Changes in Kendall Square...

Today Boston.com posted an article discussing the impact of the high demand for real estate in Kendall Square, and the subsequent high rents that are pushing out smaller start ups.....
will affordable office space become regulated and subsidized similar to affordable housing?

"To be sure, Kendall Square remains a successful business district: Office space is hard to come by, rents are rising, and it boasts a roster of marquee companies, from Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., to Biogen Idec Inc. that are expanding there. But for all its outward bustle, Kendall Square is in transition. And ironically, it has its own success to blame, as a kind of gentrification has made Kendall too expensive or too popular for the many, smaller, younger tech businesses that gave the area such cachet."

Do you work in Kendall Square? Fill out the "City of Cambridge Innovation Survey".

*****And don't forget to contact us at kendallinnovation@gmail.com to become a participant in our upcoming study about social spaces in Kendall Square.

Urban Social Spaces: Shareabouts study in collaboration with OpenPlans

We've started a study looking at places people congregate and share ideas in Kendall Square.  We're doing this project in collaboration with OpenPlans (http://openplans.org/), who has implemented this study using their Shareabouts software.  

This map will provide a new way to collect data about where people typically congregate, what types of interactions they have in a given space, and where ideas are generated. Knowing the role of space in interaction can guide future design to encourage productivity.

Have a look at the site here, and if you are in Kendall Square, feel free to contribute a data point to our study:

http://urbansocial.shareabouts.org

Also, we're looking for people who would be interested in participating in this study for a one-month period, taking about a minute a day to contribute responses.  Send us a note at urbansocial@kendallinnovation.org if you'd like to participate or if you'd like to give us your feedback and insights.

Brooklyn tour

Last Friday, a few of us set out to explore Downtown Brooklyn with the recent NYU Tech Triangle RFP in mind. Our extraordinarily well-informed tour guide for the day was Robert Perris. Rob is the District Manager for Community Board 2 in Brooklyn, which, incidentally, is the area that all three points of the proposed Tech Triangle lie within. The three points are the NYU site, the Brooklyn Navy Yards and DUMBO (down underneath the Manhattan bridge overpass). The request for this proposal is a joint effort  between the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the Dumbo BID and the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

We began the morning at none other than Starbucks, meeting directly across from Brooklyn Borough Hall. The original seat of county government, Borough Hall still houses the office of the Borough President and his staff. We learned that this area of Brooklyn has a similar population count to Cambridge, MA, a little over 100,000. Walking through Downtown Brooklyn we passed relics of urban renewal projects still in use today as court houses and government offices, and some pretty stunning examples of early skyscraper architecture. 

In the midst of Downtown Brooklyn is one of the anchors of the so-proposed Tech Triangle - the new NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress. It has yet to be renovated, but NYU's deal with the City will see it renovated and opened for use in the coming years. 

Walking past this site towards the Brooklyn Navy Yards (the second point of the triangle) we saw another large-scale urban redevelopment project (this one beginning in the 80s and finishing its last site only recently), Metrotech. Metrotech was pitched in the early 80s as a way to provide reduced-cost office space for companies in Manhattan to house their back office functions. Forest City Ratner picked up the project and today it is at high occupancy with tenants like NYU-Poly and Chase. 

Next stop on the tour was the Brooklyn Navy Yards. Here we were joined by our seasoned tour guide, Emily. The Navy Yards began its life as ship building facility for, you guessed it, the Navy. It was decommissioned in the 1960s and had a brief life in the 70s and 80s as a private shipping yard. Today it is home to hundreds of small manufacturers and goods producers and emphasizes green practices and green design. One of the very cool things that Emily showed us was the site of the Brooklyn Grange, the world's largest rooftop farm. (It was very hard not to eat their recenty harvested tomatoes.) Not only are they making a huge impact on the locavore movement but they provide one of the best views in the City.

After that, it was on to DUMBO. The old warehouse spaces and intense industrial architecture made for a photo-snapping good time for our resident architect. DUMBO went through a rezoning in the early 2000s that allowed for commercial and residential uses that were previously prohibited. This coupled with its proximity to Manhattan, outstaning views and appealing architecture have made it a popular place for those looking for a nice new condo and companies looking for a desirable spot to launch their creative new business alike. The worldclass park under construction along the waterfront probably doesn't hurt either. It is truly an exceptional spot, if you are ever in the area be sure to visit Brooklyn Bridge Park.

