By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Somerville joined an exciting new partnership this week that aims to make our region a leader for the life sciences industry. Somerville, Boston, Cambridge, Quincy and Braintree united this week to launch the Life Sciences Corridor initiative to attract more life science businesses and jobs to the region. By promoting both the individual strengths of our cities and our collective draw as a region, the initiative aims to ensure that this vital and expanding industry grows right here. Our goals are to retain the innovative companies we already have, promote collaboration between those businesses and our world-class universities and institutions, and draw new high-quality life sciences jobs to the region. In other words, we’re putting Somerville—and the corridor—on the life sciences map.

This is a concrete example of communities working together to strengthen our regional economy, but it is an important symbolic step as well. Our region extends beyond North Station and the gas tanks on the Southeast Expressway. It has more than 100 communities, 4 million people and some of the most diverse talent, creativity and innovation of any region in the world. Through this Life Sciences Corridor initiative, we are rejecting the provincial, parochial thinking that has dominated our region. By enabling more regional collaboration like this, around more innovation sectors, we can forge a stronger economy for all our cities and towns—one that will be a force in the 21st century global economy.

For the life sciences industry to grow and to prosper, they need what all innovative companies need: an infrastructure system that includes access to public transportation, cities that develop and encourage pedestrian and bike commuting, and a region that understands and nurtures the industry as one of the keys to our future. Life science companies also need a skilled workforce, access to leading universities and major research hospitals, established innovative research and development districts, and the availability of venture capital resources—all of which our region has in abundance. Most of all, they need available space where these companies and innovators can do what they do best—collaborate and translate their ideas into reality.

In Somerville, we’re planning for that future. It’s there in SomerVision, a plan that asks not what we want to build but who we want to be: a walkable, bikeable, transit-accessible community that nurtures creativity and supports our innovators and our workforce. The news that Partners HealthCare is coming to Assembly Square is an example of our planning yielding results. It’s also another regional success—when you can keep 4,500 workers and help the company save $10 million annually, move a half-mile and stay on the Orange Line, that’s a great success for the region. The fact is, however, that there’s another 60 acres at Assembly Square where we are planning to encourage the same type of job-producing development. In Boynton Yards, there’s another 30 acres of underutilized land that is less than a mile from Kendall Square with direct access to the new Union Square MBTA station. Those 30 acres could be a campus for the life sciences industry.

Somerville has planned for this, but so have our fellow cities and towns in the region. We need to leverage our collective planning and strengths, rejecting the provincial attitude that if it’s not within our borders, it’s not good for our community. We are all great neighborhoods of this greater region, and when we build connections, we create that ‘bump factor’—vibrant, high-density neighborhoods teeming with creativity and innovation, where great minds meet and spark great ideas. We want to launch ideas and feed imaginations. We want curiosity to burn here and people to chase that dream in our region. We’re seeing it right now in Somerville, where clean tech innovators, artisans and makers are bumping into one another, sharing ideas and working together. The researchers and minds of the life sciences industry need this too. Greater Boston as a whole can be an incubator for the companies in the knowledge-based economy that is the foundation of our nation’s future. Our region can take a cue from today’s smartest companies: we need to have an open floor plan that encourages the exchange of ideas.

Traveling along the Red Line that is the spine of the Life Science Corridor, there is unique talent and strength in each neighborhood, from Davis to Kendall, to Downtown Crossing and Quincy Center. There’s a wealth of opportunity in each neighborhood, all only mere minutes away from one another because of the Red Line—and soon the Green Line.

This is more than the life sciences. It’s the clean tech movement that’s happening at Greentown Labs in Union Square. It’s biotech. It’s the maker movement, the next industrial revolution that is happening right now in Somerville, Allston, Brighton, Chelsea and around the region. It is understanding the unique value and the assets of our region—who we are, the talent, innovation and creativity we have here, and leveraging that in a regional effort that will enable collaborative creativity, that bump factor, to create and organically grow the next great economy.