This volume is the result of six years of research and discussion by scholars at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on the role of a public university as an active participant in the process of regional economic and social development. This project was carried out under the auspices of the Committee on Industrial Theory and Assessment (CITA), the cross-campus body that was created in 1993 to find new ways for UMass Lowell to engage in and foster sustainable regional development. Following four years of work devoted to developing cross-disciplinary discussions and encouraging collaborative research projects at UMass Lowell, CITA began to hold annual conferences in which faculty members presented their research. The essays included in this volume were crafted for the First Annual Conference, "Approaches to Sustainable Development," held in October 1997, and the Second Annual Conference, "Innovation and Sustainable Regional Development," held in October 1998.

        The chapters mark the convergence of several hitherto distinct fields, including planning and regional development, economic geography, ergonomics and work design, research on the innovation process in firms, manufacturing engineering, community and neighborhood studies, gender and race/ethnic studies, and health-related and environmental studies. Given the industrial and immigrant history of Lowell, the background and expertise of UMass Lowell as a science and engineering institution, and the work being done to forge linkages across the sciences, engineering, and the social sciences, Lowell is indeed an appropriate place in which to ask several difficult questions about how academic institutions can engage in the regional development process. There is no consensus on the concept of development. Does it imply an expanded economic pie—for instance, a larger tax base, more jobs, new firms—without regard for how the additional slices are distributed? Does it foster increased stability in the economy, an end to the boom-and-bust cycles that communities such as Lowell have witnessed for much of the twentieth century? What of worker health and safety, energy efficiency, and efforts to eliminate toxics usage in production? Is a public role in the nurturing of start-up enterprises consistent with sustainable development? How can a more encompassing definition of development, one that moves beyond the focus on growth of gross domestic product (GDP), take shape? What roles ought a public university play in the regional development process; asked another way, what is the value of higher education to regional development (Thanki 1999)?

The University of Massachusetts Lowell

The university is a product of the region, its people and its political economy, although it has also helped shape the kind of development that has occurred. Its predecessor institutions, the Massachusetts State Normal School at Lowell and the Lowell Textile School, were created in 1894 and 1895, respectively, to serve the economic and social needs of the region at the time. The two went through several reorganizations in the twentieth century before merging in 1975 to become the University of Lowell. The creation of this new institution was thus concurrent with the resurgence of the Lowell economy of the 1970s and 1980s, primed by the rapid growth of the computer industry and defense spending. But this new prosperity, so reliant on one industry (as it had been in the nineteenth century with textiles), was not sustainable. In 1991, in the midst of a deep downturn, the university was once again reorganized and became the University of Massachusetts Lowell, part of a five-campus statewide system (for a more detailed history, see Blewett 1995). The crash of the minicomputer industry, sharp cuts in Pentagon spending, rising unemployment, and a series of devastating plant shutdowns compelled UMass Lowell to reconsider its role in the region.

         During this last period of restructuring, UMass Lowell articulated a focus on sustainable regional development as one of its central priorities. In the economic downturn of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the university's leaders recognized that the socioeconomic problems of older industrial regions are complex and require creative, multidisciplinary solution strategies if they are to be resolved. Seeing that there was no panacea for the boom-and-bust cycles that shaped Lowell and the region's history, these leaders concluded that it was imperative to foster the purposeful interaction of social scientists and historians, engineers and scientists, and colleagues in the education and health professions, to approach creatively the difficult economic and social challenges confronting the region. Not satisfied to simply educate and purvey high-tech labor to the region's businesses, faculty and administrators engaged in a lively discussion of alternative strategies for attaining sustainable development. Issues of workplace health, environmental sustainability, the incorporation of diverse populations into the workforce, and community empowerment were being linked to the formulation of innovative social and economic policies.

        To proceed conceptually and practically—for thinking and doing are essential—the administration formed and provided resources for two committees working closely together under an umbrella council and supported the creation of a new interdisciplinary academic department in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Committee of Federated Centers and Institutes (CFCI) was formed to facilitate interdisciplinary activities among faculty-led centers and foster their relations with industry and community-based organizations. CITA was established to develop new theoretical and pragmatic ways of thinking about sustainable regional development and to assess the success of these initiatives. Designed to explore the issues of sustainable regional development from interdisciplinary perspectives, CITA has drawn its membership from the Colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Health Professions, and Management. The new department—the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development (RESD)—is composed of faculty with academic backgrounds and careers in disciplines such as economics, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and urban planning. RESD faculty have a collective history of well over a hundred years working with the community and industry.

