledge. This definition is illustrated in Figure 2.
Another important advantage of a KC is that it favors the preservation of a ‘‘local’’ character that respects and takes into account the history, particularities, mentalities and the concerned region’s needs.

The examination of the above mentioned pre-requisites and criteria revealed that some of them are indispensable for any modern well developed city. However some others could be considered as characterizes for what is called "a knowledge city". In this respect we have the followings:
Any modern- well developed city:
· High quality of life;
· Provision of efficient, dependable and cost competitive to infrastructure to transport of people, goods, information.
· An urban design and an architecture that incorporates the new technologies.
· Central educational strategy including all cultural facilities and services;
· Economy with enough "critical mass" to support world competitive specialization;
· Networks of commercial influence, in order to attract funds,
· Market access and awareness, that is to say high capacity in sustaining robust trading
Relationships with other markets.
· A business culture, which is at once collaborative and competitive.
● Responsive and creative public services; and
● Open, tolerant and merit based culture and inclusive society.
A knowledge city:
· Provision of access to the new communication technologies for all citizens;
· Research excellence which provides the platform for new knowledge-based goods and services;
· Provision of instruments to make knowledge accessible to citizens, in a systematic, efficient, and effective way;
· Ability to generate, attract and retain highly skilled citizens in different domains; and
· Existence of civic centers being open to diversity and fostering face-to-face relations.
Based on the findings above, it can be concluded that the concept of the knowledge city is particularly new and very broad; it may be refer to some or all of the aspects of social, economic and cultural life of a city. The definitions mentioned above are of different kinds and examine the concept from various points of view. All the definitions are highly dependent on the main strategic objective(s) that such a city has. Consequently, any attempt to give a definition for this concept must be accompanied with reference to these strategic objective(s).

Key success factors:
The process of developing a knowledge city is neither quick nor simple. As it was mentioned above, this concept refers to many different aspects of life in a city. In this way, any effort to develop a knowledge city must be actively supported by the entire society. i.e. local government, citizens, private sector, organizations, universities etc. It requires a coherent strategy, starting with an examination of the city’s strengths, local government’s political will, regulatory environment, resources and ability of the population to develop a knowledge-sharing culture. Local governments have different strategies to transform their cities into knowledge cities.
Figure 3 presents the main key success factors related to the knowledge city concept, categorized in six basic categories. It must be noted that this categorization has derived from the examination of existing efforts to develop knowledge cities.
- Political: the political will is the most important factor for the success of the concept. It can be characterized as the spark for any further action. Of course, an appropriate legislative framework should exist.
- Strategic: any attempt to transform a city to a knowledge city is doomed to failure if it is not guided by a clear strategic vision. This strategic vision should incorporate and take into account the entirety of in-depth knowledge concerning the city status. It is compiled by the actors being responsible for the future of the city (e.g. local government, specific agencies and organizations etc) and it results to a set of specific objectives and a series of measures and actions.
- Financial: before the implementation of any strategic plan, the appropriate funding of the initiatives should have been ensured. Through marketing actions, the city can attract outside investments.
- Technological: it is important that citizens are familiar with new technologies and have access to them. The information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure of the city should be of a high level.
- Societal: a high level of education and standard or living combined with a knowledge-sharing culture is significant because it will allow the widespread adoption - from citizens part - of the new concept and of the necessary changes n their way of living. All that happens in the appropriate context of human rights and freedoms.
- Environmental: the business environment and the market needs are two very significant factors that should be thoroughly analyzed. During the implementation phase, the private sector and NGOs play a major role. Their commitment to the strategic plan and their active support to the implementation of projects will help towards the direction of transforming the city into a knowledge city.

