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 17

frameworks of polycentric urban development; integrated spatial planning; and
multi-level governance.
Polycentric urban development—Serious concerns are emerging in different
contexts that balanced urban development will not result from current trends in
urbanisation. The existing urban order sees mega-cities and global cities attracting
further investment, wealth and power, and they themselves are becoming highly
spatially segregated between rich and poor populations (Parr 2004 ). This raises
serious questions about the role of smaller and less well located urban areas, a
situation seemingly furthered by inter-urban competition with its associated fiscal
and political costs and 'zero-sum game' outcomes from the promotion of
endogenous growth theory. The normative application of the polycentric urban
development idea sees urban areas collaborating in order to combine and maxi-
mise from their complementary and distinctive functions and roles (Davoudi
2003 ). Clearly, competition still occurs in some areas, but within a spatial
development framework and an inter-urban governance arrangement that allows
strategic collaborative decision making where appropriate. All urban areas are
inter-connected through the flows of modern capital and the informational society,
and spatial organising ideas must reflect this, and civic leaders recognise this.
Science cities would need to look to their external relationships carefully, to realise
where benefits could accrue to the constituent elements of their wider urban
systems from their specific and specialised form of development.
Multi-level governance—This is seen as necessary (Gualini 2004 ) since checks
and counter-balances are needed within governance systems to gain benefit from
top-down approaches to science city planning (technopolis programme) and bottom-
up approaches to the development of embedded regional innovation development
(EU RIS). Higher levels of government are necessary to formulate appropriate
policies towards uneven spatial development (re-distribution of resources), scientific
excellence and international competitiveness (R&D programmes, frameworks for
higher education) whilst regional and local levels need devolved powers and control
to ensure the localisation of benefits, and embedding of cultural and social shifts
associated with new modes of innovation and entrepreneurialism.
• Multi-level governance offers pluralistic processes, which envisages governance
as an open and chaotic pattern of events—no single actor has sufficient potential
to dominate.
• Bargaining is not simply between two or even three levels, but encompasses
multiple levels, many of which lie outside the control of state executives, such
as development agencies, business representative bodies, etc.
Integrated spatial planning—In its most essential form, spatial planning can be
regarded as a set of procedures, processes and practices concerned with what is
built, where and when. The notion of a 'built environment' is given a very broad
meaning in this interpretation of spatial planning, incorporating many forms of
'development', at various scales (e.g. a housing estate and a city), and expressed
through many investments (e.g. a building, a public open space, infrastructure). It