The Color of Innovation

Innovation District: Boston’s  “South City Action Plan”

The good city is innovative and fun; it is prosperous; it strives for justice and sustainability- and above all, it is alive. —— Paul S. Grogan

All politics is local. —— Tip O’Neill

If one were asked to single out the most difficult role to play on the political stage of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston would be the default answer. It can be explained by two reasons: firstly, the Greater Boston area has long been among the world cities and Boston is no doubt the center of the area. Therefore, any moves made by the mayor would exert significant impacts on the region and its surroundings. Such a fact requires the mayor to possess sufficient foresight and superb leadership. Secondly, as the capital of Massachusetts, Boston is both an independent city with its own constituency and the key area for state governance. Indeed, the state government and the city hall are located within half a miles from each other at the heart of the city. It is therefore very natural that the two governments would frequently find itself at odds with the other on various issues, ranging from development goals, project selection, construction timetable and specific operational plans. As a result, the post of mayor requires strong communication and coordination skills. To borrow the words from Chinese officialdom, the situation of Boston mayor is comparable to that of “Peking officials.” However, the incumbent Mayor Thomas M. Menino has served in this position for nineteen years, finishing up his fifth term next year. In light of the general popularity and his overall performance record, Menino is believed to be the most accomplished and popular mayor in the history of Boston.

Menino was born into an ordinary Italian immigrant family at Hyde Park, Boston. He received his higher education at University of Massachusetts Boston. Prior to taking the mayorship in 1993, Menino had served for ten years on Boston’s city council. Up to the present, he has never left Boston, his beloved city where he grew up, went to school and then work, got married and had children.  Ever since he first took office,  Menino has demonstrated strong dedication and an undivided attention to build a better city. Making full use of his major in community planning and with the most ardent enthusiasm and attention to details, Menino devotes himself to neighborhood development. For nearly two decades, he has visited individual homes and streets to examine and resolve problems. From cleaning up the parks and fixing the streetlights, to selecting location for convenience stores and repairing the sewage system, nothing is too trivial for Menino. When new projects come up, he is delighted to supervise every aspect of the construction, be it site selection, planning, supporting infrastructure building or exterior design. His burly figure often appears at the street corners, restaurants, bars, shopping centers and the barbers’. A survey conducted by a local media in 2009 showed that about 59% of the citizens had private talks with the mayor. He is omniscient. It is hard to tell if such is his innate leadership style or deliberative policy strategy. In short, his tireless work ethic and attention to the basics that make for a thriving city won him the reputation of “urban mechanics” early in his career.  His most distinguished achievements include promoting the growth of medium-size and small businesses, supporting education innovation, revitalizing cooperation-based community culture and clamping down on crime, for which he has been recognized as a national leader on urban neighborhood governance.

At 69 years old, Menino has been constantly bothered by minor health problems. His eye surgery and leg operation were both topics of local media reporting. His extremely strong Boston accent earned him the nickname Mumbles. For all appearances, he stands as strikingly different from the young, upbeat and eloquent American politicians we often see on TV. But beware such should not trick you into believing that Menino is no man of charm and competence. On the contrary, he has shown extraordinary insight and courage for innovation during his entire mayoralty. At the inauguration speech of his unprecedented fifth term, Menino pledges a new era of “shared innovation,” jointly built by the administration and the people; he promises to create a continuum of educational opportunities for the city’s youth, from dusk to dawn and from birth through college; he aims to revitalize the undeveloped parts of the city and construct a sustainable and shared innovation economy; he advocates civil entrepreneurship as a proper means to initiate a wave of urban innovation; he is committed to a culture of “inclusiveness” to bring the city even closer together across varied backgrounds. The whole Boston gathered under his championship. With criticism of “hopelessly myopic” and “lacking in spirits” against Menino the workaholic swiftly disappearing, his new initiatives are all making steady progress, among which the South Boston Innovation District is unequivocally the most prominent. Indeed, Menino’s South Boston “action plan” kicked off a new round of urban construction and has made great contributions to the city’s reviving economy. Innovation District, shortened as ID, is a new “ID” for Boston proper.