We finished the day on the East River Ferry, just one stop over to Wall Street. Potentially a significant spoke on the edge of this new tech triangle.

Visit to OpenPlans:

As part of our New York trip, we visited the offices of OpenPlans, where we were hosted by Ellen McDermott and Naama Lissar and also spoke with other members of their organization.  OpenPlans is a non-profit organization of about 60 people, a mix of planners, software engineers and others, all of whom are passionate about developing open source tools for urban planning and for transportation.  Their goal is to help cities work better.  For instance, crowdsourcing could be used to collect information about the city, perhaps the locations of old, defunct payphones that need to be removed.  These tools could also engage the public in a more participatory city planning process.  The folks at OpenPlans have been looking for new ways to apply their tools.  And we've been looking at new tools and technologies for urban planning and research.  We're hoping to continue discussions with our friends at OpenPlans and explore the possibility of collaborating in the near future.

Trip to Lowell

Site of the future University Commons building, linking North and South campuses, UMass Lowell.

Last week, our group traveled 45 minutes north of Cambridge to Lowell, MA to learn about the Merrimack Valley Sandbox and hear about the expansion of UMass Lowell. 

Lowell is an old New England industrial city, in fact the oldest industrial city in the nation, and the 19th century red brick mills dot the landscape, next to the small canals whose water used to provide the power for these operations.  In one of these old mill buildings exists the Merrimack Valley Sandbox, an effort started by the Deshpande Foundation and headed up by Todd Fry, one of the two executive directors of the effort.  We met with Todd and Theresa Park, the head of economic development for the city of Lowell to hear about the work each of them is doing and to learn about innovation as they define it, and to understand the relationship between the work of the Sandbox and the city of Lowell.

Lowell is a city of industry and successive waves of immigrants who have chosen this city.  Interestingly, one of the newest groups to make this place home are Iraqis, refugees from the war, typically very highly educated.  

One of the goals of the Sandbox is to further the entrepreneurial spirit among these immigrant groups --  people who might otherwise pursue a version of the American Dream that is lower risk, more secure, more predictable.  The Sandbox does this through events like Pitchfests, and Todd stressed that the experience is the most important part of what they promote.  From these Pitchfests, ideas that seem promising, or people who have a strong grasp of a path forward can and will get further support.   But more important is instilling a broader notion of what is possible.  An outcome of this attitude is that social innovation may be as likely to occur as some technologically demanding product development like a new drug.  

After our talk at the Sandbox, we stopped by to talk with Beth Rubenstein, head planner for the UMass Lowell campus and former head planner for the City of Cambridge.  UMass Lowell is in a strong expansion mode -- with seven new buildings under construction on campus.  The statistics are staggering -- with the arrival of former congressman Marty Meehan as the head of the school, enrollment will have increased around 60 percent in about ten years, and the campus will go for a largely commuter school to something more akin to a UMass Amherst.  The growth spurt of buildings is matched by huge need for investment in the existing physical campus.  One of the great planning challenges that the campus has, but also one of its great opportunities, is to link what are in effect two separate campuses, a North Campus and a South Campus.  They will do this in part through the construction of a new building University Commons that will sit almost directly in between these two campuses and be a central gathering place.  There is a new effort to get people out of their cars and walking and biking more.  

What wasn't clear from the visit, and perhaps it still needs to be developed, is the level of articulation or coordination between the campus and the innovation space of the Sandbox, and for that matter the city of Lowell.  One of the striking things when talking about the Cambridge example of innovation is the role that MIT plays in all of it, and the porous boundary that MIT seeks to create between the academic world and the urban and/or commercial world that exists right off of its campus.  

We are grateful to Clay Martin from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council for meeting with us today at the MIT media lab.

Clay was willing to provide and on-site training for Metro Boston DataCommon.  We are looking forward to exploring the information and capabilities of the site!

August 24th meeting recap

Next week we will be training on the MAPC DataCommon software, traveling to Lowell to tour the Merrimack Valley Sandbox, and finishing the busy week in New York City to visit some innovation hubs.