That's pretty much it, with the caveat that the Bloomberg article is about American cities and in my post I was talking about the average American. Said person probably doesn't make it a point to keep track of the GDP of American cities, much less foreign ones, and the Boston metrics and rankings they're most likely to know about involve the Patriots and the Red Sox, not NIH research funding.
Conversely, I assume many of the people aB members meet overseas are highly educated and well-traveled professionals, not average citizens of their country, and are more likely to know about Boston's ranking in NIH funding than its ranking in Superbowl championships.
In other words, my analogy was not based on regional economic dynamism or other technocratic metrics. It's just my impression of what some random American in the street tends to associate with Boston, probably because they first learned about the city in a US history class or similar context. (Colonial) Williamsburg might have been a better choice for the analogy, but it doesn't work as well as "Venice" in rephrasing the "Athens of America" sobriquet. "Boston is the Colonial Williamsburg of America" sounds like that old movie line about Rolls-Royce being the Cadillac of automobiles.
It's unspeakably annoying how people choose to live in a city only to stand in the way of development. IMO this would have been the best-looking tower coming from this development cycle and it's a shame if it doesn't get built.