

Portugal gets own Silicon Valley - base
http://euobserver.com/9/32156

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Luyt
I'm skeptical about this. The city I live in has declared itself as the 'IT
City of the North' a few years ago, but still most IT jobs are in the West of
the country. You don't become a Silicon Valley by declaring yourself one. It's
a political pipe dream. This new city in Portugal leaves the same taste in my
mouth: lots of fashionable marketese (what does 'being green' and 'carbon
neutral' has to do with being succesful in IT?) hot air and vapourous ideas.
Let's see where it is in a few years from now.

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greencircle
Sounds like they are ignoring Jane Jacobs. Her four rules for a flourishing
city area: the area must serve more than one primary function, and preferably
more than two; most blocks must be short; the district must involve mixed aged
buildings; and there must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people.

~~~
anamax
By those rules, Silicon Valley is not a "flourishing city area".

Let me guess - Ms Jacobs wants to "encourage" those factors by various means.

What would the Portugese rather have, a "flourishing city area" or a job and
technology producing area?

In other news, black families are leaving "flourishing cities"
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-08-10/bay-
area/17121007_1_af...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-08-10/bay-
area/17121007_1_african-americans-black-families-public-housing) . See also
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%20flight> .

In that, black families are like other families -
[http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/03/san-francisco-
becomi...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/03/san-francisco-becoming-
child-free-zone-youth-population-declines) .

Some people prefer urban. However, a lot of people don't. The urbanists are
merely one group who hasn't figured out that when an argument suggests/implies
behavior that doesn't happen, the argument is wrong, no matter how appealing
the proponents find the conclusion or proposals.

~~~
greencircle
Silicon Valley isn't a city. San Francisco is. I don't know whether Jacobs
wanted to encourage such factors --- she turned city planning on its head with
her book in 1960, and it was a data-driven book, while the orthodoxy at the
time satisfied "The urbanists are merely one group who hasn't figured out that
when an argument suggests/implies behavior that doesn't happen, the argument
is wrong, no matter how appealing the proponents find the conclusion or
proposals."

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ozziegooen
It takes a lot more than 10 billion euros of infrastructure to create a
Silicon Valley. Else, China would have about ten of them by now.

~~~
kmfrk
It sounds way too artificial. They don't even have any universities of note in
a radius of, what, over hundreds of kilometres?

~~~
jacabado
It really depends on what you consider an university of note, if you set the
bar really high you can raise that to a thousand kilometers. Is there any
engineering university of note in Portugal or Spain?

That said, there are more than acceptable universities around and with really
good traits like Universidade do Minho and the Porto's university.

I'm portuguese but from the south, formed in the engineering university with
most tradition in Portugal, Tecnico (IST), do you know it?

But it also sounds too artificial too me, maybe they are there for the
landscapes, for the Porto wine and the 'francesinhas'
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha>).

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ataggart
For a bunch of smart, wealthy people, they really don't grok emergent
phenomena. The Silicon Valley ecosystem, like so many things, is a product of
human action, but not of human design.

[http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarkets....](http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarkets.html)

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protomyth
What are taxes, non-disclosures, non-competes, and angel investing rules like
in Portugal?

~~~
hjrnunes
It would depend on which politician you have in your payroll or influence
network. If don't have any, get ready for a slow, agonizing, unintelligible
maze-like process through twisted Portuguese law, local authorities,
government authorities, back to local authorities, different local
authorities, back to central government, eventually a little showdown on the
court, more laws, and finishing realizing you could have saved a lot of time
(and money) and accomplish exactly the same by just ignoring any kind of
regulation, and being prepared to pay the fines for doing it.

This is an exaggeration of course, but you're bound to experience this
someway, one way or another. Everybody does, no matter what they're trying to
do. As for what you specifically asked, I don't know. But I'd like to as much
as you...

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bryanwb
Sounds like that new Silicon Valley they were building outside Moscow, or the
one they built in Malaysia, or the high-tech cluster outside Kathmandu, . . .
you get the point.

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kiba
I seem to possess a bias against cities that doesn't grow organically.

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smackay
I'm in Lisbon and nobody I asked today had ever heard anything about this.
Given the economic climate (2% fall in GDP forcast for the next year or so)
I'd be really surprised if it was possible to raise the funding for this. As
others have pointed out Silicon Valley has very little to do with location so
recreating it is rather fanciful at best.

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ecaradec
Just like startups, anything that displace the silicon valley would probably
not be like silicon valley. It'll be something else probably...

~~~
euccastro
This is something else actually. It's intended to be an utopian sustainable
smart city. I don't think they call it the "Silicon Valley of Portugal"
because of the projected startup ecosystem, but for the hi-tech aspect.

