Innovation District Planning

Innovation districts are physical spaces that serve to strengthen the foundations and institutions of an innovation ecosystem. The design, implementation, and management of formalized innovation districts is a new practice area. Research draws upon the experience of concentrated areas of innovation that occurred organically, such as Boston’s Route 128, as well as intentional projects to bring together innovators in large science and technology parks, such as North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. Existing research focuses on how to define and design innovation districts and evaluate their impact, as well as general policy considerations. In this paper, we review the definitions and benefits of an innovation district, reviewing the existing empirical research on their impacts. We then propose a series of questions to guide practitioners in addressing the economic, physical, social, and governance elements of an innovation district. Finally, we outline some of the challenges in creating an innovation district and ways to measure progress, to allow practitioners to get ahead of potential issues in the future. This paper is intended to help policymakers and practitioners working in innovation and economic development translate the concepts of innovation ecosystems into actionable next steps for planning innovation districts in their communities.

This book aims to fill the knowledge gap on how to plan, develop and manage innovation districts that are competitive in terms of both productivity and quality of living, justifying the massive investment put into place and at the same time doing both in a delicate and harmonious way. There is a need for smart urban land use that is wired with both hard infrastructures (e.g., telecommunication and transport) and soft infrastructures (e.g., diversity and tolerance). The reader learns this knowledge through conceptual expansions for key insights, frameworks for potential and performance assessment and best practices for global innovation districts. The authors begin innovation district planning with the role and effectiveness of planning a branding in the development of innovation districts. The next key topic of place making is recognised as a key strategy for supporting knowledge generation and innovation activities in the contemporary innovation districts. Another important topic is place quality where the reader learns to identify and classify indicators of place quality by studying global innovation districts best practices. The reader also expands their understanding on the classification of innovation districts based on their key characteristics through a methodological approach. The book concludes with district smartness studied through the socio-cultural role played by anchor universities in facilitating place making in innovation districts. Smart campuses, enabled by digital transformation opportunities in higher education, are seen as a miniature replica of smart cities and serve as living labs for smart technology. The book serves as a repository for scholars, researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students as it communicates the complex innovation district phenomenon in an easy-to-digest form by providing both the big picture view and specifics of each component of that view.

This book aims to fill the knowledge gap on how to plan, develop and manage innovation districts that are competitive in terms of both productivity and quality of living, justifying the massive investment put into place and at the same time doing both in a delicate and harmonious way. There is a need for smart urban land use that is wired with both hard infrastructures (e.g., telecommunication and transport) and soft infrastructures (e.g., diversity and tolerance). The reader learns this knowledge through conceptual expansions for key insights, frameworks for potential and performance assessment and best practices for global innovation districts. The authors begin innovation district planning with the role and effectiveness of planning a branding in the development of innovation districts. The next key topic of place making is recognised as a key strategy for supporting knowledge generation and innovation activities in the contemporary innovation districts. Another important topic is place quality where the reader learns to identify and classify indicators of place quality by studying global innovation districts best practices. The reader also expands their understanding on the classification of innovation districts based on their key characteristics through a methodological approach. The book concludes with district smartness studied through the socio-cultural role played by anchor universities in facilitating place making in innovation districts. Smart campuses, enabled by digital transformation opportunities in higher education, are seen as a miniature replica of smart cities and serve as living labs for smart technology. The book serves as a repository for scholars, researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students as it communicates the complex innovation district phenomenon in an easy-to-digest form by providing both the big picture view and specifics of each component of that view.

Planners, environmentalists, architects, engineers, policymakers and economists have to work together to ensure that planning and development can meet our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations. This collaboration was the aim of the 12th International Conference on Sustainable Development and Planning, from which the papers in this volume originate. Problems related to development and planning, which affect rural and urban areas, are present in all regions of the world. Accelerated urbanisation has resulted in the deterioration of the environment and loss of quality of life. Urban development can also aggravate problems faced by rural areas such as forests, mountain regions and coastal areas, amongst many others. Taking into consideration the interaction between different regions and developing new methodologies for monitoring, planning and implementation of novel strategies can offer solutions mitigating environmental pollution and non-sustainable use of available resources. Energy-saving and eco-friendly building approaches have become an important part of modern development, which places special emphasis on resource optimisation. Planning has a key role to play in ensuring that these solutions, as well as new materials and processes, are incorporated in the most efficient manner. The included papers feature new academic findings and their applications in planning and development strategies, assessment tools, and decision-making processes.

