Shaping gateway cities in GPNs: The São José Dos Campos’ science and technology park

Abstract

In this paper, science and technology parks (STPs) as policy for local and global development, is associated to the phenomenon of gateway cities’ formation. With the theoretical lens of gateway cities studies, the Global Production Networks (GPN) approach and regional development analyses, we sought to answer the following research question in a strategic coupling perspective: how the São José dos Campos Science and Technology Park is impacting the region consolidation as a gateway city of aerospace and correlated sectors? To answer it we performed a longitudinal case study with five different unities of analysis and interviewed 32 multiple players operating in and out this specific STP. Our purpose was to investigate whether this innovative arrangement may or may not be facilitating the access of other regions and sectors to the global economy. We argue, by promoting local, global and inclusive development, STPs could be operating not as an isolated island, but as a gateway city developer by acting as an articulator of GPNs of multiple sectors. They would permit productive knowledge flows and would allow the access of other Global South regions to the organizationally fragmented and spatially dispersed world economy. In fact, interviews confirmed that the more than 60 years of aerospace industry history in São José dos Campos, recently redeemed and strengthened by the STP operation, where the three global leader companies develop research and development: Boeing, Airbus and the national Embraer, the gateway city phenomenon is evident there. This environment, because of many incentives towards capacitation, has also helped many technology-based enterprises not only from the STP to better position themselves in GPNs of many sectors and to retain more value in their local operation.