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Located at the old south seaport of Boston, Innovation District is nestled between Boston’s transportation gateways: abutting historic Boston Harbor, adjacent to Logan International Airport, and at the nexus of two major interstate highways. The 1,000 acres of residential, commercial, and industrial space includes Fort Point, Pan Pier, Seaport, Liberty Wharf, Channel Center as well as parts of the Financial and Leather districts. Before Menino rechristened it as Boston’s Innovation District and vowed to help companies large and small, this part of the city had been home to Seaport World Trade Center, Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and Marine Industrial Park. However, in the past decades, it remained a largely empty land with abandoned factories and gravels that attracted only artists to work or wander around.

Innovation District has clear and distinctive principles, goals and strategies. In Menino’s opinion, people in clusters innovate at a quicker rate, sharing technologies and knowledge easier and thereby increasing productivity. So he was determined to create a place, in midst of the economic recovery, for the best ideas to collide and the most promising entrepreneurs to meet and communicate. By assisting entrepreneurs to develop their business, more work opportunities will come along and the economy will grow. The ambition of Innovation District is not limited to another typical regional innovation economy cluster In Massachusetts like Kendall Square, Route 128 and Longwood Medical and Academic Area, but extends to building a vigorous and vibrant urban community with experiences and lessons borrowed from San Francisco and New York. To reach such an end, Innovation District defines its theme as “work, live and play,” that is, to build a multi-functional urban community that combines business and jobs, comfortable and convenient living, as well as leisure and fun. In addition to an abundance of collaborative venues, research and development space, Menino has spurred the investment of monies in transportation and municipal infrastructure. He has also made available a wide variety of housing choices as well as a large number of dinning and entertainment options. I cannot help but be reminded of a slogan on posters all over Changping when I started to work there: Let’s make Changping the first choice for investment and entrepreneurship, living and residing, tourism and leisure. Much encouraged, I understand how difficult it would be to turn these words into reality on the 300 thousand-acre land of Changping. To see such a seemingly unattainable goal being implemented in an orderly manner here at the Innovation District, I was simply overcome with emotion.

Being an opportune project, Innovation District has had a smooth first two years. Statistically, by February this year, over one hundred new companies had moved to the area, bringing more than three thousand new jobs. It is fair to say that Innovation District has managed to seize three opportunities. First of all, limited office space in Kendall Square drives rents up, and the soaring price forces many start-ups to look for more affordable place. Besides, as the second-time host of the BIO International Convention, Massachusetts consolidated its leadership in the world’s biomedical and pharmaceutical industry, attracting a number of multi-national corporations, European companies in particular, to relocate or open branches in the Greater Boston area.  Thirdly, against the backdrop of current global economic recession, Greater Boston is able to keep a relatively strong economic growth rate, highlighted by its featured innovation economy. With biomedical, clean energy and information technology, among others, being the primary industries, Innovation District has initiated a new economic path marked by multi-industry, diversified development as well as integration of industry, academia and research.  Some of the companies and institutions that have moved to Innovation District include: MassChallenge, Greentown Labs (Boston’s first clean tech incubator), Oasys Water (committed to developing breakthrough technologies to address the growing global water crisis), Space with a Soul (a non-profit accelerator), Babson Boston, Gezelle (sale of used electronics), Gemvara (customized jewelry making), Crimson Hexagon (social media monitoring analysis), NPR Digital (digital platform service), Buzzient (social media tools), Boston Society of Architects (a nonprofit membership organization committed to architecture, design and the built environment). In 2013, two well-known companies, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Zipcar will make Innovation District their home. The new headquarter of Vertex, a $900 million development plan under construction, is presently the largest private sector construction project in the nation. So, to respond to one of the comments made on my blog- “could you predict the most promising industry along Route 128?” my answer would be: Massachusetts’ innovation economy has stopped relying on one or a few industries; rather, Route 128, Red line innovation corridor and Innovation District have all presented a mixed development of multiple industries and it is thus hard to predict which one of them would become the new star. These industries’ shared advantages lie in knowledge and technology. Innovation activities are concentrated on basic research, product development and lean production. The most distinguished characteristics of the enterprises can be summarized as small scale, big investment, and high return.

