The Future of Knowledge: Growing Pains.
In the heart of London, tucked into a one-mile radius around King’s Cross, the knowledge economy is booming. Bursting with world-leading universities, research institutions, arts establishments, museums, galleries, studios, tech giants and plucky start-ups, what has come to be known as the Knowledge Quarter sits across the boroughs of Islington and Camden, and the organisation which shares this name works tirelessly to facilitate communion and to catalyse interaction. Here, gleaming office towers proliferate, glass laboratories and esoteric think tanks abound, and masterpieces of modern architecture sit cheek by jowl with the capital’s fine heritage buildings, but look a little closer and a more complex picture emerges of this gilded hub. To put it bluntly, we must ask whether we have done enough for the communities who live just a stone’s throw from our grand and well-kept buildings. Have we failed our closest neighbours, and is there more we can do?
In the past it was believed that the wealth and growth generated in all the gleaming towers would eventually ‘trickle down’ to those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder, but we know better now. That model of the economy was a myth, and the result is deprivation. Rampant unemployment, soaring child poverty, bitter social isolation and shocking levels of chronic illness are just some of the economic and social characteristics associated with the very same area which we so proudly described as an intellectual boom town just a paragraph ago. Paradoxically, as the benefits of economic growth, driven by the knowledge industry, pile up in the hands of the few, both statements are true. The area is booming, but many of its residents are being held back.