Community leaders in Brookings, South Dakota sought ways to jump-start economic development, boost public spiritedness, and unleash the creative ideas of residents in the city and the region. The resulting Creativity Week festival, begun…

By clustering talent, startups, established firms, nonprofits, research institutions and cultural assets, innovation districts encourage people to come together in places that can incubate creativity and serve as labs for…

In this Big Ideas for Cities feature, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke tells the story of how his city became a hotbed for entrepreneurship and innovation.

When Andy Berke became mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee,…

The city of Austin has set out to create the prototype for how communities of the future compete in a global marketplace.

With a fast growing tech economy and population, the city of Austin is a hotbed of growth and innovation well on its…

What are the project goals?

After the completion of the "Big Dig," a project that rerouted the downtown portion of I-93 through a subterranean tunnel, Downtown and South Boston were no longer divided by a major highway. In 2010, then-…

With President Obama’s announcement at the NLC Congressional Cities Conference of the new TechHire initiative, the White House will make available $100 million in grants to expand the number of Americans in well-paying tech jobs. The program will…

This post was written by Bruce Katz, Brooks Rainwater and Julie Wagner .

For the past 50 years Silicon Valley and Research Triangle Park epitomized the environments where the nation’s innovations germinated. Now, there’s a noticeable…

This post also appears on CityMinded’s blog.

Cities incubate creativity and serve as labs for innovative ideas and policies. One such idea arising more and more is the innovation district. These districts are creative, energy-laden…