A New Strategic Approach to Science Cities: Towards the Achievement of Sustainable and Balanced Spatial Development - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 12

innovation. ''In other words, a technopolis is a means to develop good places to
live by attracting high-tech industries, universities, research labs, pleasant dwell-
ings, and public service into a city which has a nice natural environment and
convenient living conditions'' (Oh 2005 ). Within this perspective, science cities
are in fact given specific expression, an expression that requires careful and critical
examination in light of the regional and national conditions within which the idea
is implemented or seeks policy influence.
Oh ( 2005 ) proposes that science city development has a number of expressions
or possible outcomes:
1. They provide a major location or space for business-science ventures;
2. They attract foreign investment;
3. They promote the transfer of new and emerging technologies;
4. They provide a major location and space for the development and commer-
cialisation of knowledge-based products and services;
5. They provide the ability to adapt existing technologies to local conditions and
needs;
6. They increase added value to exports;
7. They improve foreign exchange earning;
8. They provide the ability to purchase new technologies;
9. They improve environmental conditions;
10. They improve economic performance;
11. They usher the host country into the global economy; and
12. They reduce poverty.
The possibility therefore arises to utilise such a potentially powerful regional
development instrument to enhance the capacities of developing countries in their
management of science, technology and innovation. However, the foregoing review
has strongly hinted at the extent to which the achievement of public policy goals
through the implementation of such technology-based initiatives is highly varied.
A variety in effectiveness and outcome which is deeply conditioned by a number of
social, physical, cultural and governance factors as well as economic factors.
Outcomes are not inevitable, nor do they follow supposedly inevitable pathways of
successful development. Local conditions in specific spaces and places do condition
important elements such as risk taking, entrepreneurship, the structure of capital,
the motivation of labour, the form and nature of creativity. Perhaps most impor-
tantly, creating the abilities and assets to generate and capture added value that can
overcome prevailing patterns of uneven spatial development is particularly prob-
lematic. The particular concern in this chapter is the extent to which different
strategic policy frameworks can offer the possibility of addressing these issues in
order to deliver balanced and sustainable development, and what characteristics
might such a framework take or need to consider. In order to explore these practices
further, this chapter now examines some of the critical assessments made of the
technopolis concept, and then advances new frameworks of policy that can shape
the key elements of successful regional technological development: growth models;
spatial planning; socialisation of learning; and governance.