        This process results in a "virtuous circle" of improvement, for practically speaking, a healthy economy redounds to the benefit of the university in terms of an increased budget, greater enrollments, and larger alumni donations. By extension, a thriving university can increase its activities and thus play a more dynamic role in the wider world it inhabits. Although the chapters in this volume are a product of their environment, we firmly believe that the discussions engendered herein are relevant far beyond UMass Lowell and the Merrimack River Valley. There are myriad programs at colleges and universities throughout the world confronting the same questions that motivate our work. This volume provides a perspective on how to integrate the disparate approaches of academics to begin to trace the circumference of that "virtuous circle."

Lowell and the Regional Economy

Lowell is an old industrial city thirty miles northwest of Boston, poised on the edge of the Merrimack River. The river, with its powerful Pawtucket Falls, inspired merchant capitalists of Boston to establish a city with the first textile mills in the United States that integrated all aspects of production, launching the American industrial revolution in the 1820s and 1830s. Lowell was constructed with utopian fervor; the city was to be a well-planned, well-supervised, Puritan American alternative to the Dickensian "dark Satanic mills" in England. It was not possible, however, to sustain prosperity in a one-industry town, particularly when it was based on an industry looking for new markets, cheap labor, and tax breaks. By the 1920s, much of the Lowell and New England textile industry had headed south (for a more detailed history, see Gross 1993). Lowell, a place that had offered economic hope to waves of new immigrants, became a decaying city with high unemployment and rising poverty, a scene all too familiar in older industrial cities throughout the Northeast United States. Renascence occurred for a time in the 1970s and 1980s, as the computer giant Wang established its global headquarters in Lowell and the federal government turned some of the old mills into our first urban National Historical Park (for a discussion of boom-and-bust cycles, see Best and Forrant in part III herein).

        Today Lowell is the fourth-largest city in Massachusetts, with a population of approximately 104,000. The daily and long-term problems that the city faces are far too common in older industrial cities and thus make the activities of UMass Lowell relevant to other urban university campuses. Lowell remains an immigrant city; although its total population has increased approximately 10 percent since the early 1980s, the immigrant and minority share of the population has risen from 5 percent to 25 percent. The city has sizable Laotian, Vietnamese, Dominican, and Puerto Rican populations, and its Cambodian population is the second-highest concentration of Cambodian immigrants in the United States. Indeed several neighborhood census tracts contiguous to the university have immigrant and minority concentrations greater than 50 percent. Economic prosperity in the early 1980s, especially in computer manufacturing, drew many of these newcomers to the city, but the sharp downturn in the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted in high unemployment and extreme economic hardship. And in spite of the city's overall unemployment rate of approximately 4 percent, joblessness in neighborhoods with minority and immigrant concentrations is at least three times higher than the city average. Numerous abandoned buildings and vacant lots are hazardous waste sites; thus, land available for economic development or housing construction is often contaminated. Jobs are again becoming available, but largely in the surrounding suburban corridors not easily reached by Lowell residents without private transportation. Many in Lowell have been left behind in the so-called new economy.

        What is the larger geographic area that we are working in? Route 128 and Route 495, the circumferencial highways around Boston mark out the region (for a discussion of notions of region, see Gerson and Wooding in part I herein). The Northeast region of Massachusetts is made up of older mill cities, such as Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill, and cities and towns that have undergone explosive growth fueled by the recent high-tech boom. Since the end of the Second World War, three broad trends have influenced wild swings in the regional economy: the sharp decline of the textile industry; the meteoric emergence and precipitous fall of the minicomputer industries and the recent high-tech rebirth along Routes 128, 93, and 495, north and west of Boston; and the buildup of and drastic cut in defense spending. Between 1980 and 1994, the defense stimulus to companies, colleges, universities, and federal and private research laboratories in Massachusetts totaled approximately $90 billion, with much of this coming into its Northeast region. But the reduced defense budget—in terms of actual dollars, Massachusetts received $8.7 billion in 1989, $5.1 billion in 1994, and about $4 billion in 1998—eroded once dependable markets, and the failure of Wang, the problems of Digital Equipment, and the demise of other computer firms had hurt the region in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The economic health of the region has improved with the current national economic expansion, and there are high concentrations of employment in computer and communications equipment, software, electronic and electrical components, and aircraft production in the region. Yet in the midst of this boom, Lowell and other older industrial communities grapple with jobless rates higher than the state average, while the state's overall poverty rate in 1999 was higher than at any time since 1980, the year the Census Bureau began tracking this figure.

