Research City used to be called “Research Park,” until market conditions and traffic jams inspired it to sprout compact housing arms, postmodern shopping wings, green office clusters, and iconic convention centers. Research City has public funding, public advertising, private infrastructure, and no taxes. Research City is spread across as many jurisdictions as possible. It competes with itself-- as well as with Research Cities in 8 other time zones-- to attract specialists whose work is lucrative and perhaps not immediately useful. Tech Valley is a name coined in 1998 by the Albany Chamber of Commerce, as part of a strategy to redevelop a post-industrial region by luring new-economy businesses to the area through a combination of incentives, free trade zones, and regional branding. It’s a strategy which has been used worldwide, most prominently in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, but is also being used in a notable ways in places like China, Malaysia, and India, Which we will look at for comparison. Research parks are increasingly taking on the characteristics of full-fledged, 24-hour neighborhoods. Their existence as enclaves makes visible simultaneously their Utopian and segregating potentials, potentials which must be confronted.