The city has always been a forum of knowledge production and distribution. However throughout the history, constellations and phases raised in which knowledge production and transfer in the urban space have been accelerated and developed in a very specific direction. In Central and Eastern Europe this process can be understood as reception and creative development of impulses transformed by local socio - economic and cultural factors, like: multi-ethnicity, multi-confessionalisation and nationalizing processes, which are specific for these regions. As the knowledge transfer does not only takes place between, but also within the cities, knowledge had been transferred in multi-ethnic cities between different national and social groups. The transferred knowledge was incorporated and transformed trough different strategies and practices by the local actors.
Instead of operating with a pre-set notion of “center” and “periphery, this project asks about the specific local conditions that gave rise to the transfer, adaptation and use of modern knowledge in the cities of this region during the long 19th century.
The project concentrates on the less researched actors, practices
and strategies of knowledge production and the transfer of
knowledge in the urban space. Doing so, the project seeks to identify the particular characteristics of the exchange between urbanization and knowledge transfer in these cities and at the same time to offer the concept of “emerging cities” to on the specific model of urbanization in this historical and geographical region.