Defining Sustainability

Sustainability is not an abstract issue for Lowell. Two times in this century Lowell has been ravaged when industries that had dominated the region migrated or went into decline. The grinding poverty of regional recession is familiar to Lowell, Lawrence, and the Merrimack Valley. The university's origins are in the old textile industry. And in the heyday of the computer industry, the university was the technological handmaiden of this new world. Our history is one of technical and cultural servicing of industry: We have provided technical ideas, the engineers to implement them, and we have provided the cultural and community support by educating everyone from the music teachers in the high schools of the Merrimack Valley to the community organizers in social agencies in Lowell. These experiences are at the root of our discussions of the role of the university in sustainable regional development. There is no quarrel over the importance of the university's engagement in and service to the region: We have adopted the public university land-grant model, but within our ranks there are very different conceptions of sustainability.

        Sustainability is not a vacuous concept: It developed as a critique of the "tunnel division" of economists and advocates of economic growth. “The momentum for sustainable development grew from the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development that was headed by Gro Brundtland, who later became prime minister of Norway. From 1983 to 1987, the World Commission conducted public hearings throughout the world, from Brazil to Mexico, Zimbabwe to China, to review the concept of sustainability. The commissioners concluded in their unanimous report that our common future depends on sustainable development” (Lowrie 1996, as quoted in IISD).

        The World Commission defined sustainable development as meeting present needs without compromising the capability of future generations to meet their requirements. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, the "Earth Summit," arose out of efforts to popularize and build support throughout the world for this conception. "The assembled leaders (from 100 countries) signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity; endorsed the Rio Declaration and the Forest Principles; and adopted Agenda 21, a 300-page plan for achieving sustainable development in the 21 ^st century" (United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, 1999). There are numerous research efforts taking place around the world to develop indicators of sustainable production. Government programs, including the Environmental Protection Agency's Industrial Toxics Project, encourage companies to develop their own environmental strategies.

        Although the impetus for the Earth Summit was rooted in the environmental critique of Western economic development theories and practices, "sustainability" began to take on a broader meaning. According to Noel J. Brown, of the United Nations Environment Program, "Agenda 21 is both a foundation for global governments, a framework for global cooperation, as well as a catalyst for citizen action. It comprises 115 concrete program proposals that would promote improved air quality, protect the quality of the environment and land-based resources, and address the problems of waste, poverty, and lifestyles and disseminate environmentally sound technology" (Brown, 1996, as cited in IISD). One organization for corporate responsibility has adopted the following dimensions of sustainability: protection of the biosphere; sustainable use of natural resources; reduction and disposal of waste; wise use of energy; risk reduction; marketing of safe products and services; disclosure of and compensation for damage; and use of environmental directors and managers.

        The chapters in this volume discuss many of these dimensions, augment them, and provide some indication of their relevance and applicability for regional development. For example, the concept of sustainability described by Vesula Veleva and Cathy Crumbley in part II integrates the economic, social, and environmental realms of human activity. Social justice and popular participation, and the practical application of the principles of cleaner production are of particular concern to Lowell researchers, as is the process of innovation.

Innovation, Economic Development, and Sustainability

As used by economists, "innovation" is a process that generates higher quality, lower cost products than had previously been available, whereas the term "economic development" is a process that allocates resources to the production of goods and services that augment the standards of living of the population over time. Thus defined, innovation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic development to occur. It is a necessary condition because economic development requires the production of higher quality, lower cost goods and services. It is not a sufficient condition because the distribution of the costs and benefits of the innovation process may actually lower the standards of living of some members of the population. Innovation may render existing skills obsolete. It may be accomplished by demanding more onerous work or foisting more hazardous work conditions on certain participants in the economy. Innovation may also entail destruction of the physical environment. Future generations may end up paying the costs of innovation while reaping a small share of the benefits relative to current generations. By the ways it transforms existing human and physical resources, and by the ways it distributes the resultant goods and services, innovation may undermine rather than promote sustainable development.

        Of course, if we were to define "higher quality" and "lower cost"—the key manifestations of an innovation process—broadly enough, we could count as “innovation” only those processes that are consistent with a broad definition of sustainable development. But such a definition would only enable us to avoid the difficult issues of what we mean by “higher quality” and “lower cost,” and how different groups within the population, now and in the future, can experience the innovation process very differently. The point of economic and social analysis is to confront, not ignore, such issues. How, then, can business and government policy promote innovation processes that enhance the standards of living of the population in an equitable and stable way?

