Defining A Functioning ‘Region’- "Can a collection of towns and cities strung along an interstate highway passing through two states actually declare itself a region, give itself a name, sell the brand, and increase the impact of their collective assets?

That’s exactly what the state of Connecticut wondered a year ago in commissioning research that essentially asked: Is the I-91/Connecticut River corridor, stretching from the Connecticut coast to Northampton, Mass. a functioning region? … These folks are calling themselves the Knowledge Corridor."

Contributed by Abhijeet Chavan

The I-91/Connecticut River corridor, stretching from the Connecticut coast to Northampton, Mass. is calling itself the "Knowledge Corridor."

The Connecticut River Valley – New Study Says It’s One Region

Posted by Curtis Johnson The Citistates Group

Are there shared institutions and traditions, a common infrastructure? Is it one labor market with overlapping and interdependent economic clusters? Are there cultural ties? Do businesses define this corridor as a region? Do people ignore the state line as they go to work and carry on their lives?

Leaders from New Haven to Northampton got the report mid-June and they filled a hotel conference room to ponder the results. Beth Siegel of Mt. Auburn Associates, which took the lead in the study in cooperation with the Connecticut Economic Research Council, said the answer is yes. But, she said, it’s not a typical region, with one center city ringed by suburbs. It has Hartford, Conn. and Springfield Mass., two urban centers known in recent years for their economic and social struggles, but also a host of smaller cities and towns. It’s a “polycentric region,” Siegel said.

Neal Peirce and I were there, he as commentator, I as the meeting facilitator. Peirce pointed to European parallels. He pointed to rebirth of the Hanseatic League concept in the Baltic states, and to a region of cities stretched from Barcelona along the Cote d’Azur to northern Italy. With names sprouting up like Blue Banana, Latin Arc and Alpen Adria, polycentric regions have emerged that circumvent old structures and ignore even national boundaries. The idea is no city has it all, but together they discover they have something special.

The I-91 corridor crowd has caught the same fever. As a region, it has a critical mass of precision manufacturing, an abundance of higher education institutions, an emerging bioscience cluster, and transportation infrastructure friendly to distribution industries.

Tim Brennan, head of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in southwestern Massachusetts, raised the red flag about state lines. “We’re engaged in a mental deconstruction,” he told his colleagues, “reengineering our thinking.” While our politics make the state line seem as big as a Berlin Wall, Brennan went on to explain, the people are already way ahead of us, already behaving like it’s one region. The report backs him up.

New Haveners, however, weren’t buying their connection to this region. “Guess you need to saw us off this corridor,” one said. He may be right. Take out a map and you see New Haven seems more like a bridge to the coastal corridor, linked with New York. But from Middletown up to Northampton, the study shows a functioning region, with a major airport (Bradley International) smack in the middle. Hartford and Springfield have serious economic and social issues, not to mention image problems. But this group realized it doesn’t have to look farther than nearby Providence, Rhode Island, to see what gritty recovery looks like.

Rick Porth, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments in Hartford, said it’s time to push for better intercity rail connections – for passengers and to move goods. Representatives of area colleges pointed out how students were searching for internships. They are looking at the whole region.

So stay tuned. These folks are calling themselves the Knowledge Corridor http://www.metrohartford.com/neknowledge.htm . Like South Florida’s Internet Coast or Cascadia in the Pacific Northwest. The test will be what cross-boundary strategies get implemented before the novelty of this notion fades.

http://www.citistates.com/2003_06_01_archive.html#105641739976738685