Handbook on the Geographies of Innovation Edited by Richard Shearmur, Christophe Carrincazeaux, and David Doloreux, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, MA, 2016, 512 pp., cloth $340.99 (ISBN 978‐784710767)

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149489/1/cag12535.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149489/2/cag12535_am.pd

Building Cities Like Startups: Innovation Districts, Rent Extraction, and the Remaking of Public Space

Across the globe, economic developers and policymakers are building “innovation districts” –master planned developments with the aim of concentrating the actors, entities, inputs, and physical infrastructure considered essential to process and product innovation. Promoters have repeatedly hailed Barcelona’s “22@bcn” (est. 2000) and Boston’s “Seaport Innovation District” (est. 2010) for their success in attracting talent, increasing jobs, scaling startups, and transitioning regions into a high-tech economy. Built within the city and the urban-periphery alike, innovation districts point to a new spatial layout for capitalist production. This dissertation is an in-depth comparative case study of five innovation districts: Boston, Detroit, Park Center (North Carolina), St. Louis, and Dublin (Ireland). I engage a qualitative approach that includes on-site observations and semi-structured interviews with over 100 key supporters of innovation districts–from residents and workers to the university affiliates, developers, incubator owners, venture capitalists, non-profit managers, private executives, elected officials, and consultants driving growth decisions. In developing a more robust definition of innovation districts than the strategy mobilized by growth coalitions, I situate the emergence of innovation districts and their extractive logics along a historic trajectory of capitalist production from manufacturing material goods to new forms of immaterial production. Relying on content analysis of primary documents, maps, legal statues, and architectural renditions, I document how the planning process for each innovation district encloses public space and lived experience within that space, relinquishing it for private profit. Through detailed case studies I argue that economic developers and policymakers opportunistically used innovation district strategy to trigger real estate development after the 2008/2009 global financial crisis. The allure of the innovation district concept –that of an entrepreneurial haven for science and design breakthroughs and the acceleration of discoveries to the market—succeeded in selling the innovation district strategy for financial, political, and popular backing during a time period of complete construction standstill. However, in places with robust entrepreneurial ecosystems, supporters lost sight of the benefits of the innovation district as a support for startups and entrepreneurs in favor of more established companies seeking proximity to talent. Using census data, I trace the changing demographic makeup of each innovation district from its date of inception to its current state to demonstrate how innovation district strategy contributes to the splintering of resources. Lastly, I conclude the dissertation with a theoretical discussion gesturing how innovation districts might exacerbate issues of precarity for the entrepreneur who sits at the center of this experimentation and is increasingly interpellated by a state-led ideology that eagerly encourages self-provisioning.PHDUrban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149993/1/kayanan_1.pd

Negative Consequences of Innovation-Igniting Urban Developments: Empirical Evidence from Three US Cities

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

Innovation Districts As A Strategy for Urban Economic Development: A Comparison of Four Cases

Innovation districts are a relatively new strategy in urban economic development. They have been fast gaining attention and popularity, due in part to energetic third-party promotion and the apparent successes of two early adopters: Barcelona and Boston. As additional cities establish and promote innovation districts, it benefits policymakers to possess information regarding their characteristics and suitability as an economic development approach. We conduct in-depth case studies of four innovation districts in the United States—located in Boston, Detroit, Saint Louis, and San Diego—that present contrasting settings, policies, and outcomes. The empirical information is drawn primarily from interviews with the innovation district creators and implementers and the entrepreneurs embedded within them. We assess the expectations, design, implementation, and operation of these innovation districts, with reference to stated and normative policy goals along with theories of regional economic development. Our purpose is to provide scholars and policymakers with guidance as to how, and how well, innovation districts may achieve the aim of urban economic development to generate economic dynamism and prosperity

Governing the Metropolis: An International Review of Metropolitanisation, Metropolitan Governance and the Relationship with Sustainable Land Management

Recent research has identified the potential of the metropolitan scale, and indeed metropolitan bodies, in achieving greater coordination and more effective land-use management. In this paper, we have undertaken a systematic scoping review of the English-language literature (2014–2019) on metropolitanisation and metropolitan governance, with a view to understanding the potential relationship with more sustainable land management. Our scoping review identified several dominant trends within current research on metropolitanisation and metropolitan governance illustrating the complexity between sustainable land management and issues of territorial politics, resourcing, and power relations. The centrality of collaborative working relationships in supporting sustainable land management is identified, yet collaboration and effective metropolitan scale governance is not always an easy task or readily implemented. The paper identifies a series of challenges and concludes that while there is general consensus that the metropolitan arena may be an appropriate scale through which to support more sustainable land management, there is no agreement on the mechanisms to enable this. Steering and more strongly directing metropolitanisation processes through either formal metropolitan governance structures or other tools could provide a potential approach but will require significant adaptation in power and funding structures

Notes from the Trenches: Reflections from Recent PhD Graduates on Navigating the Academy

PhD planning graduates face an increasingly competitive academic job market. In this commentary, seven recent graduates provide qualitative descriptions of the complicated and ever-changing expectations graduates face. We situate this within a larger reflection on the neoliberal academy that promotes a culture of competitiveness over care and production over purpose. We emphasize how this system is seemingly antithetical to the transformative planning work needed to address the most pressing planning issues of our time and provide suggestions for meeting shifting expectations, evolving training and support needs, and opportunities for a more compassionate tenure-track market. Our commentary has implications for doctoral pedagogy, the tenure-track market, and the academy