Suburban technopoles as places: The international campus-garden-suburb style

Abstract

What are suburban technopoles like as places? This article examines the design and planning features of areas developed specifically to promote technological innovation focusing on cases in Japan that have been ranked highly as technological centers: Tsukuba, Izumi Park Town and Kansai Science City. Although different in age and the relationship between public and private sponsors they share a campus style of urban design, with ample green space linking nearby housing, adapting the college or university campus model and combining it with a garden city approach in what we call the international campus-garden-suburb style. Although there are other kinds of environments that support high-technology clusters -for example multimedia areas in central cities -the international campus-garden-suburb is a very flexible model that can be seen in many international examples. It can be used for developments in the thousands of workers and residents to the hundreds of thousands. URBAN DESIGN International (2010) 15, 165-182.

Delivering growth? Evaluating economic governance in England’s South East subregions

“…The area therefore differs radically from the 'international campus-garden-suburb style' of suburban technopoles which has come to prominence in high-tech developments throughout the world (Forsyth and Crewe, 2010). In contrast, the three major elements of SVUK are perhaps better regarded as 'camps' rather than …”

Alternative Forms of the High-Technology District: Corridors, Clumps, Cores, Campuses, Subdivisions, and Sites

“…In terms of high end creativity, Fang and Xie (2008) describe designing a research campus where workers could partake in a set of amenities related to international preferences. Many developments designed for such creative work are in what Forsyth and Crewe (2010) call the international campus-garden-suburb style. Few are as comprehensively designed for work, housing, and recreation as the Japanese developments highlighted in their paper-including the science city of Tsukuba and the master planned Isumi Park Town.…”

“…Campuses are new towns, or at least large scale comprehensive communities, planned for innovation. They may take up thousands of hectares (Forsyth and Crewe, 2010).…”

“…However, because high-tech companies and workers can frequently outbid local businesses and residences, there may be significant displacement of existing lowerincome occupants (Graham and Guy, 2002). Forsyth and Crewe (2010) outline how some purpose-built high-technology developments have adapted the campus and garden city or planned garden suburb model into what they call the international campus-garden-suburb style (Gumprecht, 2005;O'Mara, 2005). True science cities, planned from the beginning for high tech development, are comprehensively developed with housing and business areas.…”

“…Tsukuba, population planned for 200,000) to the medium e.g. Kista planned for far fewer (Forsyth and Crewe, 2010;2009;Baringa and Ramfelt, 2004). Some comprehensively planned mixed-use developments were not intended initially for high tech but attracted a great deal, for example Izumi Park Town outside Sendai (benefitting from the Japanese Technopolis program) or Irvine in Southern California (Forsyth, 2002).…”