Firas T Thalji

The Planning and Design of Science and Technology Parks Firas T Thalji

The effort to innovate and develop very often takes the form of creating and nurturing what we have called STPs. We need now a more precise definition; under this name I tried to include various deliberate attempts to plan and promote, within one concentrated area, technologically innovative, industrial-related production: technology parks, and science cities. This study will try to assess how these different developments perform (or fail to perform) their role as engines of the new round of economic development and as organizing nodes of the new industrial space besides analyzing the Jordanian prospect towards establishing STPs. Comprehension of the STP phenomenon has been so blurred by political, ideological, and business biases that any serious study must start from a careful analysis of how these centers were created and developed, and of the factors that account for their differential success, according to a set of criteria that must be established at the start. Several basic planning and design criteria were thus deduced/derived from the analysis of these world-famous STPs,