Planning and Designing of Science and Technology Parks with the Emphasis on Regional Advantage: The Case of Mazandaran province

Science and technology parks, which could result  in accelerating  growth and  sustainable development of regions, play a key role  in  technological and scientific planning of the country. The modern science and technology planning theories  emphasize the necessity of creating science and technology parks, which are based on the region’s natural resource endowments and technological capabilities. However, neither criteria nor principles in planning and designing  these parks have been proposed. In this paper, given  the unique features of Mazandaran, which has a natural resource based economy, we propose different principles for planning, designing, and implementing the science and technology parks. The principles of the planning and designing are codified in framework of the vision statement and full flow process of production in the parks by recognizing the concepts related to regional development, as well as identifying the regional advantages using the  scientific methods and the regional  comparative  advantages.The results have shown that it is possible to provide  different strategies of planning and designate for technology and science parks with respect to the social, economic, spatial, environmental,  and temporal variables for a natural resource based economy. The strategies have been categorized in five areas: Economic, management, environmental-physical, social-cultural, and science &  technology, and objective goals have been presented.