        We cannot answer this question abstractly, apart from the particular social contexts in which innovation might occur. But we do need a theoretical framework to analyze how, in particular social contexts, business and government policy can encourage the kinds of innovation that contribute to sustainable development. We also must construct assessment tools to determine whether in fact the innovation processes taking place are indeed making the contributions to sustainable development that were intended. It is with these analytical objectives in mind that CITA was created to encourage the type of research contained in this volume. Although some of the contributors to this volume are more explicit than others in specifying their analytical framework, all of them reflect a growing understanding among the researchers at UMass Lowell—itself in part the result of the collective learning process that CITA helped to set in motion—concerning the intellectual approach that such analytical work must take.

        What are the key elements of this approach to the study of innovation and sustainable development? Perhaps the most important element is that innovation that supports sustainable development results from the interaction of industrial, organizational, and institutional transformations (Lazonick and O'Sullivan 2000). Industrial transformations revamp the technologies that we have available to us and the markets (or uses) that these technologies serve. Thus, industrial transformations are the very substance of the innovation process.

        But how are such industrial transformations set in motion? The essence of the innovation process that supports economic development is a cumulative learning process that takes place in certain locations over time and a collective learning process that develops and integrates the capabilities of large numbers of people with different specialties and responsibilities (O'Sullivan 2000). To change the ways in which people engage in such cumulative and collective learning requires transformations in the ways in which they relate to one another at a point in time and over time. Such is the substance of the organizational transformations that generate industrial transformations.

        This relation between organizational and industrial conditions occurs, moreover, in broader institutional contexts, characterized especially by particular norms and laws concerning employment relations (including educational institutions) and financial relations (including the increasingly important institutions that regulate the distribution of income between the retired and working populations). For both analytical and practical purposes, we generally take these institutional conditions as given when we look at how we can affect organizational transformations that permit the industrial transformations needed to generate the innovations that support sustainable development. But when such innovations are not occurring, or when they are not having the desired results, we must begin thinking about whether institutional transformations are required, and about what political processes must be set in motion to bring them about. Hence the need for our work to be rooted in, but at the same time critical of, the particular social environment that must be transformed.

        Such action-oriented research requires not only a deep understanding of the industrial, organizational, and institutional conditions that face a particular region such as Massachusetts, but also the conditions that exist, and the transformations that are taking place in regions around the world. The region within which we are located both collaborates and competes with regions in other parts of the United States and abroad. In a world of industrial innovation, what was successful yesterday in our region may be a failure today because of the emergence of new, high quality, lower cost products from other regions. Hence the need for industrial renewal.

        At UMass Lowell, we are committed to studying regional development and international competition on a global scale. In doing so, our prime charge is to find ways to encourage innovation that supports sustainable development in the region in which we are located. But we can only do so by learning from, and helping to train, people from around the world who are intent on pursuing similar goals. The global economy has become more interdependent, and we believe that, given all the forces that may be working to inhibit or even undermine sustainable development, the future lies much more in cooperation rather than competition among regions and nations. Yet such an ideal of global cooperation will remain only that if we cannot understand and promote innovation that supports sustainable development where we live and work. Thus, in participating in the process of regional development, our goals at UMass Lowell are to promote the next round of innovation before, not after, yesterday's industries can no longer compete, and to search for the kinds of innovation that can productively engage the skills and efforts of a broad base of people in the region.

The Shape of this Book

It is within these contexts—historical, regional, institutional, and intellectual—that we at UMass Lowell have developed the concepts and approaches in this volume. The process by which we have come together to formulate the new approaches to sustainability presented in the following four parts is perhaps as important as the substance, particularly in terms of the increasingly important need to generate knowledge and new solutions to social and technical issues via multidisciplinary approaches.

        We have had a unique situation in which to work. By its designation of sustainable regional development as one of its main goals and by its establishment of CITA, the university administration provided an environment that enabled faculty and staff of centers to begin and to continue interdisciplinary, cross-college discussions about the theory and practice of sustainable regional development. This multiyear period of gestation was necessary, for scholars from diverse disciplines needed the time to cross disciplinary lines to consider the perspectives of others and the opportunity collaboratively to construct new approaches based on insights from the disciplines involved. Many faculty members and centers were already engaged in scholarly and practical endeavors related to particular aspects of sustainable development. This was the catalyst that fostered a major effort to rethink what "sustainable regional development" means and how the university can assist the region in achieving it.

