تاثیر صنعت بیوتکنولوژی در توسعه اقتصادی محلی در مناطق شهری بوستون و سان دیگو

High-technology/knowledge-intensive industries have become of increasing importance as sources of job growth and revenue to communities seeking to develop their economies. Communities want these industries so that they can be as economically vigorous as possible. However, although high-tech industries such as biotechnology are coveted as drivers of economic development, the local development impact of these clusters of regional innovation is not entirely positive. This is especially true with regard to the impact upon the low and semi-skilled populations. In some regions, the new growth generated by high-tech clusters has converted relatively inexpensive open space into haphazard commercial and industrial use that has contributed to sprawl, transportation congestion, lack of affordable housing, and gentrification. These problems are particularly evident in the Boston and San Diego metropolitan areas, which rank as the second and third largest U.S. biotechnology clusters respectively. This paper seeks to gauge the local economic development impact—especially with regard to the labor and real estate markets—of the biotechnology clusters in the San Diego and Boston metropolitan areas.

The dynamic between technological change and urban and regional change is a fascinating one. A generation ago, the inner-cities became predominantly minority in many large American municipalities as the suburbanization of America proceeded. Now, since cities are the homes to many of the major universities and hospitals that are at the core of biotechnology clusters, inner-city land in proximity to them is in high demand. This is evident not just in the Boston and San Diego metropolitan areas but also in places like St. Louis where a biotechnology “Technopolis” is being built in the inner-city Forest Park Industrial Corridor. Why? Plant and life science institutions such as Washington University Medical Center, St. Louis University School of Medicine, the Center for Emerging Technology (a business incubator) and the Missouri Botanical Garden are all nearby. Yet the ability of low and semi-skilled local residents to benefit from this trend is limited because as has been pointed out, in the United States, infrastructure investment in educational facilities and social services is what is linked to long-run improvements in relative unemployment distress [51]. This is especially true given the capital-intensive nature of biotechnology R&D. With all of the emphasis on high-tech clusters of innovation as a solution to the economic development problems of cities, it is evident that for the low and semi-skilled, biotechnology is not the answer in and of itself. Local economic development and high-tech cluster development are not necessarily synonymous. Biotechnology can be beneficial to all in the community but those benefits will only be realized through active engagement between government, the community and the private sector. Targeting the biotechnology industry is not enough. While biotechnology’s limited job opportunities for the low and semi-skilled have been acknowledged, the real estate impacts of this space intensive industry that has strong ties to universities and the health care sector and an intensive imperative to cluster spatially are only just beginning to be understood. Acknowledgement of the challenges posed by biotechnology clusters and indeed all clusters of high-technology innovation is the first step towards harnessing the potential of these knowledge-intensive industries to serve as catalysts for broad-based economic development in the new millennium.