Tuesday, May 10, 2016

MIT's Innovation District

Last week the Boston Globe had a clever map of "The Kendall Network"  I posted it on Twitter but have not had a chance to mention it here. It accompanies an article celebrating the 100th anniversary of MIT's move from Boston to an empty warehouse district of Cambridge. For those unfamiliar with Boston, Kendall Square is the area adjacent to MIT and has recently seen a huge growth in tech companies.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/specials/2016/05/05/mapping-kendall-square-network/whKpe5VayFBBJJD8tsUMWP/igraphic.html
The printed circuit board analogy works great because of the somewhat ordinary (by local standards) street network. If this was Harvard, it would have been much more difficult to make this kind of map. The crazy Harvard Square street network there would have required some major schematic simplification. The Kendall Square area only needed minor adjustments. MIT is the chip that is driving the innovation around it. Nice work Globe graphics team!

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