From ‘wannabe’ Silicon Valley to global back office? Examining the socio‐spatial consequences of technopole planning practices in Malaysia

Abstract

Abstract: Cyberjaya is one of a long line of aspiring science and technology parks in the Asia‐Pacific region that have attempted to create a successful technopole, and in doing so become the ‘Silicon Valley of Asia’. The paper attends to the place‐making strategies through which Cyberjaya was positioned as a new ‘global hub’ for information communication technology and multimedia industries, framed as an extremely ‘sticky place’ (Markusen, 1996). That is, a place within a global economic system where local skills, infrastructure and capital attracts and makes research and development and corporate headquarters reluctant to leave. The paper considers that despite considerable infrastructural investment and state‐led urban boosterism to ‘sell’ Cyberjaya to prospective investors, more than 10 years after its completion in 1999 the development has become little more than a zone of disconnected business process outsourcing industries comprising low value‐added outsourcing activities.