Towards smart urban developments?:Innovation habitats and tech parks in Brazil

In line with the UN’s global agenda of sustainable development goals (SDG), to achieve a positive transformation towards the sustainability of cities,urban planning practitioners should draw on a series of action plans aimed at combining smart infrastructure to high-density and mixed-use developments.In Brazil, these endeavors are likely to be fostered from the Innovation Habitats – such as tech-parks, coworking spaces, incubators, living labs, etc. –understood as spaces conducive for innovations to occur, as they are the locus of information and knowledge sharing, particularly regarding cutting-edgetechnology development. However, there is limited knowledge on the extent to which innovation habitats cope with smart urban planning. Therefore, thispaper intends to verify this issue through an analysis of the 43 tech parks currently in operation in the country and their integration into respective urbancontexts. The results account for three fronts from which it is possible to reflect on the extent to which these parks play a prominent role in promoting asmarter and more sustainable urban development: (i) their legal personality; (ii) their rapport with the city region; and (iii) their relation with thesurrounding neighborhoods