Cities, and Science and Technology Parks Innovation environments as a new urban hierarchy

SUSANA FINQUELIEVICH

Quebec

Conferencia; XIX IASP World Conference on Science and Technology Parks; 2002

Which are the characteristics of XXI Century cities? Do cities still exist, as we have known them, or are they the new agents of economic, political, and social changes? How are they related to scientific and technological innovation? In this paper, strongly based upon Castells, Hall and Sassen concepts, I wish to contribute new ideas to this debate. The first hypothesis is that urban changes are characterized by the overcoming of Industrial cities, as dominating structural elements of economic, geographic, and social organization, in different levels; some signals are identified, which suggest the upsurge of a society based on innovative forms of social cohabitation, which are not based any more on the classic formulas (family, neighborhoods, local community), and which eventually leave aside their territorial anchorages to wave global economic and social networks. At the same time, a new urban hierarchy is built in the world’s urban network. It has already been intensively studied by Saskia Sassen, and by Manuel Castells, who have created the concept of global and nodal cities, according to the importance of the financial and political fluxes they concentrate. But also, cities can be classified in central and peripheral to the Information Society urban system, according to their capacity of becoming innovation environments. Castells and Hall (1998) define innovative environment as: “The social, institutional, organizational, economic, and geographic structural system, witch creates the conditions for a continuous generation of synergies, and for their investment in a production process originated from this synergic capacity, for production units, as well as for the environment a as whole”. The development of innovation environments is, in the new Millennium, not only a decisive factor for local economic development, but also, a matter of political, and social prestige. Innovative cities would be those that are capable of concentrating and interrelate elements such as: Development of technological parks. Local production of goods and services of high Information Society- technologies´ value. This refers to hardware and software (as shown in cases such as Seattle and Silicon Valley, in USA, and Bangalore, in India), but not exclusively: it also refers to cities´ capacities to attract innovative enterprises, not only manufacturers of electronic items, but enterprises that use ICTs, and mainly the Internet in its more recent generations, as place and means of networked organizations (such as Cisco Systems). Individual and collective consumption of ICT intensive goods and services - urban services that use ICTs for their operation and management: education, public health, transportation, etc.; urban technological networks, such as water and sanitation, managed through ICT systems; and mainly, local electronic government. The emergence of new social organizations, supported by ICTs. This refers specifically to electronic community networks, defined by the Spanish Association of Citizens Networks as “Systems of intervention, instrumentalization, articulation, and promotion, of local developments in all its areas”. Different groups and social movements find in these networks means of communication and development, forums to transmit their ideas to the citizens, tools to interact with groups with similar interests around the world. These cities attract the interactions between risk capital, State actions oriented to become key cities in the new economy, and production of high-quality knowledge in Universities, research centers, and technological parks. Depending on the cities capacities and possibilities to fulfill this role, a new map of urban centralities and peripheries will be established around the world, a map, which will possibly differ from the one, inherited from the Industrial Society. Innovative environments will be territorially concentrated in cities and their hinterlands, articulated and connected through telecommunication networks, with the rest of the world. The third hypothesis is that this network of central and peripheral cities, defined by their innovation capacities, will not necessarily be coincident with the present urban hierarchy of Capitals, large, intermediate, and small cities, in developed or developing countries or regions. It may also be non coincident with the Sassian hierarchy of global, and nodal cities. As in a juxtaposition of transparent maps, some central, global, or hierarchically relevant in the present Norths and Souths will be coincident with the innovative cities, and many will not. Only cities that have the goal to become innovative environments (trough the development of S&T, and the implementation of S&T parks, in their many forms) will achieve a new protagonism. This paper attempts to build a conceptual basis to analyze the concepts referring to the urban hierarchies specific to the Information Society, as well as to sketch a first attempt to build an appropriate research methodology to analyze the phenomenon of urban centralities and peripheries, according to the mentioned hypothesis.