URBAN ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT AND HIGH TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY

This paper examines the economic development prospects for urban areas arising from localised clusters of high technology activity. Economic development opportunities are expected to be expressed in the development of local linkage patterns: employment linkages, production and service linkages and linkages to local universities. On the basis of survey evidence of high technology firms from two urban areas in Israel, linkage patterns are found to be weakly developed locally but extensively developed nationally and internationally. This is explained as a result of the international character of Israeli high technology activity resulting in a limited effect on the development of the local urban economy. Policy implications for urban economic development point to the need for the formulation of a public policy executed and administered at the local level rather than the present system of central government targeting of urban economic development at select locations.