Ramon Gras. Boston. Researcher in Urban Planning and City Science at Harvard and co-founder of Aretian Urban Analytics and Design.
What urban and economic strategy do world-class cities follow?
The Boston metropolitan area is promoting the development of the next two innovation districts in Massachusetts: Harvard Allston, in Boston, and Union Square, in Somerville, which aspire to consolidate the region as the first global talent center.
The Allston neighborhood plans to host 145 hectares of urban and economic development supported by Harvard University, which will allow synergies to be generated between the Innovation Lab, the business school, and the new Science and Engineering Complex, with the private companies that will be housed. at the new Enterprise Research Campus. Fields such as engineering, data science, and the biotechnology sector can constitute the new Kendall Square sheltered by the university, which plans to house more than 5,000 new innovative jobs in the health sciences, and 12,000 more in technological sectors pointers. In turn, Union Square plans to concentrate 24,000 jobs, in an intervention that has 12 hectares of green spaces, and the extension of the green metro line, with two stations that will reinforce this new node of centrality, and the urban attractiveness of the future. district, which already has world-renowned centers such as Greentown Labs in the field of sustainability.
What are the next reference innovation districts in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region?
The metropolitan region of Barcelona has two star candidates to host the next innovation districts that materialize a new renewal impulse, generating prosperity and social dynamism: Esplugues-Alta Diagonal and Badalona and les Tres Xemeneies. On the one hand, Esplugues de Llobregat and the adjacent area of Pedralbes-Bonanova have a golden opportunity to transform the nearly 100 hectares of the northwest corridor into the country's largest concentration of innovation in conjunction with the academic fabric: the future Clínic campus , the expansion of Sant Joan de Déu, and the synergies between public and private universities and 370 startups with the four economic sectors with fertile ground for growth: health, gastronomy and sports, urbantech and software.
On the other hand, the regeneration of the industrial fabric of Badalona and Sant Adrià will allow the activation of nearly 240 hectares in robotics, digitally assisted industrial design, audiovisual, the pharmaceutical sector, and advanced manufacturing, in a nearby area on the Btec campus. -BarcelonaTech, and in the IGTP complex, which has top-level researchers. Two fundamental pieces to move towards the fractal metropolis, where urban planning and the economy go hand in hand at the service of citizens.
