Public Transportation Fuels Innovation In Life Sciences

Public transportation fuels innovation in the life sciences because researchers who can move around dense regional clusters of colleagues have more opportunities to share new ideas about their work.

Richard Dimino, president of the Boston business and transportation committee A Better City, wrote in the Boston Globe of a recent study from his group, which found that:

That one major advantage of our life sciences cluster is its geographic compactness….Our tight-knit web of institutions and companies allows a physician-researcher to see patients at a hospital, teach at a university, attend a seminar, and work in a laboratory - sometimes all in one day.

But dense clustering leads to congestion, so facilitating the exchange of ideas also depends on maintaining and expanding the public transportation infrastructure to keep pace with the scientists, innovators, and ideas shuttling around greater Boston. The map featured in the executive summary of the report shows the established and emerging centers of research around the city:

The lessons from this report (pdf) have the potential to fuel smart growth and new innovation in emerging science and technology clusters around the country.

Tags: Innovation, medicine

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