Knowledge in Science and Technology Parks

Science and technology parks (STPs) are considered as a kind of public-private partnerships designed to increase regional wealth and technology start-ups growth in developed and/or in developing regions. The main aim of these institutions is to reproduce the successful factors of regional phenomena such as Silicon Valley or Boston's Route 128. These institutions are focused on fostering knowledge flows, mainly among tenant institutions, as well as between tenants and nearby external institutions. The main objective of this chapter is to shed some light in the role of STPs as specialized institutions leveraging knowledge creation and diffusion. First, the origin and evolution are analyzed. Second, the evolution and typology of models of STPs are showed. Finally, conclusions and future research directions will be proposed

Cluster Dynamics and Regional Networks

Regional clusters and their competitive advantages have attracted growing research and policy focus. This chapter reviews cluster dynamics, regional advantages, and the talent flow amongst the leading innovation hubs, notably Silicon Valley, and new emerging hubs in newly industrializing economies. In exploring cluster dynamics, cultures, and networks, the chapter compares Silicon Valley and Route 128, the leading innovation hubs, in the United States. It provides an alternative network approach to examine and explain the dynamics of industrial hubs and cluster dynamics. It also shows that economies of the periphery (such as Hsinchuu Science Park in Taipei) can rely on strategies of talent circulation and brain gain through collaboration with leading innovation hubs. Through a comparative study of firms in Silicon Valley and Route 128, the chapter explains the uneven performance between the two regional hubs, and provides new insights on regional clusters. This has implications for countries exploring effective policy mechanisms for cluster dynamics to develop technological capabilities. The review focuses on a particularly significant period, the 1970s to 1990s.

Planning for an Innovation District: Questions for Practitioners to Consider

Innovation districts are physical spaces that serve to strengthen the foundations and institutions of an innovation ecosystem. The design, implementation, and management of formalized innovation districts is a new practice area. Research draws upon the experience of concentrated areas of innovation that occurred organically, such as Boston’s Route 128, as well as intentional projects to bring together innovators in large science and technology parks, such as North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. Existing research focuses on how to define and design innovation districts and evaluate their impact, as well as general policy considerations. In this paper, we review the definitions and benefits of an innovation district, reviewing the existing empirical research on their impacts. We then propose a series of questions to guide practitioners in addressing the economic, physical, social, and governance elements of an innovation district. Finally, we outline some of the challenges in creating an innovation district and ways to measure progress, to allow practitioners to get ahead of potential issues in the future. This paper is intended to help policymakers and practitioners working in innovation and economic development translate the concepts of innovation ecosystems into actionable next steps for planning innovation districts in their communities.

No Ordinary Suburbs

This chapter shows how structural processes, policies, and national trends intersected with the particular history, geography, and reputation of the Boston area to produce the set of juxtapositions—between history and progress, tradition and technology, open-mindedness and exclusivity, meritocracy and equality—that characterized the physical landscape and political culture of the Route 128 suburbs and the political ideology of many of their residents. It reveals that homeowners' view of themselves in rural Lincoln and cosmopolitan Newton fueled grassroots activism on a range of liberal issues. This sense of individual and collective distinctiveness simultaneously made many residents see themselves as separate from, and not responsible for, many of the consequences of suburban growth and the forms of inequality and segregation that suburban development fortified.

A Multiracial World

This chapter examines the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) and its commitment to equal opportunity and changing individual attitudes through one-on-one interaction. While METCO offered a rare example of interracial and urban–suburban cooperation, its focus on collective benefits rather than collective responsibility had wide-ranging consequences. Tracing the development of METCO offers an important case study of the trade-offs that suburban liberal activists made in their quests to achieve social justice. The organizers' pragmatic approach ensured the acceptance of the program in the suburbs and paved the way for later support of diversity claims about the value of affirmative action. This strategy, nevertheless, fortified the consumer-based and individualist dimensions of the Route 128 political culture. It ultimately made community members more resistant to grappling with the systemic and historical circumstances that necessitated programs like METCO and affirmative action in the first place.

Tightening the Belt

This chapter places the debates over voluntary integration within the context of the Boston busing crisis and the national recession. Explorations of the dramatic events that surrounded the Boston busing crisis have often focused on the ways in which “suburban liberals” passively stood by as working-class whites and blacks in the city endured the burden of school integration. However, the residents along Boston's Route 128 belt were not as removed from the events and issues as those depictions might suggest. The discussion about METCO during this period of turmoil illuminates how the various forces of suburban politics influenced the remedies to school desegregation and racial and economic inequality.

Open Suburbs vs. Open Space

This chapter concentrates on a series of conflicts over affordable housing that took shape during the late 1960s and early 1970s that pitted traditionally liberal causes like civil rights and environmentalism against each other. At the outset of the 1970s, several observers identified “opening up the suburbs” as “the major domestic social and political battle of the decade ahead.” However, the Route 128 suburbs had stood on the front lines of what experts had deemed “The Battle over the Suburbs.” These controversies and their outcome ultimately show that liberalism did not stop at the proverbial driveway of local residents, and instead expose the continuities in and adaptations of the political culture of the Route 128 suburbs and liberalism more broadly in the 1970s.

Political Action for Peace

This chapter demonstrates how the Vietnam War forced residents to grapple with the central role of defense spending in shaping the economy and labor market of the Route 128 area. The MIT scientists and Raytheon engineers who got involved in activities such as the McCarthy campaign and anti-ABM (antiballistic missiles) movement exposed their complex position about the dependency of their professions on defense spending. These attitudes challenge the assumption that residents of Cold War suburbs who worked in defense-related industries, regardless of partisan affiliation, were uniformly and reflexively supportive of national security issues. The decision of some of this contingency to voice their opposition to the war through electoral politics underscores their faith in the liberal ideal of working within the system to create change, which would have a reverberating impact on the direction of liberalism, the Democratic Party, and the antiwar cause.

Epilogue

This concluding chapter examines the recent trends in Massachusetts' effort to confront its image as out of touch with the rest of the country, turning to the themes of equality of opportunity and meritocratic individualism and how these had come to define liberalism. It shows that, in recent years, the Route 128 area had experienced a series of demographic changes which has since helped to lessen the pronounced whiteness in the Route 128 suburbs—but not the patterns of economic exclusivity. The chapter notes the improvements to the quality of life for Route 128's residents of color, noting however that such trends have yet to provide the solution to metropolitan, class, and racial inequities.