Innovation Districts at the Cross road of the Entrepreneurial City and the Sustainable City

Abstract

Innovation districts are designed to promote increased interaction between employees and firms in knowledge-intensive industries. They have been praised as both sustainable economic development and sustainable real estate development. Nevertheless, there has been little investigation of how those involved in the planning and development of innovation districts view the role of sustainability. In this paper, we draw on 40 semi-structured interviews with professionals associated with four innovation districts in the U.S. The results provide new insight into how these market participants perceived the components of sustainability in fostering innovation and project success. Economic attributes of sustainability were consistently emphasized as the primary driver of innovation district successes. Further, where social and environmental elements of these districts were acknowledged as factors contributing to project success, professionals tended to frame their roles in economic terms.