CHAPTER 1: INVESTIGATING INNOVATION DISTRICTS CHAPTER 1: INVESTIGATING INNOVATION DISTRICTS 4 Our terminology follows the standard distinction between invention, which refers solely to discovery, and innovation, which encompasses commercialization (Schumpeter 1939; Arora et al. 2016).

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Emergent economic development policies reflect the challenges urban growth coalitions face in attracting the footloose tech-entrepreneurs of the global economy. This convergence between the focus on place and the harnessing of global capital has led to the proliferation of innovation-igniting urban developments (IIUD)—place-based economic development strategies to boost the local knowledge economy. Economic developers are using IIUD strategies to convert areas of the city into entrepreneurial “launch pads” for innovation. However, because these developments remain young, considerations to implement IIUDs lack an evidence-base to show the potential for negative consequences on the communities where they are embedded. This research addresses this gap through: 1) a review of studies of similar developments to identify negative consequences; and 2) using a quasi-experimental method composed of Propensity Score Matching and Average Treatment Effect analyses from IIUDs in three US cities (Boston, MA, St. Louis, MO, and Buffalo, NY). Combined, results demonstrate that the greatest implications of IIUDs are the increased polarized division of labor, housing unaffordability, and income inequality. As IIUDs gain in popularity, it is critical to correlate negative consequences with IIUDs to inform economic developers in assessing trade-offs.

This article critically investigates the global trend toward urban innovation districts, a distinctly 21st-century spatial form. Innovation districts are a place-based, economic development strategy to concentrate the actors, entities, and infrastructure considered essential to process and product innovation. Built on the idea that today's innovation requires continuous interaction, the design of innovation districts incorporates a density of living and working amenities to accommodate a 24-7 live–work–play environment. At the heart of the innovation district strategies are the entrepreneurs meant to benefit from the built-in supports that help them scale their ideas and introduce products to the market. Despite an embrace by policymakers, to date, there has been little systematic analysis and critique of innovation district strategies or attempts to understand them as tools of neoliberal urban economic development. This article tracks how planners and other city development officials endorsed innovation districts during the Global Financial Crisis. The districts were a stopgap policy measure to accumulate economic benefits while waiting for market activity to resume. Furthermore, this paper argues that the emergence of innovation district strategy points to new governance arrangements that shift the burden of urban revitalization onto entrepreneurs who catalyze growth through their consumption and production activities. The findings are based on content analysis, site observations, and interviews with the creators, implementers, stakeholders, and users of innovation districts in Boston, St. Louis, and Dublin.