Earlier this year, Miguel Sanchez decided he wanted out of Manhattan. So he uprooted his digital creative agency to an Internet incubator in a restored red-brick building with a sleek, modern design. For a few hundred bucks a month, Sanchez, who has recently done work with brands like Belvedere and Mercedes-Benz, joined a community of entrepreneurs who share ideas and get advice on nitty-gritty start-up matters. He just recorded his best month of billings ever.

This may sound like another Brooklyn success story, but Sanchez is operating out of Sunshine Bronx, an ambitious new development in Hunts Point, a neighborhood known for unemployment and rampant prostitution. There’s no Ping-Pong table, but Sunshine is nevertheless trying to make entrepreneurs feel as though they’ve left the South Bronx and stepped into Silicon Valley.

This may seem overly ambitious, but Ruben Diaz Jr., the borough president, reminded me that the Bronx is home to nearly a dozen colleges and universities and the research arms of the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo. (“There are so many scientists here,” he said.) Diaz, like many officials I spoke to, claimed that the area’s problems are largely based on perception...