Main benefits of knowledge cities
Nowadays, it is quite clear that the traditional model of development is no longer functional. The advantages of the knowledge-based development for the human societies are also particularly emphasized during the last years in the lterature (Malone et al., 2002; Laszlo et al, 2002; Arbonies etal., 2002; Mansell, 2002; Scheel, 2002). In this context, the main benefit of knowledge cities is that, by definition, they are functioning in such a way that is in favor of their knowledge-based development. If we would like to examine the benefits of knowledge cities, on a more local scale, we should refer to the following:
· creation of more and well-paid employment;
· faster growth in community’s income and wealth;
· a more sustainable economy, by increasing their capacity to take on technological innovations and attract off-shore investment;
· revitalization of traditional industries;
· a boost to tourism;
· greater opportunities to share the wealth through investment in the public domain (parks and gardens, public transport, cultural facilities etc) and better funding of social safety nets;
· a boost to the city’s pride and confidence, which acts as a platform for reinvestment of local capital into the local economy;
· creation of knowledge communities that will provide" just-in-time" knowledge when it is needed;
· better education services; and
· creation of a tolerant environment towards minorities and immigrants.
In addition, the structure of a knowledge city contributes to the better functioning of democracy by online knowledge-sharing among all the citizens, provision of inexpensive, real-time access to consistent, up-to-date information facilities, support for online debates etc. We should also stress the fact that the digital divide" is replaced with digital inclusion" and the benefits of technology flow to all members of the community. Finally a knowledge city could serve as an excellent platform and basis for the further development of a digital city or a virtual knowledge city.
Digital cities integrate urban information and create public spaces for people living in the cities(Ishida,2000),Many worldwide projects had or have as a main target to develop digital cities over real-life cities (Van den Besselaar et al. 1998; Beckers, 1998; Peeters,2000; De Bruine ,2000 Ishida,2002; McQuillan,2002).

