Silicon Urbanism

Background

In a time of geopolitical uncertainties, high-tech industries, epitomized by the semiconductor sector, hold significant promises for urban-regional development. Cities around the world are competing to host the semiconductor industry, based on the “clustering promises” (e.g., Porter’s clusters, global production networks) that the agglomeration of semiconductor and its adjacent industries have the potential to enhance technological capabilities, attract global talent, stimulate economic growth, and elevate the quality of life.

However, extant promises often rely on compartmentalized, generic assessment frameworks driven primarily by entrepreneurial and economic perspectives, overlooking heterogeneous urban and regional developmental pathways and the multifaceted socio-ecological ramifications of high-tech sectors. Moreover, as silicon industry driven urban developments are intricately entangled with processes of globalization and interconnected networks, the cities and metropolitan regions involved are becoming increasingly interdependent. Current studies, mostly based on single city case studies, rarely engages in cross-national comparisions to trace prolific silicon-interconnections which produce differentiated urban outcomes. In sum, silicon urbanism – a term we use to refer to the phenomenon encompassing the global expansion of the semiconductor industry to selected cities, urban-regional competition and collaboration, variegated practices around making cities and regions semiconductor-friendly, and the reshaping of city physical forms and ways of life – remains under examined.

Objectives

This project aims to 1) enrich empirical insights into semiconductor-driven urban and regional developments and their multifaceted socio-ecological-material implications across diverse contexts, and 2) advance broader theorizations of silicon urbanism in a “non-reductionist” way that further supports cross-regional learning and methodological innovation.

Methods

Researchers from multiple disciplines will address the questions below through two workshops and conjunct field trips in two city-regions of Hsinchu and Dresden. The multi-sited fieldtrips will be translated into creative mappings of semiconductor industry-related stakeholders, lands, water bodies, infrastructures, non-human species, narratives, memories, and imaginaries.  

Research Questions

• Q1: Past, Present and Future Imaginaries. Which narratives dominate local and regional visions for high-tech-driven growth, and how do they shape land-use decisions and social and physical infrastructural priorities?
• Q2: Infrastructure Requirements. Which physical, energy, socio-economic, cultural and ecological infrastructures (e.g. biodiversity offsets) are necessitated by semiconductor production, and how do they transform urban-regional forms?
• Q3: Winners and Losers. Who (including both human and non-human actors) benefits or is disadvantaged by such developments, and what planning intervention can prevent or mitigate socio-spatial inequities?
• Q4: Negotiating Centrality and Peripherality. How do high-tech clusters redefine what is considered “central” or “peripheral” within regional hierarchies, and what are the consequences for resource allocation?
• Q5: Planning Silicon City. Which data-driven methods and tools are used/could be employed to enable planning the silicon industrial sites and supporting physical and social infrastructures towards inclusivity, circularity and sustainability?