Looking Forward: A Beloved (Epistemic) Community?

Chapter 9 explores the implications of this work for future research on regional economic and social trajectories, suggesting that diverse and dynamic epistemic communities are important in and of themselves, since they contribute to a sense of civic membership—and that they can also enhance growth, innovation, and inclusion at the metropolitan level. The chapter explores how such communities can be replicated across metropolitan areas, and examines challenges to replication. The book closes by considering how the lessons learned might inform a more productive approach to the national crises of subpar job growth, worsening inequality, and political polarization. The authors argue that diverse and dynamic knowledge networks can provide exactly the norms, standards, and (place) identities that can better link equity, growth, and community. Because they can generate genuine care for the other, help participants develop the communicative processes to balance competing needs, and forge a lived sense of common destiny, they provide the framework for achieving win-win solutions rather than Darwinian destruction.