The world is not flat; cities are more important than ever before. We observe an increased competition between cities to attract, create, and retain talents and innovative companies. For urban leaders, the capacity to innovate is central to urban competitiveness. One of the recent trends in local economic development is the concept of innovation districts. The toolkit analyzes the re-emergence of downtown areas, the importance of innovation for urban competitiveness, the recipe for designing a successful innovation district, and provides an innovation district's framework - urban, productive, collaborative, and creative - to accelerate cities' innovative capacity. With case-studies from 22@ Barcelona, Boston's Innovation District, and one-north Singapore, the book will give clear guidelines to urban leaders on how to activate a successful innovative ecosystem. The book will be of interest for urban planners, local development agencies, urban policymakers, urban theorists, and anyone with a strong desire to make cities more innovative and more interesting.

In the late 2000s, new spaces -- such as co-working, maker spaces, and co-living spaces -- have been emerging in the knowledge-based post-industrial cities. The paper investigates the emergence of innovation centers through the use of public-private partnerships. The research methodology is based on a multiple case-study approach in which three cases were selected: Barcelona Growth Center in Barcelona (Spain), District Hall in Boston (USA), and Edney Innovation Center in Chattanooga (USA). Innovation centers, which consist of widely diverse creative and knowledge-based activities located within the same building, participate in the urban regeneration of downtown areas through the promotion of entrepreneurship. The paper finds that the local governments, which adopt public-private partnerships to create innovation centers, are entrepreneurial and are aligning their actions and visions with those of the entrepreneurs they are trying to attract. For the entrepreneurial local governments, innovation centers are anchor spaces incorporated in a broader vision of making “innovation districts”

Innovation districts are being implemented as urban regeneration strategies in cities as diverse as Barcelona (Spain), Boston (Massachusetts), Chattanooga (Tennessee), Detroit (Michigan), Medellín (Colombia), and Montréal (Canada). Little however, is known about the concept. This paper aims to provide a framework to define innovation districts. The research methodology is based on a qualitative approach using 22@ Barcelona as single case study. 22@ Barcelona was the first planned innovation district and has been a model for the innovation districts of Medellín (Colombia) and Boston (Massachusetts) among others. The paper finds that innovation districts based on the 22@ Barcelona's model are designed around four strategic axes, namely urban planning, productive, collaborative, and creative, all coordinated under a strong leadership. An innovation district is a place-based urban development strategy that aims to regenerate an under-performing downtown neighborhood into a desirable location for innovative and creative companies and workers.

In the knowledge economy, the rise of new social environments is blurring the conventional separation between the first place (home), the second place (work), and the third place. The paper aims to construct a typology of places in the knowledge economy. The research methodology is based on an exploratory case study approach investigating the social environments in Paris (France) that don't fit in the traditional typology of places. The paper finds that the new social environments in the knowledge city can combine elements of the first and second place (coliving); of the second and third place (coworking); and of the first and third place (comingling). Furthermore, the combination of elements of the first, second, and third place in new social environments implies the emergence of a new place, the fourth place. The paper contributes to understand how the knowledge economy is changing the nature of places in the global post-industrial city.

The Entrepreneurial Region explores the importance of regions in encouraging regional structural change. What is the role of regional governments in the innovation process? What can regions on the knowledge periphery do to promote technological catch-up with innovation hubs? Fundamentally, The Entrepreneurial Region argues for regional governments to act more entrepreneurially and to partner with regional stakeholders to find solutions to complex policy questions. The book includes three parts. The first part introduces the concept of The Entrepreneurial Region. The second part presents a case study of an Entrepreneurial Region with Medellin in Colombia. The case study provides a rich description of the regional context, the actors, and the regional innovation agency behind Medellin's economic transformation. Lastly, the book provides a toolkit for regional policymakers to stimulate regional structural change in a sustainable and inclusive manner.The book will be of interest for regional policymakers, practitioners, and elected officials in regions on the knowledge periphery (Global South, peripheral regions in the European Union) and for everyone with an interest in innovation policies, regional development, and heterodox evolutionary economics.For more info, please visit entrepreneurialregion.com