Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Whilst there are some examples of technopole development in Europe (Castells
and Hall
1994
), the key site for the development and implementation of this
construct has been Japan and East Asia. In this process of generating new growth,
it is argued that cities, regions and nation states compete with each other, but more
often than not, such competition becomes a source of innovation, of efficiency, of a
collective effort to create a better place to live and a more effective place to do
business. This became expressed ''within various attempts to plan and promote
technologically innovative, industrial-related production within one concentrated
area'' (Castells and Hall
1994
). An empirical typology based on international
experience can explain the initiatives that had developed a focus on planned
techno-industrial development:
1. Technology parks—attempts to induce new industrial growth by attracting
high-technology manufacturing firms to a privileged space. Functions defined
in
economic
development
terms,
deliberately
established
business
area,
resulting from government and/or university efforts.
2. Science cities—strictly scientific research complexes, with no direct territorial
linkage to manufacturing. They are intended to reach a higher level of scientific
excellence through the synergy they are supposed to generate in their secluded
scientific milieu.
3. Technopolis
programmes—localisation
of
national
programmes,
regional
development and industrial decentralisation.
Within this typology science cities are seen as ''new settlements, generally
planned and built by governments, and aimed at generating scientific excellence
and synergistic research activities, by concentrating a critical mass of research
organisations and scientists within a high-quality urban space. What characterises
science cities, in contrast with other types of technopoles, is their focus on science
and research, independent of their impact on their immediate productive envi-
ronment. They are generally conceived as supports to national scientific devel-
opment, considered a positive aim in its own right, in the hope that better scientific
research will progressively percolate through the entire economy and the whole
social fabric. They are also often presented as tools of regional development,
intended to assist the decentralisation of scientific research, with all the prestige
that involves, to the national periphery or, failing that, the metropolitan periphery''
(Castells and Hall
1994
).
The concepts of science cities and the technopolis aimed to promote a new
approach to regional development. The creation of secluded and privileged spaces,
detached and independent from mundane concerns and their internal closure of
space were supposed to spur the cohesion of intellectual networks that would
support the emergence, consolidation and reproduction of a scientific milieu, with
its own set of values and mechanisms to promote the collective advancement of
scientific inquiry. They were to offer symbolic and material proof of the nation
state's commitment to science and technology, and the spatial concentration was to
give real as well as symbolic presence to national scientific resources. This concept
was perceived to aim at promoting a new regional culture that differed from
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