Metropolitan Areas and Science Parks: Universities, Centres of Excellence and Regional Development

In a significant number of European metropolitan areas, universities (or parts of them) have been or are leaving the historical centre where they have been located for decades, and often for centuries. Research institutions are at the same time often developing facilities and premises at the periphery where land is available at relatively low cost.This move raises various strategic issues at different levels of government, spatial and urban planning, as well as concerning university management.For instance, for small and medium size cities which are intended to host new campuses : how to optimise such external investment and build on it to the benefit of local development and improvement of social capital; how to conceive and implement proper urban and spatial planning; how to address students needs; how to build a trustworthy and win-win relationship with the university hosted; how to solve problems of multi-level governance, and in particular how to promote and market the new image resulting from new competencies in a context of competition with the larger city, head of the metropolitan area; etc.Stockholm, Oslo, Munich, among other large metropolitan areas in Europe, have been addressing these issues in the last decade through networking with small and medium size cities in the periphery and the creation of specific agencies, with the support of well-conceived web portals.The example of Parco Tecnologico Padano in Lodi, close to Milano, illustrates the importance of these strategic issues and the way in which they can be addressed. Milano State University has decided to relocate 3 Faculties (Veterinarian, Agrarian Sciences, Pharmacology) on a new campus in Lodi (25 kms from Milano) paving the way for a clustering process with an hospital for animals, a technological platform, a bio-incubator and a business park, leading to a pole of excellence of European level in the field of biotech applied to the agri-food sector and agro-industries, which will be fully operating by the beginning of 2004.