Preface CONTEXT This book and its twin volume, City Preparedness for the Climate Crisis, are part of current work at the World Capital Institute (WCI) in order to evolve the fields of Knowledge-Based Development and Knowledge Cities -the scientific and technical sides of the WCI work -into those of Knowledge for the Anthropocene (Volume 1) and City Preparedness for the Climate Emergency (Volume 2). The choice faced by the WCI is the same as many individuals and organizations face in their daily

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... experience: coming to terms with Anthropocene realities as the single most pressing issue of our age and the need to re-invent our lives accordingly. Both volumes work as mutual companions and together add to a conceptual and practical approach towards the Anthropocene. These two volumes carry a formal symmetry, while the contents are quite specific to each. The original selection of topics for both volumes was based on prior work that led to the ongoing transformation of the WCI work in the second decade of our century. The World Capital Institute is an independent international think-and do-tank "whose purpose is to further the understanding and application of knowledge as the most powerful leverage of development" (WCI webpage at www .w orldcapita linstitute .org). For that purpose, it has created and internationally propelled the discipline of Knowledge-Based Development (KBD) and its application to urban development under the better-known category of the Knowledge City, which stands for a best model representation for a socio-economic and infrastructural pattern. KBD and the Knowledge City aim at a balance of all collective capital forms (both tangible and intangible) in the evolution of a human activity system. Under this perspective, the main societal performance benchmark is not monetary mass increase as expressed by the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), but the improvement in the everyday and long-term experience of the majority of citizens on the basis of knowledge creation and distributed capitalization. The bulk of the literature on Knowledge Cities has been led by WCI associates and the leading journal in the field -the International Journal of Knowledge Based Development (IJKBD), one of the offsprings of WCI, was created and continues to be edited by prominent WCI members. Additionally, the WCI conveys the main annual conference on KBD