Science Parks: Actors or Reactors? Canadian Science Parks in Their Urban Context

Abstract

In response to the current accepted wisdom that we are now in a ‘knowledge economy’, where economic growth is directly linked to the capacity to gather and analyse information, an increasingly popular policy approach has been to foster the development of science parks. These parks, it is argued, contribute to the development of learning regions' by encouraging knowledge transfer between academic institutions and ‘high-tech’ or ‘knowledge-intensive’ establishments, thereby bringing about start-ups and growth in these sectors. Over the last 25 years, 17 such parks have opened in Canada, and in this paper the authors set out to answer two questions. First, what do these parks consist of? Second, can it be shown that they stimulate high-tech employment (whether in the manufacturing or service sectors) in the regions in which they are located? It is found that there is no link between the opening of a science park and employment growth in high-tech sectors.