From Place-Marketing to Place-Making, Examining Boston’s Case of Global Transformation

ABSTRACT

Economic globalization intensified at the end of the twentieth century. This paper utilizes the City of Boston, and its late 1990s Millennium Initiative (MI), to examine the role of North American cities in the globalization of society and its economy in particular. The study is anchored in these two research questions: Is Boston’s city-region knowledge economy and ensuing culture sufficiently integrated into the overall dynamics of its urban society? How did notions of social and environmental sustainability evolve with increased calls for enhancing World City status? The key finding is that for Boston to become a truly World-Class city, it has to go beyond its short (nonetheless the most extensive in the U.S.) history, landmark buildings, socio-economic, and cultural achievements, ambiance and character, to also sustain and nurture all those who reside, work and visit the city-region appropriately and with solidarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic globalization
• global competition
• marketplace politics
• place-making
• Boston

Acknowledgment

I should like to thank Meir Gross. Justin Hollander’s invitation to give a talk at a Department-wide Lecture Series in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts in Fall 2016 was also greatly appreciated.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Which, in turn, relate quite strongly to cities on lower levels of the urban hierarchy with a more limited scope of their economic, social and political functions (Chen & Kanna, 2013).

2 See Warf (1995) for a comprehensive review of the geographical repercussions of the explosion of information services, the growth of global cities, and the dispersal of back offices to low wage sites across the globe.

3 Sassen (1994, p. 4) relates the dynamics of cities to the globalization process, using three main arguments: (i) the economic and social trajectory of each city depends heavily on the level of its integration into the global economy; (ii) more cities are becoming involved in the coordination of processes and managerial activities; and (iii) the economic base and the social order of several major cities are shaped by the emerging organization of the financial sector.

4 Fortune Magazine ranked Boston as the third most improved city in the country for businesses (Faircloth, 1997).

5 What Kanter (1995, p. 160) called “social glue” – a way to bring people together to define the common good, create joint plans, and identify strategies that benefit a wide range of people and organizations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD, Lisbon – Portugal) and the Center for Economic Development (CED) at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA – U.S.A.).

Notes on contributors

Carlos J. L. Balsas

Carlos J. L. Balsas, Ph.D., AICP, is an independent scholar in Albany, New York. His latest book is Urbanismo Sustentável Medidas para uma ‘Política de Ciclismo Urbano’ [Sustainable Urbanism Measures for an ‘urban cycling policy’] (2000, Curitiba: Editora CRV). Carlos Balsas was an assistant professor at Arizona State University and more recently at the University at Albany. His research interests include Urban Revitalization, Sustainable Transportation Planning, and the Scholarship of Teaching.