Spazio pubblico e innovazione per Boston

Public space and innovation for Boston In the city of Boston, especially since the nineties, some public policies and planning / management initiatives, aimed at integrating (and encouraging) urban development and innovation at the same time, have been activated, through strategies of coordination between urban transformation or regeneration programs and development processes based upon innovation. A first type of urban transformation, discussed in the paper, is related to initiatives implemented on the basis of the activation of synergies aimed at attracting significant resources and operators of particular production and financial relevance, as well as entrepreneurial subjects of different economic field and weight. Among these cases the extensive transformations related to the Boston Innovation District, focused on Seaport - South Boston Waterfront, can be classified. The second type of urban transformations concerns the first outcomes of the recent public strategy called Neighborhood Innovation District, launched in 2014, aimed at fostering good conditions for local regeneration in contexts characterized by urban and economic degradation. The paper proposes a synthetic analysis of a selection of these important urban operations, with the aim of highlighting some correlations between the shape of urban space and the morphogenetic potential exerted on the city by innovation, and with a focus analysis concerning some operational procedures and urban planning rules and regulations which have been adopted in these public strategies.