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

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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.

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Notes

  1. The international campus–garden suburbs is a reference to Jane Jacobs (1961) ‘radiant-garden-city-beautiful’ although unlike Jacobs we are not necessarily criticizing it.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Graham Foundation for partly funding for this project and to Tom Hilde, Luke Van Sistine, and Whitney Parks for assistance with maps. Photos are by the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cornell University, 106 West Sibley, Ithaca, 14853, NY, USA

    Ann Forsyth

  2. Arizona State University, Tempe, 85287-2005, AZ, USA

    Katherine Crewe

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  1. Ann Forsyth
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Forsyth, A., Crewe, K. Suburban technopoles as places: The international campus-garden-suburb style. Urban Des Int 15, 165–182 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2010.15

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