High Tech Zones/High Tech Developments

GOICOECHEA, MARÍA EUGENIA

Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Wiley-Blackwell

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2019; p. 810 - 816

High tech zones (HTZs) or high tech developments (HTDs) represent a new form of territorially organizing production linked to the high tech industry. They concentrate diverse elements that jointly contribute to create an environment conducive to the development of research and development (R&D) activities, usually called an innovative milieu. These elements are highly qualified human capital, educational and research institutions, companies and access to capital intended for investment in high-risk operations. It is, therefore, a new form of industrial location, built on the basis of territorial complexes of spatially distant production; a new geographic pattern associated with the capitalist dynamics of informational production (Castells 1996). HTZs account for a new form of local-global articulation, where the world economy once again emphasizes the role of the territory and of the local productive systems over the national dimension, as a strategy of global economic insertion. Although the origins of these productive patterns date from the post-World War II period, in the last decades they have had an extensive reception worldwide. They have been developed both in peripheral areas and from urban renewal processes in central areas of big cities, and refer to a variety of space forms that assume different characteristics depending on the contexts where they are deployed: science park, research park, scientific park, technopole, tecnoburbs, technology park, creative city, innopolis, district of innovation, and even high tech corridor. However, they share certain features that distinguish them as selective and exclusive spaces: a green and campus-like environment and a consumption proposal defined by a real estate and cultural offer, particularly oriented to a type of inhabitant linked to the creative economy. They are built from public and private initiatives, with the aim of promoting optimal environments not only for production, but also for urban life (especially considering leisure, entertainment, or recreation functions). They concentrate large investments of fixed capital together and represent highly valued areas for the real estate market.