TECHNOLOGY POLICY BETWEEN CENTER AND PERI PHERY - THE TECHNOPOLE EXPERIMENT

Recent trends in technology policies seem to be narrowly connected wit h some kind of political decentralization. The upheaval of the technop oles formula, in France as well as in many other industrialized countr ies, is likely to give room for a further development of relationship between center and periphery. Nevertheless. technopoles relate much mo re to a political vision than to a well defined institutional or geogr aphical standard. Technopoles may be viewed as tools dedicated to the renewal of public intervention strongly associated with an utopian pro spect of urban life. As a matter of fact, technopoles' economic outcom es still need to be assessed. One may raise questions about their actu al impact upon the local sociopolitical system. Do technopoles really abolish the center-periphery dichotomy or do they reproduce national p atterns of technology policies?