The First International Conference On E-City

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Virtual City

Introduction
The more realizations are happening at the local level, at the level of local administrations and that the democratic potential or the possibility of bringing citizens and administrations or politicians nearer from each other it could be easier to set up in such a local context. Local developments could provide us with interesting elements regarding the introduction of multimedia in the public sector in general. Digital cities were then seen as laboratories of the integration of multimedia technology within the public place.
Digital cities, at the beginning, strictly defined as web sites that give access to city’s administrations. These local developments could provide us with interesting elements regarding the introduction of multimedia in the public sector in general. Digital cities were then seen as laboratories of the integration of multimedia technology within the public place. This feeling was confirmed by Michel Hervé (1997).
For Emmanuel Eveno (1997), the importance of communication within cities is linked to the definition of the city itself. Cities are places where people gather and communicate.
All these arguments confirm our initial choices of digital cities as a relevant place to observe changes induced by the development of multimedia applications. Regarding the democratic potential of these local developments that has been announced in numerous discourses, it seems that, even if the link between city and democracy is quite clear (Eveno, 1997).
Definition of digital cities and proposition of a typology
The term 'digital city' has several meanings, sometimes very different. There is actually no common definition of that concept and authors seldom adopt a strictly identical sense. 'Digital city' is used to qualify the rapid growth of information and communication technologies that is currently transforming advanced industrial cities as well as to designate on-line services —mostly services available through the World Wide Web— managed by municipal government, businesses, citizens or users and which either present local content or use the urban metaphor to facilitate users understanding.
In the reviewing of the literature, we observe that some authors do not approach the problem of this lack of common definition and do not specify what they really mean by the notion of digital city. In addition, we note a great diversity of terms used to indicate sometimes very similar experiences: Digital City, Virtual City, Wired City, City of Bits, Web-City, Webbed City, Electronic Town, Digital Town, ... On the other hand, some may use the same term in two opposite senses. Therefore, it is very difficult to elaborate an accurate definition of the digital city and, consequently, to constitute a rigorous basis of comparison.
Dutton, Blumler and Kraemer (1987a) underscore this issue when they distinguish two main meanings for the 'wired city' concept: ' The term ‘’wired city’’ is used in two different ways. At a conceptual level, it refers to a normative forecast of the future of communications —a prescriptive statement about how communications technology should be institutionalized and used. In this context, the wired city has been broadly defined as a community in which all kinds of electronic communication services are available to households and businesses. (...) At a concrete level, the wired city concept refers to experiments and projects involving the use of advanced information and communications technologies for the provision of services to households and businesses. Defined broadly, nearly any new development in computing and telecommunications might be called a wired city project if used to provide services to business and households of a community.
Defined narrowly, wired city projects refer to new developments in cable and telecommunications that affect the public communications systems of a community '.
According to this somewhat outdated definition —it was actually elaborated in the mid-eighties and originally applied to the rapid growth of cable television during the seventies—, the 'wired city' concept appears as an extremely wide notion which could include a service provided to the public —as, for instance, a city council’s website— as well as a much wider urban planning project aimed at integrating new information and communication technologies in the city, well as a much wider urban planning project aimed at integrating new information and communication technologies in the city.
On the one hand, we list those who consider the digital city as an online interactive physical space of one city.
Among them, Graham and Aurigi (1997) mention ' an emerging range of new, Internet-based, local initiatives known as ‘’virtual cities’’ ' developed ' to widen local participation in telematics and to engineer the emergence of new ‘’electronic public spaces’’, which, at the local level, will complement or replace the undermined physical public space of cities. '
On the other hand, there are those who use this expression to designate the wide urban restructuring process lead by current developments in telecommunications that have important implications for both physical form and social and economic life of contemporary cities.
To sum up, it seems that the concept of digital or virtual cities –or whatever the exact name it takes– concerns two main types of situation:
a project of developing a telecom infrastructure in a city, which is close to the wired cities concept of the 70’s
a set of services mainly available on the Web site and that are more or less linked with the concept of city.
Web site refers to the real city (grounded digital city) but this is not necessarily the case as observed (non-grounded digital city).
A possible typology of digital cities
Actors of the public sphere
The actors of the public sphere are the public administration, the citizens, the associations and the voluntary bodies, the commercial or private companies, and consultants, research centres or universities. All these actors may intervene in the management of the public sphere and according to the different cases; their importance in the sphere is different. Beamish also proposes a kind of typology, but of community networks more than strictly on digital cities. In her typology, she includes the actors of these networks as well as their main resources or the resources that they bring into the technical artefact: hardware, software, infrastructure, access possibilities, content, ... .
