Future urbane

Architectural Review, The, May, 2004 by Iain Borden

CITIES OF INNOVATION: SHAPING PLACES FOR HIGH-TECH

By Marcial Echenique, Barry Pearce, William Fawcett and Jason Palmer, Cambridge: The Cambridge-MIT Institute. 2003. [pounds sterling]25

The technology cluster or research park has recently become a well-established aspect of urban development, particularly in connection with world-stage universities in London, Oxbridge, Edinburgh and in the US. Typically, such research parks involve planned development of land outside the city core or university campus, with modern and signature-designed architecture set within heavily landscaped grounds, sharing both business services and opportunities for networking. In short, somewhat akin to a twenty-first century collective version of the eighteenth-century country estate. From Silicon Valley to Silicon Fen, such initiatives have been, by and large, relatively successful, offering new jobs, economic growth and relatively free transport access, as well as the more obvious goals of stimulating high-tech research and related intellectual and financial profits.

However, as Cities of Innovation shows, there are also potential pitfalls to such developments. For example, Cambridge University in the UK has initiated the Cambridge Science Park, St John's Innovation Centre and other research parks--the undoubted success of which has been tempered by inadequate or inappropriate provision of such services as education, healthcare, roads and transport. Nor is this a purely UK problem--similar challenges also now face the Route 128 area around MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the 1970s and 1980s focus on manufacture and computing has recently being followed by considerable 1990s and twenty-first century research into telecommunications and nanotechnology.

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Cities of Innovation takes these problems apart with care, using a joint MIT-Cambridge student group to explore how economic clusters such as research parks have arisen, and precisely what the advantages and disadvantages are for all concerned. Detailed studies of the Cambridge and MIT experiences are also provided, including differing options for future growth, such as greater densification, green belt usage, virtual highways, new towns, and corridor developments. The overall message is clear: research parks should not be developed in isolation. If they are to be fully successful, they must be integrated into wider, regional planning strategies.