The Purposes of the Learning City

The Learning City has two principal and interconnected purposes:

• to support lifelong learning
• to learn how to promote social and economic regeneration.

Lifelong Learning

This means encouraging individuals, employers and organisations to involve themselves in learning throughout their lives. The changing nature of work requires people to adapt and upgrade their skills and knowledge throughout their lives if they are to survive in the labour market. Employment will be attracted to high skill communities. Successful cities and towns are also attractive places to live as well as providing employment opportunities. Learning needs to support and enrich the life of communities as a whole. The more people participate in formal and informal learning activities, the richer, more successful and attractive their community is likely to become.

Regeneration: Learning About how the Community is Changing

The Learning City is one which strives to understand how it is changing in order to be able to shape its future. It needs to learn about the context of change if it is to influence the types of change which create the knowledge society. Change may be taking place in areas such as population movements, growth as well as decline in the industrial and commercial base, and the impact of new technologies on communication systems. Communities which are in the process of regeneration need to learn, not merely to develop the skills of their citizens but to understand how the different parts of city life - social, cultural and political, as well as economic - can connect together more effectively to sustain the future well-being of the community.