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Innovation Districts encourage the distribution of people and ideas throughout the district. The initiative is funding start-up Innovation Districts from London to Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. The Brookings Institution’s “Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking” (funded by the billionaire Bass family of Fort Worth, Texas), seeks to create and monetize new ideas and grow metropolitan economies. Other cities quickly followed, and more are added each year. This concept began in the early 2000’s with Barcelona’s 500-acre and Boston’s Seaport Innovation District. Think of it as a massive regional shopping mall, but for ideas and creativity. Distributed throughout, Innovation Districts are also offices, retail, dining, and open greenspaces with a specific focus on a variety of transportation options, often favoring mass transit over cars. Innovation Districts are characterized by two or more “anchor” locations, such as universities, hospitals, and research centers. That is the core principle behind an urban regeneration strategy called Innovation Districts-massive mixed-use developments with a variety of housing types to encourage a diverse population mix, combined with walkable mixed-use employment and retail areas. Innovation DistrictsĪs designers, we often speak about the benefit of “accidental collisions” between people in a workspace. Three strategies stand out as key trends in urban development: Innovation Districts, Blue Zones, and EcoDistricts. It involves fundamental shifts based on strategic or philosophical principles on “how” and “why” we develop. And it reaches beyond the recent expansions of mixed-use developments in formally monolithic areas like office parks and shopping centers. Change is happening in cities big and small, urban and suburban. And not just major cities like New York or Chicago. Pick just about any city, and it will seem both familiar and new at the same time. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “the only constant in life is change.” Nowhere is that more evident than in our cities.