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A formal status of being a metropolitan area opens up vast opportunities for economic and social development for the whole region and a metropolitan area itself. However, literally only few big urban areas in Poland, including Lublin, are capable to meet all applicable statutory qualitative and quantitative requirements. Lublin with its geographical location, population, established Special Economic Zone and Regional Science and Technology Park, numerous organizations and institutions, including local and regional business supporting agencies as well as many successful research-and-development units, has a solid base to become a ‘metropolis of knowledge’. Intensified co-operation between all three spheres within the framework of so called ‘triple helix’ could largely strengthen this process. The very concept of a ‘triple helix’ is based on interactions between three types of organizations – scientific centres, public institutions, including self-government authorities, and business. Lublin has all the assets to become ‘a cluster of knowledge’. Co-operation between scientific institutions, science and technological parks, business incubators as well as properly designed policies based on the economy of knowledge and therefore providing significant preference to high added-value projects are crucial for Lublin to be considered a metropolis of knowledge.
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