Formulating Urban Development Strategies with Knowledge-Based Development Approach (Case: City of Arak)

In the third millennium and the urban world, achievement to development requires cities that they were mentioned as development engine until a few decades ago and today, they are introduced as knowledge-based cities. Such cities have a kind of economy based on knowledge and sustainable cities that their citizens live in comfort. In other words, a knowledge-based city is one aiming to achieve wisdom-based development. This important issue is done by creating, dividing, updating, and measuring knowledge continuously. In order to achieve to this purpose, citizens’ constant interaction from one hand, and interaction among them and people in other cities or urban economy from other hand is necessary. In the meantime, industrial cities, as economically and demographically important places, are very important since they are alternatives to achieve to knowledge-based cities because of their direct relationship with technology, science, job creation, and revenue creation. Thus, this research tries to evaluate feasibility of industrial cities to achieve to knowledge-based development with the aim of multiple analyses socially, economically, environmentally, institutionally etc. of industrial cities. Thus, city of arak, as one of the industrial hubs in the country, was investigated. Research methodology was descriptive-analytical by using decision-making techniques of SWOT and PESTLE. In this regard, it has been tried in this research to examine indicators of knowledge-based city in Arak, to realize abilities and limitations of city of arak by using strategic planning techniques and evaluating status, to investigate whether industrial cities, such as Arak, have necessary potential to become knowledge-based city, and to determine strategies to achieve to knowledge-based city. The findings indicated that city of Arak is able to become a knowledge-based city.