Grounded/non-grounded
The concept of grounded/non-grounded is the same as the one used by Graham and Aurigi (1997) where non-grounded refers to Web sites - the authors seem to exclude other technologies - which ‘use the familiar interface of a ‘‘city’’ as a metaphor to group together wide ranges of Internet services located across the world’ .Grounded cities on the contrary ‘relate coherently to the development of specific cities (...) and concentrate on integrating Web content located within the physical space of one city'. Non-grounded cities seem to be very close to virtual communities as they group together people who share the same interests but are not necessarily based in the same area. Some cities may be grounded as well as non-grounded, i.e. using the metaphor of the digital city to attract people and propose different kind of services to people who do not originate from the real city but be initiated by local authorities and also provide local content. The situation is then not necessarily binary.
Openness and closing
The ‘openness’ or closing of the city refers to the ‘nature’ of the inhabitants and to the frontiers of the city. The question here is who can live in the virtual city. Is it open only to the inhabitants of the city or can other people from other places be considered as inhabitant? What defined the status of inhabitant and the one of visitor?
Access
The notion of access refers to the fact that people have to pay or not to access to the services offered or the information provided in the digital city. It also concerns the types of accesses and access places available in the real city.
Content/Services
The content of the digital cities is another element of the typology. At that level, we may consider three main types of services: information - communication - transaction. Information refers to the research of information in database (relation many-to-one) for example or simply through navigating on the Web site with or without using search engines. In this category, the user is relatively passive. The transaction category consists of functions for which the user is handling some tasks himself and sometimes must pay for them: ordering a ticket, tax forms, application for day care. Communication includes communication through e-mails (relation one-to-one) or forums (relation many-to-many).
Dominant metaphor
In some of the digital cities, the metaphor of the city is clearly used. Sometimes other related metaphors like quarters, streets and so on are also used.
Target public
In her typology on community networks, Beamish includes the target group of these
networks: individual, school, youth, specific groups like homeless, elderly, women,
... This characteristic could also be used here. The target public on the digital cities can be: the inhabitants of a specific city, the members of a community, the tourists or visitors of a city, the local SMEs, the community groups or non profit making associations, people gathered by a common interest, …
History of the development of digital cities
According to Marie d'Udekem-Gevers (1998), the concept of digital cities comes from the United States, from political visions developed there and from local spontaneous initiatives. Digital cities found their history in two main types of initiatives because they embedded two ideas: the Community and the City.
Community refers to the relations and social links between people that share the same interests or values and City refers to administrative relations, to the links between citizens, policy-makers and the local administration.
Within the Community perspective, digital cities are very close to the free-nets and on-line communities that first developed in the United States in the 70’s. But the idea of using the technology to bring together communities is not new and already emerged in the 60s and 70s with the emergence of local radios and TVs.
In some cases, virtual communities and digital cities may be seen as an extension of the local community radio, television and newspaper concept (Simon, 1995). The initial idea of this move was to use new media to provide local content, often made by citizens themselves, to encourage user participation (Pailliart, 1993), to (re) create asocial link and allow the set up of communities (Pailliart), and to offer a place forfree expression.free-nets and on-line communities may be seen as theextension of this 'free' move initiated by free radios and community TV. This is these network communities that usually originated from members of grass-roots movements in numerous towns in the USA and in Canada (Pierson, 1999) allow 'interaction and communication between
citizens' (Casalegno and Kavanaugh, 1998, p. 70).
US Initiatives: Wired cities and electronic service delivery projects
Apart from the existence of free-nets and on-line communities, the 60’s idea of digital cities came from the USA (d'Udekem-Gevers, 1998) where the concept and the metaphor of 'wired cities' emerged (Dutton and alii, 1987a). At that time already, ICT were used in discourses as an answer to urban problems, especially to social problems. These discourses and the subsequent programmes lead by Lyndon Johnson (Dutton and alii, 1987a) were based on different infrastructures: telephone, cable, institutional and community-owned networks which would allow telecommunications applications that 'might improve city living and stimulate variable patterns of regional development' (Dutton, Blumler, Kraemer, 1987a, p. 5).The dominant infrastructure at that time was the coaxial cable. At the end of the 80’s, there was a shift towards 'more integrated communication facilities' (1987a, p. 7) with advanced satellite, microelectronic and fibre-optic technologies. Nowadays, the rapid emergence and diffusion of Internet and the Web technology has played a major accelerator role in the phenomenon of wired/digital cities.
