U.S. Mayors Are Backing Innovation Districts To Transform Their Cities’ Brands
Photo Credit: The Tomorrow Building is a micro-unit co-living space for startup entrepreneurs in the Chattanooga Innovation District in Tennessee. Tomorrow Building
Skift Take
With the federal government deadlocked in intractable partisan debate, mayors across the U.S. are stepping up to drive progress by cultivating their innovation economies. A growing number are developing innovation districts to elevate their cities' brands.
Mayors across the U.S. are investing significant resources to develop what the Brookings Institution calls “innovation districts,” in an attempt to accelerate urban and economic development, catalyze job growth, and shift their cities' reputations toward being incubators for progress.
These districts are also providing a new type of idea collision space during meetings and conferences for visiting organizations to engage local tech and creative thought leaders in different growth industries.
According to the House of Logistics & Mobility in Frankfurt: "The city of the future is an interdisciplinary knowledge sharing machine." Innovation districts, then, are designed to be the engine powering the machine.
But what are they exactly? You can’t always see innovation districts physically in their entirety, beyond the buildings they inhabit, anymore than you can “see” Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, although people are attempting to do just that.
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