Civil Engineering Reference
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A New Strategic Approach to Science
Cities: Towards the Achievement
of Sustainable and Balanced Spatial
Development
Gordon Dabinett
Abstract This chapter addresses the new challenges facing the internationalisation
of science city projects. It is predicated upon an assumption that such projects are
underpinned by a desire to overcome and address the real or potential consequences
of uneven spatial development. A further assumption underlying the arguments in
this chapter acknowledges that technology and its development do not inevitably
lead to a series of foregone or determined impacts. Rather the applications and uses
of technology are mediated via social structures and influences, including spatial
planning (Borja and Castells
1997
). Spatial policies can shape and be shaped by the
various ways in which the emergence of a knowledge economy might be mediated
through specific localities and territorial characteristics. These specific character-
istics of localities and the spatial outcomes of general policy ideas become elements
for debate in any assessment seeking to understand such complex interactions. The
chapter constructs a critical perspective of science cities in light of future scenarios
generated by globalisation and sustainable development. These scenarios will frame
future successful economic development and desires to increase prosperity and the
quality of life in all cities and regions. Experiences and practices, largely from
Europe, are examined with respect to the extent to which common approaches
situated in markedly different socio-economic localities are also able to manage the
transition from, initially, an industrial to post-industrial economic order, and cur-
rently, onwards to a knowledge-based regional economy. The chapter argues that a
new strategic approach is required in order for science city projects to contribute to
sustainable development in the future. A form of development that will create dif-
ficult trade-offs between economic, environmental and equity goals, based on new
forms of indigenous development and territorial governance, and a new approach to
the social construction and reproduction of innovation and learning. Such a new
strategic approach finds expression in the practices of polycentric urban develop-
ment, multi-level governance and integrated spatial planning. The chapter begins
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