In the late 80's and early in the 90's, many American local governments took initiatives to improve the delivery of political participation, to provide access to a common computer database and offer e-mail facilities via terminals in public places. These were the continuation of the 'public information utility' promoted in the 60's (Graham & Marvin, 1996). Internet 'generated renewed enthusiasm for electronic democracy' (Docter and Dutton, p. 126).
The European context: The' market' of digital cities
In Europe mainly, the digital cities concept came back at the front of the scene following the discourses and projects on the Information Society. The Delors White Paper introduced the idea and the following Bangemann report proposed teleworking (application 1), distance learning (application 2), a network for universities and research centres (application 3), telematic services for SMEs (application 4), road traffic management (application 5), air traffic control (application 6), healthcare networks (application 7) and electronic tendering (application 8), the transeuropean public administrations network (application 9) and mainly the city information highways
(application 10).
Besides their own objectives, the 10 Bangemann initiatives had to follow somegeneral objectives like ‘strengthening industrial competitiveness and promoting thecreation of new jobs, promoting new forms of work organisation, improving quality of life and quality of the environment, responding to social needs and raising the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of public services’ (Bangemann, 1994, p. 24). As the other applications, cities and administrations were mainly seen as potential markets.
The idea was to connect public administrations and to improve their efficacy and to connect households to multimedia applications and entertainment services. The Bangemann report stated vigorously that 'the information society has the power to improve the quality of life of the European citizens, increase the efficiency of our economic and social organisation and reinforce its cohesion' (p. 6). Cities were said to play an important role in the awareness process of the citizens and local administrations were said to have an important leverage effect by becoming mass users of the technology. But these initiatives, according to the Bangemann report, were to be launched as real commercial initiatives.
At the beginning, the EU adopts a technology push approach. Projects involving cities were included in technical research programme: integrated broadband communications, road transport, informatics, and construction of telecom infrastructure in lagging regions. In 1996, Graham and Marvin note that some projects allow more balanced 'technology push' and 'demand pull' approaches bringing together technology with representative of users and city policy-makers("telematics sites").The European Digital Cities (EDC) project aims at 'providing an open cooperation network for concerted urban development through Telematics' and ... 'covers networking activities by cities, towns and regions with a view to laying the foundations of the Global Information Society as outlined by the G7 world conference of Feb. '95.
Apart from these networked projects, there exist a lot of other initiatives from the European Commission at the level of digital cities, on-line administrations, etc., mainly within the Telematics Applications Programme, that covered different domains: Administrations, Transport, Research, Education & Training, Libraries, Urban & Rural Areas, Health Care, Disabled and Elderly People, Environment, Telematics Engineering, Language Engineering, Information Engineering, Support Actions and Integrated Applications for Digital Sites.
Virtual Cities
Our contemporary cities are faced with the loss of real public spaces due to increasing problems of violence, insecurity, pollution, which also constitute specific problems by themselves. Digital cities may then be considered as an attempt to build new secured (electronic) public spaces and regain some characteristics of the cities, i.e., places of communication, interactions, offering a lot of economic, social and cultural opportunities (Graham and Aurigi, 1997).
Moreover, cities are increasingly competing with each other on a commercial level in order to attract investment and tourists and 'cannot afford then, not to promote themselves'. Cities have adopted marketing strategies. They present themselves as 'products' in the global image space; they participate to an 'electronic urban imagery'
The tie between physical urban space and virtual city
There are indeed many interaction points between real and electronic urban spaces. First, Alain d’Iribarne (1997) demonstrates that politics, social and cultural structures of the society heavily influence the foundation and the management of a digital town.
Secondly, the physical and economical growth of the city depends on whether a modern and well-developed telecommunication infrastructure exists or not. In addition to older communication structures —as roads, highways, railways...—, new information and communication technologies allow certain economic activities to move towards industrial suburbs (Atkinson, 1997).
Another admitted evolution about physical urban space and digital cities is the deepening integration of one into the other. As business centres become telecommunication nodes, electronic public spaces are increasing and buildings turn into network interfaces equipped with electronic sensors and sophisticated telecommunications capabilities, the interaction between digital towns and physical cities is stronger and stronger.
The time-space compression
The fast development of new information and communication technologies over the last years is currently overcoming, or at least reducing, time and space barriers. Morley and Robins (1995) or Graham and Marvin (1996) use to name this phenomenon 'time-space compression'. As a result of this, we note a complete reshaping of traditional economic and geographic basis and, broadly speaking, a total restructuring of traditional landmarks.
A major outcome for our everyday life could be the blurring of the boundaries between, on the one hand, workplaces and working hours and, on the other hand, entertainment or family life places and free-time. Homes will therefore tend to become the place for 'multiplexed activities', i.e., that ' we will find ourselves able to switch rapidly from one activity to the other while remaining in the same place '(Mitchell, 1995, p. 101).