This book crtitically examines the reciprocal relationship between creativity and the built environment and features leading voices from across the world in a debate on originating, learning, modifying, and plagiarizing creativities within the built environment. The Companion includes contributions from architecture, design, planning, construction, real estate, economics, urban studies, geography, sociology, and public policies. Contributors review the current field and proposes new conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and directions for research, policy, and practice. Chapters are organised into five sections, each drawing on cross-disciplinary insights and debates: Section I connects creativity, productivity, and economic growth and examines how our built environment stimulates or intimidates human imaginations. Section II addresses how hard environments are fabricated with social, cultural, and institutional meanings, and how these evolve in different times and settings. Section III discusses activities that directly and indirectly shape the material development of a built environment, its environmental sustainability, space utility, and place identity. Section IV illustrates how technologies and innovations are used in building and strengthening an intelligent, real-time, responsive urban agenda. Section V examines governance opportunities and challenges at the interface between creativity and built environment. An important resource for scholars and students in the fields of urban planning and development, urban studies, environmental sustainability, human geography, sociology, and public policy.

In twenty-first-century American cities, policy makers increasingly celebrate university-sponsored innovation districts as engines of inclusive growth. But the story is not so simple. In University City, Laura Wolf-Powers chronicles five decades of planning in and around the communities of West Philadelphia’s University City to illuminate how the dynamics of innovation district development in the present both depart from and connect to the politics of mid-twentieth-century urban renewal. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, Wolf-Powers concludes that even as university and government leaders vow to develop without displacement, what existing residents value is imperiled when innovation-driven redevelopment remains accountable to the property market. The book first traces the municipal and institutional politics that empowered officials to demolish a predominantly Black neighborhood near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in the late 1960s to make way for the University City Science Center and University City High School. It also provides new insight into organizations whose members experimented during that same period with alternative conceptions of economic advancement. The book then shifts to the present, documenting contemporary efforts to position university-adjacent neighborhoods as locations for prosperity built on scientific knowledge. Wolf-Powers examines the work of mobilized civic groups to push cultural preservation concerns into the public arena and to win policies to help economically insecure families keep a foothold in changing neighborhoods. Placing Philadelphia’s innovation districts in the context of similar development taking place around the United States, University City advocates a reorientation of redevelopment practice around the recognition that despite their negligible worth in real estate terms, the time, care, and energy people invest in their local environments—and in one another—are precious urban resources.

Extensively revised and updated, Planning in the USA, fifth edition, continues to provide a comprehensive introduction to the policies, theory, and practice of planning. Outlining land use, urban planning, and environmental protection policies, this fully illustrated book explains the nature of the planning process and the way in which policy issues are identified, defined, and approached. The new edition incorporates new planning legislation and regulations at the state and federal layers of government and examples of local ordinances in a variety of planning areas. New material includes discussions of • education and equity in planning; • the City Beautiful Movement; • Daniel Burnham’s plan for Chicago; • segregation; • Knick v. Township of Scott; • reforming single-family zoning and regulatory challenges in zoning and land use; • Daniel Parolek’s ‘Missing Middle Housing’; • climate change, mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency; • the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan; • sharing programs for cars, bicycles, and scooters; • hybrid electric and autonomous vehicles; • Vision Zero; • COVID-19 relief for housing; • Innovation Districts, Promise Zones, and Opportunity Zones; • the sharing, gig, and creative economies; • scenic views and vistas, monuments, statues, and remembering the past; and • healthy cities, Health Impact Assessment, and active living. This detailed account of urbanization in the United States reveals the problematic nature and limitations of the planning process, the fallibility of experts, and the difficulties facing policy-makers in their search for solutions. Planning in the USA, fifth edition, is an essential book for students of urban planning, urban politics, environmental geography, and environment politics. It will be a valuable resource for planners and all who are concerned with the nature of contemporary urban and environmental problems.