The Planning Experience of TFT-LCD Industrial Cluster in Southern Taiwan Science Park

Taiwan has been vigorous with building science parks since 1980s. Besides the successful experience in Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park (HSIP), Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP), which was established northeast to Tainan City in 1997, expanded and renamed as Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) in 2003, already become an important high technology industrial district in Taiwan and one of the world-class TFT-LCD industrial clusters. The output of Opto-Electronics industry is about 34 trillion US dollars in 2005 in which TFT-LCD industry occupied about 55 % of its output value and ranked number 2 all over the world. No more than 10 years, TFT-LCD already can compete with IC industry in Taiwan which developed over 20 years until now. Therefore, it is no doubt that TFT-LCD industry has great potentiality and already becomes the domestic industry and the core of government policy to promote the southern region development. Due to the entrance of flagship company, CHIMEI, cooperation with different actors and different planning effort, STSP has constructed a TFT-LCD industrial cluster which has complete upstream and downstream industries of TFT-LCD production. However, rather than growing directly from the original blueprint, this recently burgeoning science park has struggled its way and adapted to many situations that had not been foreseen in the mid-1990s. But how it is developed and success is still a pandoras box needed to be conceptualized in the planning field on combing science park development with industrial clusters. Therefore, this paper focuses on understanding the planning process of how to govern the formation of STSP with industrial clusters, especially in the context of the confliction between different development goals, actors, institutions and ways to govern in city-region scale.