Consequently, ' it will no longer be straightforward to distinguish between work time and ‘’free’’ time or between the space of production and the space of consumption. Ambiguous and contested zones will surely emerge '. The growing role of home in tomorrow’s ' information society ' seems to inspire utopian perspectives. As Graham and Marvin (1996) point out. The 'time-space compression' phenomenon could hence lead to the revival of citizen's involvement in social and cultural urban life as well as to an excessive withdrawal. As information and communication technologies spread, 'telepresence' will be more and more substituted for 'face-to-face contact'.
The glocalisation phenomenon
Concurrently to the 'time-space compression' phenomenon, another shift —a double process seemingly inconsistent— can be observed as information and communication technologies grow. On the one hand, the overcoming of space barriers leads to the globalisation of economic, social and cultural flows and to the emergence of world-wide business centres as ' information cities ' (Hepworth quoted by Graham and Marvin, 1996, p. 126), On the other hand, it could boost small-size cities economic activity thanks to information highways. It also favours decentralisation of mass production processes towards industrial suburbs and development of teleworking and services into remote areas. Authors have forged the terms'glocalisation'. the new geographies are, in fact, about the renaissance of locality and region ' (Morley and Robins, 1995, p. 115). Actually, it seems that 'global-local nexus' —conjointly with the 'time-space compression' phenomenon— is about reinterpreting traditional notions of localism, nationalism and globalism. The question is not to know whether globalisation or localisation will emerge but rather to foresee how global and local will be articulated. ' Globalisation, Morley and Robins write, is, in fact, also associated with new dynamics of re-localisation. It is about the achievement of a new global-local nexus, about new and intricate relations between global space and local space. Globalisation is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle: it is a matter of inserting a multiplicity of localities into the overall picture of a new global system ' (Morley and Robins, 1995, p. 116). In the same line of thought, Graham and Marvin (1996) add that ' the key relationship between cities and telecommunications is therefore a global-local one in which a city is integrated silently and invisibly into the new global electronic networks through which the many different regions and areas of the global economy are tied together to support profitable entreprise ' (pp. 97-98).
Conclusion: Utopian and dystopian discourses on digital cities
To summarise, utopian authors (Goldmark, Negroponte, Naisbitt and Aburdene, Pascal, Eubanks, Maisonrouge, Santucci, all quoted in Graham, 1996; Mitchell, 1995), or 'techno-optimists' (Gilder, Gates, Myrhvold et al, Toffler, quoted in Kunzmann, Brödner and Rücker, 1998) think that this electronic medium will provide the possibility to overcome many of the contemporary problems of the cities (violence, individualisation, insecurity, anonymity, ...) and of the society in general (loss of faith in democracy, of truth in the institutions, ...). Digital cities will contribute to the improvement of the real life democracy, they will create new electronic place for discussion and interactivity, close to the former Greek concept of Agora. For Graham (1996), these visions 'often tend to radically oversimplify the relations between cities and telecommunications' (p. 2). For Kunzmann, Brödner and Rücker (1998), 'in general, these visions are technological dreams and present a futuristic and fictional world, influenced by technological determinism' (p. 3). This is the paradigm of 'all that is technologically possible will happen' (Kunzmann, Brödner and Rücker, p. 3) or the 'anything-anytime-anywhere' dream (Graham and Marvin, 1996, p. 88).