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The rise of Innovation District, viewed in a broader perspective, mirrors the revival of urban culture in Boston and America at large, thanks to the coordinated efforts of politicians, entrepreneurs and intellectuals. According to the studies of Edward Glaeser, professor of Urban Economics at Harvard University, downtown Boston showed signs of decline in the 1920s, hit bottom in the 1950s, and did not get back on its feet until the late 1980s. Glaeser’s observation could be verified by two facts. The first is the curious absence of any large-scale commercial building in Boston downtown amidst the building boom between 1950 and 1957 that created Route 128 as well as the industrial parks and commercial facilities along the line. The second is the disappointing result of the fundraising campaign led by the then mayor Kevin White and developer James Rouse in 1975 for renovating two cultural heritage sites—Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. Their proposal met unanimous disapproval from the city’s banks, as no one saw it a promising project. But Boston was not the only city hit by a downturn in fortune during the early part of the twentieth century—Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Cleveland followed suit. With the wholesale exodus of residents and jobs, the once glamorous downtown areas deteriorated into a nightmare of blight, decay and danger, filled with disease, poverty and crime. It was not until the 1980s that cities like Boston and San Francisco with unique human resources bounced back with the advent of information technology revolution, and recovered their former prosperity as new consumer cities.

While urban life invokes tribute and longing in Europe and Asia, it enjoys much less glorification in America. “Ambivalent” may best characterize its status in the American psyche. Paul Grogan attributes, and rightly so, the negative image to one of the nation’s founding fathers and America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, who famously declared that “cities contain all that is pestilential to the morals and moods of mankind.” Jefferson’s curse had substantially lowered American people’s estimation of cities, and the prejudice was only confirmed and deepened with people’s redefinition and pursuit of the American Dream: it was not about living in the gay and debauchery cities of high-rise buildings, but rather about enjoyig detached houses with spacious lawns, private swimming pools and groups of children—an orderly and civilized life in the suburbs in close contact with nature. Besides, the federal government had been the unwitting accomplice during the decline of cities. Such combined policies as the construction of federal highways, mortgage-interest deduction for suburban housing, generous support for automobile industries and long term fuel subsidies have all driven people to settle in the suburbs and left downtown to the homeless. However, the battle to rescue downtown from decline has never ceased, at least in Boston. In the political arena, Francis Sargent, governor of Massachusetts (1969-1975), vetoed a plan for Boston’s Inner Belt highway, making a timely effort to prevent Boston from further decline. Since 1960s, successive mayors of Boston from John Hynes through John Collins to Kevin White and Thomas Menino have all made unflagging efforts for the city’s revival. Their long terms, ranging from eight to twenty years, also ensured the continuity and longevity of policies, and promoted Boston’s steady course to prosperity. Business leaders have also made laudable contributions. Teradyne, the manufacturer of automatic test equipment, had firmly based its offices in downtown Boston since its inception in 1960 until its recent move to North Reading. When I visited Boston Properties last month, I learned from Michael LaBelle, the vice president, that the company has been, for the past forty years of its growth, focusing on high quality and high end office buildings and commercial complexes in the metropolis and never engaged in suburban projects. The company itself is headquartered in its masterpiece architecture, the famous Copley Place in central Boston.

Did the rebirth of Boston promote the status and importance of cities in general? Perhaps not in the opinion of Menino. During an interview at the end of 2007, he chafed at media’s lack of attention to urban affairs, and registered his disappointment that the importance of urban governance and urban problems seemed to have eluded the minds of the two presidential candidates. He cautioned America’s hope should reside in well-developed cities, and that the key to urban governance should be education, economy, housing, and public safety. Above all, innovation should remain the source and core power for the urban revival. Scholars have also risen to the defense of cities. In his 2011 book Triumph of the City, Professor Glaeser offered policy suggestions to the federal government and envisioned the beautiful future of urban civilization, based on his studies of the developmental history of the world’s famous cities. The book’s subtitle presents a powerful argument for the city: how our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier. Glaeser believes that in the new information age of globalization, physical distance no longer poses obstacle to communication, yet still most innovative ideas are generated through frequent and direct interaction and communication between people. Therefore he is a firm supporter and advocate for building skyscrapers and nurturing urban industrial clustering. No evidence has been found to suggest that Glaeser’s book has inspired Menino’s launching of Innovation District, but Glaeser and Menino certainly have shared some common beliefs. The official website of the Innovation District proposes that “Distance equals death,” as in contrast to the “Death of distance” theory of the British economist Frances Cairncross. But a closer reading of Cairncross’s work leads me to realize that the two notions are not intrinsically contradictory but rather address different issues. On the one hand, the extensive use of information technology has greatly reduced the time and cost of interpersonal communications, and in this sense distance has disappeared. On the other hand, the increasingly advanced information technology also calls for face-to-face communication to stimulate new ideas, so it would be rather unwise to give up the physical convenience offered by cities. Glaeser provides academic endorsement for Innovation District, while Cairncross does not necessarily oppose to it.

