Technopolis Concepts for Developing Countries A Technopolis is an economic development zone that was consciously created out of a partnership between government, industry, academia, and the people for the purpose of injecting creative, grassroots technologies into the economic processes of cities in order to enhance economic and technological competitiveness. The Technopolis program emphasizes the creation of a "soft" infrastructure of people, new technologies, information services, venture capital, and telecommunications. People and services, not massive public works projects, are the focus of this new program. Indirectly the people create the other "soft" infrastructure that is often overlooked by technologists. The three basic types of infrastructures needed to create a Technopolis or in our case a Center for Sustainable Development are: • Hard - systems which support the movement of things and information • Soft - education and government • Economic - the economy of the centers can be viewed as an ecosystem, i.e. a self-organizing system. In other words "Wc envision a privatized infrastructure and network of technology that creates the conditions for accelerated development". Whereas the goal of the Japanese Technopolis project is the creation of new world-class cities ours is the creation of zones of sustainability that can, growing with success, expand outward to gradually encompass more of the land into a sustainable relationship with a stable human population that is experiencing an improving quality of life. Technological resources in concert with social, political, and economic systems can leverage human resources and create wealth where there was none. Coupling this concept with the social and political dynamics described in The Other Path means that the care and nurturing of the human assets will result in greater wealth creation than merely treating them as a resource to be used and discarded. The hypothesis is that by encouraging the peasant to become a shareholder in the creation of a Center for Sustainable Development though "sweat equity" rather than a squatter in an urban slum, developers and investors in the CSD will realize a greater appreciation of their investment than normal as well as the resident shareholder. It is important to differentiate between public-sector consumption, (creation of non-value added public sector jobs or welfare), and public sector investment (roads, water and utility systems). The difference is very important for economic growth. Design Criteria or steps to creation: • Determine which assets qualifies a region as strategic and then locate centers in strategic regions or regions which could become strategic. Deserts or semi-arid
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