From Pacific Standard
By Jim Russell
Innovation does not require an urban area or a suburban area—it can happen in the city or in a small town. What it requires is open knowledge networks and the movement of people from different places.
Writing for the Urban Land Institute in 2013, Richard Florida posed a rhetorical question, “If cities, as Jane Jacobs so memorably argued, are nonpareil engines of innovation, how is it that high tech—the most innovative of industries—has mostly thrived outside them?” Given that young adult talent prefers to live in cities, Florida dispenses with the query as “moot.” Retorting to Jesse Jackson on Saturday Night Live, the question is not moot.
If suburbs are nonpareil engines of innovation, then how did Silicon Valley eat the lunch of Route 128 (suburban ring around Boston)? For scholar AnnaLee Saxenian, the question wasn’t moot but a dissertation. Why did innovation boom in suburban Silicon Valley but not suburban Boston (Route 128)? History provided Saxenian with a great natural experiment. The geography of innovation didn’t matter. It was controlled. Both places were suburban. Better yet, Saxenian has a null hypothesis. Around 1980, she predicted that San Jose would crumble. It didn’t. Turns out that Boston’s innovation corridor was cursed with a Rust Belt malaise....