        As a result, the authors of the essays in this collection have spent a significant amount of time talking to one another in informal and formal venues, widening and deepening their views of appropriate conceptual models, innovative processes (whether technical or social), and practical tools for putting ideas into action in the region. Many of the jointly authored essays are the result of CITA funding and encouragement, which facilitated the coming together of scholars from diverse disciplines - people who otherwise would never have had the time or opportunity to explore interdisciplinary boundaries. CITA has sponsored events in which this work was presented, ranging from a seminar series at which we discussed working papers to our annual workshops, where more formal presentations are made and outside commentators—academics and representatives from industry, the community, and government—are invited to share their views on what we are trying to do. There has evolved a continual process of discussion, constructive criticism, reflection, and reworking of ideas internally. In addition, most of the contributors regularly present their research at regional, national, and international conferences, garnering still more feedback.

        Last, in putting together the major groupings of this volume, we held discussions among the authors reporting in each part to ensure that, in final revisions, they would be working together closely. We would like to emphasize however, that the authors speak in their own voices. Although we are developing a common understanding of what sustainable regional development means and what will foster it, we have deliberately avoided attempts to homogenize the discussion and thereby destroy the freshness of the various perspectives that are being brought to bear on these issues.

        These four parts, respectively, provide an overview of some issues and factors we feel should underlie a discussion of sustainable regional development in today's political economy, offer a perspective on what we believe "sustainable regional development" must mean in order to benefit the most people in society, and illustrate how the university can move in the direction of achieving it, via relationships with firms that foster the types of innovation that contribute to sustainable regional development and by building strong ties and collaborations with a wide spectrum of organizations in the greater region to develop sustainable communities.

        The first part, "The Political Economy of Sustainable Development," provides a broad framework for the discussion of sustainable regional development in subsequent parts. Laurence Gross argues that any understanding of the problems and prospects of the regional economy requires historical perspective; the industrial, organizational, and institutional legacies of the past help to explain both the constraints on and opportunities for sustainable development in the present and future. William Lazonick contends that analysis of regional development must include an understanding of the historical trajectories of those other regions and nations that have, through their industrial development, confronted the established industries in the region. At the same time, as Louis Ferleger and Lazonick illustrate, it is necessary to view the employment opportunities of the region from the perspective of changes in industrial structure and the composition of employment opportunities taking place in the economy as a whole. Indeed, as Meg A. Bond and Jean L. Pyle argue, at the level of the business enterprise, even new trends in management practice and their impacts on increasingly diverse workforces can be better understood in terms of the economic and social changes that the region is going through. Finally, the last essay in this part, by Jeffrey Gerson and John Wooding, is devoted to the proposition that any discussion of regional development must confront the question: What is the region? The answer will depend on the particular sector of the economy on which one focuses, as well as on the political processes that mobilize people who live in geographical proximity to one another to transform the industrial, organizational, and institutional conditions under which they both work and live.

        The essays in the second section, "Rethinking Sustainable Development: Health, Work, and the Environment," make a strong argument that "sustainability" is not just about avoiding environmental degradation or destruction while fostering economic growth. They argue that sustainable development must also involve a healthy work environment—jobs and a workplace that are not damaging to one's health—and healthy communities—places where people living together can create and enjoy a just and improving quality of life. The first two essays, by Laura Punnett and John MacDougall, reveal the substantial costs of not being attentive to these broader aspects of sustainability, both in the work environment and in the community. The following chapters show clearly that there are means to achieve this broader vision of “sustainability” - it is doable. These authors (Margaret Quinn et.al., Kenneth Geiser and Tim Greiner, and Veleva and Crumbley) present illustrations of concrete ways in which production can be designed to be more sustainable in this broader sense and how sustainability can be measured.

        In part III, "Rethinking Sustainable Development: Technology, Business and the University," contributors discuss how the university can develop relationships with firms to generate innovations that promote this broader definition of sustainable regional development. Michael Best and Robert Forrant consider what forms of institutional collaboration between the university and firms designed to generate innovation would be most effective in meeting the goals of competitive firms and in promoting sustainability. The second essay, by David Kriebel, Kenneth Geiser, and Cathy Crumbley, suggests that firms and organizations can meet what might appear to be contradictory goals (such as economic viability and sustainability) by redesigning the production process. It provides examples of how a university center can assist in this process. The last chapter, written by Michael Fiddy, Dik Kalluri, and J. D. Sanchez, is concerned with how to maintain the relationship between a university center working with leading-edge technology and relevant firms (a relationship important for the innovation process and for promoting sustainable regional development) when firms typically have short-term, immediate needs, and centers must have longer term financial support for research and graduate students.