The dystopian discourses, close to social determinism, focus on the 'collapse of the public sphere of the postmodern city' (Graham, 1996, p. 12) by stressing the increased risk of electronic ghetto due to the development of inforichs and infopoors (Davis quoted in Graham, 1996). They also emphasised that our contemporary society is marked by an increasing fear of 'the other' and that consequently telecommunications, especially in digital cities projects, will create social connection but together with a disconnection in the real urban world (Schroeder quoted by Graham, 1996). Linked to this argument, some authors like Calhoun or Castells, also quoted by Graham (1996) underline the decreasing possibilities of meeting with others, of losing contacts 'across lines of class, race and culture' (Calhoun).

How Would Someone with Systemic Approach Choose His Thesis?

Well,
I don't know.... Maybe he just sits for a while & decides on his options. Maybe he just makes one for his own...
Maybe he tries to connect the islands which seems to be so far from each other... maybe he just makes a boat & sail through them all....
But whatever he does... he knows that he is the sole person who have the responsibility... cuz no one else is seeing the connection. Noone else can figure out the relation....
So Hail Young Sailor... May thou join the tribes of men in honor & in health!

Ehsan & EarthQuake

Dear All*,

Yesterday afternoon as most of you may know, occurred an earthquake of 5.9 in Qom & Tehran. Fortunately, there were no major damages yet it brings the discussion of series of 'what-ifs' back to the front burner. Earthquakes have always been the fragile fear of most Tehranians. It had been long known that the city I love so much could turn into history with just a moderate quake of earth…. There would be huge fires, Flood & a lot of souls will be lost not only due to the quake itself but due to diseases, infections, starvation, and just over all condition of aftermath! Long is the time we have learned that there is no security, no hope for survival, no one to call for when the time comes that mother nature wants to show some power. (The Famine desire to ruin can get very violent, you know.) & it is general knowledge that we are going to lose everything (& I mean EVERYTHING)… basically because Tehran, the beloved city, is the foundation of every source… information, goods, power… no other city will ever be able to replace the loss of the Capital, the Brain, the Heart of Iran.

What has earthquake got to do with Systemic Approach? Hmm, good question… on the surface, nothing…. The motive behind writing this is about the co-incident of Mister Ehsan's presentation on 'Tehran Earthquake' & the occurrence of it. However, on a deeper level, it is bound to the systemic approach: Tehran is a star among the galaxy… it is part of the organism… the system… the world…. Anything that affects one tiny part will result in a major change in the system eventually. It's the butterfly effect. Everything as ONE whole being….

As I mentioned before, Mister Ehsan has done a research on Tehran Earthquake. He had kindly provided me the file of presentation which I will upload to 4shared sometime soon & we had a brief chat over it. In the suggestion boxes he had offered a few nice tips I would like to share here:

l Tehran should be redesigned and reconstructed in order to earthquake management.

l Most important and vital information should not only be at Tehran.

l Tehran citizens should be taught how to face the earthquake.

l No nuclear activity should be near Tehran municipality because of any unwanted reaction could increase elastic strain in a rock that causes them to undergo a dilatency state; which is an inelastic increase in volume that starts after the stress on a rock reaches one-half its breaking strength.

While the first suggestion is somewhat the most critical one, my personal idea tends to put more force on the third issue. That's the easiest, most accessible one & honestly, if we don't care about ourselves, no one else does! & that, right there, leads us to the discussion of individualism culture in Iran.

To the next topic,

Lou. Sh.

*(Well, I like the phrase Mr. Gharib uses! What can I say? I'm a pathetic loser! :D )

From Ehsan's 360

Why Systemic Approach?
Where do you live? No… no, I am not looking for a specific answer. You could be living in a small town, a big city or whatever…. But, how do you mention the place you live in?
Tehran, Iran, Middle East, Asia, Earth, Solar System, Milky-way galaxy, Cosmo-universe… We are all part of a bigger being. It does not matter how we mention it but we define ourselves in the surrounding of other rings of the chain. & there is with no exception a function in the surroundings… that's how we divide them… that's how we define the 'SYSTEM'!
And as we are all part of this greater system, we have no choice but to analyze our surrounding as a whole. The details, the fractions, the portions must be in seen in relevance to each other… they must form the big picture. & the whole is more than the fractions together… it has an identity of its own. No element can be discussed devoid of its environment… because, it's the context that gives character to an element

The First Post...

Here we go...