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Boston World Partnership, which successfully held the “Innovation Express” event, was established with Menino’s endorsement yet operates independently. The main task of BWP is to publicize and promote Innovation District and the “New Urban Mechanics” program. ” “New Urban Mechanics” aims at tackling the basic issues in the city through mustering the passion and wisdom of the constituents. For Menino, civic entrepreneurship, richly embedded in citizens and all kinds of social organizations, needs to be mobilized to resolve even the tiniest problems. Once the various types of foundations, entrepreneurs, tech experts and community residents plunge into this massive innovation campaign, Boston’s lasting prosperity and success will be guaranteed and enhanced.

From being nicknamed as “urban mechanics” to promoting “New Urban Mechanics” in a variety of ways, Menino’s political career seems to have been filled with trivialities. A popular Chinese term “city management” came to my mind. Nonetheless, quite in contrast with the Chinese ways of “making drastic changes,” Menino enhances his favorite city through maintaining the traditional functions and providing basic services. It is through gradual small-scale improvements to address constituent concerns that Menino achieves innovation and makes the big difference. Such is perhaps Menino’s unique approach to city management and may very well be the right one. After years of watching Boston’s development and studying urban policy, Professor Howard Husock from Harvard University made the following remarks: “I think that Mayor Menino has been an important mayor for Boston — and for Democratic mayors across the country especially — because he signaled that a focus on core, traditional services was important. That we should not only think that new projects and changing the face of the city should be the sole focus of a mayor. The delivery of core services is a message that any mayor can take to heart.”

Actively advocating a shared experience for an innovative Boston and perseveringly pursuing inclusion and diversity, Menino has gained support and respect from the voters. Such is also reflected in his attitude toward the Chinese community. Throughout the history of Boston, Menino is the mayor who has paid most visits to Chinatown. His frequent interactions with the Chinese often invite generous coverage by local Chinese media. Recently, Menino vetoed a redistributing plan that would split Chinatown into two parts. The action won him unanimous praise from the Chinese community. On the afternoon of October 12, 2012, together with Harvard President Drew Faust, Menino attended the donation ceremony by the Chao family to Harvard Business School. Noting that people of Chinese descent now comprise Boston’s second largest immigrant group, Menino called the accomplishments of the Chaos as a prime example of a family that had lived the American dream. Humorously, Menino mentioned that the size of Harvard’s Boston campus exceeds that of its Cambridge campus and that the new building at HBS made possible by Chao’s funds will have to get his approval.  He also took the opportunity to express his genuine wish for more innovation resources into Boston. Following the news that Boston outpaced San Francisco’s Bay area and became the most innovative city in the world, the China Press published an article on October 20 to further introduce the great contributions made to Boston by scientists of Chinese decent. I sincerely hope that Boston will carry on such an honor and that more and more American Chinese will join the force. Together, we will inject more Chinese elements into Boston’s vitality.

References:

Boston’s Innovation District. City of Boston. Web. 26 Oct. 2012. <http://www.innovationdistrict.org/>.

“Case Study: The Boston Waterfront Innovation District.” SustainableCitiesCollective. N.p., 27 July 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2012. <http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/ecpa-urban-planning/27649/case-study-boston-waterfront-innovation-district>.

City of Boston.“The Strategy.” Boston’s Innovation District. June 28, 2010. Accessed June 23, 2011 <http://www.innovationdistrict.org/about-2/the-strategy/>.

Farrel, Michael. “High-tech Firms Find Fertile Turf in South Boston.” Seaport Innovation District. N.p., 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2012. <http://seaportinnovationdistrict.com/2012/south-boston-waterfront-innovation-district/>.

Mayor’s Office. City of Boston. Web. 26 Oct. 2012.

<http://www.cityofboston.gov/mayor/>.

Hiestand, Emily, and Ande Zellman, eds. The Good City: Writers Explore 21st Century Boston. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Print.

Patton, Zach. “The Boss of Boston: Mayor Thomas Menino.” Governing the States and Localities. N.p., Jan. 2012. Web. Oct. 2012. <http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-boss-of-boston-mayor-thomas-menino.html>.

Tsipis, Yanni and David Kruh. Building Route 128. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, c2003.