        In part IV, "University-Community Collaboration," the authors examine the challenges for the university in trying to establish ways for the faculty and centers to develop innovative collaborations with the community that promote sustainable regional development. Forrant posits that, to be effective in the region, the university must establish ongoing discussions that are theoretically and methodologically grounded, involve key constituencies in the region, and advance learning across these organizations. Linda Silka emphasizes the importance of developing an applications component to learning—creating projects that involve faculty, students, and some community groups and simultaneously advance teaching and learning, research, and sustainable regional development. In the next essay, administrator Nancy Kleniewski discusses ways the university can support applied community research by defining what it is and how it will be assessed, surmounting traditional institutional barriers to such endeavors. Finally, Krishna Vedula et al. address the importance of a well-educated workforce (in this case, engineering) that is versed in issues of sustainability and has had "hands-on" experience as part of the education process.

Universities, Learning, and Development: The Applicability of Our Work

UMass Lowell is not unique in its endeavor to shape a development infrastructure, and this collection of studies adds to the growing stock of knowledge on the role of higher education institutions in the regional development process. These institutions around the world are attempting to deliver education and training consonant with new modes of knowledge production in the fast-paced global economy (Tierney 1998). In a recent article, Kevin Morgan of the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Wales Cardiff, states that "in recent years there has been a growing convergence between students of economic geography and students of innovation; the former are becoming more interested in innovation capacity as a way of explaining uneven regional development, while the latter are no longer impervious to spatial considerations in their work on technological change (Morgan 1997, 494).

        Urban and regional development centers can be found at such universities as the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, the University of Molise, Italy, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Department of Economic and Social Geography at the University of Cologne, Germany, the Chalmers University of Technology in Goteborg, Sweden, the Center for Urban and Regional Development Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and the Urban Research Center Utrecht, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, University of Utrecht, Netherlands. International conferences on sustainable urban development now occur regularly; for example, in 1998 the Eighth Conference on Urban and Regional Research was held in Madrid, Spain, and it addressed issues regarding urban policy and sustainable economic development. It was cosponsored by the United Nations Commission for Europe (Tsenkova 1999).

        There is a growing body of academic research on the role of universities in the regional development process finding its way into leading journals (see, for example, Beck et al. 1995; Dineen 1995; Huggins and Cooke 1996; Labrianidis 1995). Some journals ran special issues. American Behavioral Scientist , for example, produced a special issue in 1999 on universities in troubled times. Regional Studies focused on regional collective learning and innovation in a special issue in the same year that covered research funded by the European Commission. Also in 1999, the United Nations Development Programme issued its Human Development Report which described indicators of sustainable development. The national and local policy implications of these endeavors are also under review (Asheim 1996; Felsenstein 1996; Florida 1995). What is distinctive about the work at UMass Lowell is the inclination to collaborate across disciplinary lines and the importance placed on concrete practical activities; in other words, engagement and research and a reflective back-and-forth occur.

        Felsenstein (1996), in his review of the typical development impacts associated with metropolitan universities, offers three approaches to analyzing the role of the university. The first attempts to correlate the "concentration of high-technology activity" with location factors "perceived as inducing this spatial clustering." The second approach reviews specific growth processes, such as skill and knowledge development, and examines the university's role in producing them. The third category is for traditional, straightforward impact studies that in the main seek to place a dollar value on the wages spent and the goods and services purchased by the university community. Yet the three fail to consider the university as a dynamic and consistent participant in the formulation, implementation, and analysis of long-term strategic initiatives to improve the quality of life for the inhabitants not only of the campus, but of the region in which the university is situated.

        The array of activities at UMass Lowell is extremely important for the academic community and development practitioners to consider, for we are making a concerted effort to cross numerous academic and community-university boundaries that have heretofore proven difficult to bridge. We approach our work not simply to help firms acquire the latest technology, but to make it possible for underemployed and unemployed workers to receive the education and training required to work with that technology. It is imperative that our social scientists do not "study" the ethnic and immigrant groups that reside in Lowell as an anthropological outing, but that we work with residents and among businesses to study and learn together. Economic input-output models fail to capture the vital, cumulative impact of such complex human efforts, while traditional research paradigms that focus on business growth and technology diffusion to the exclusion of social, environmental, and cultural development also fall short of the mark when it comes to formulating innovative, long-term, sustainable development initiatives.