Innovation Districts: Establish and support Innovation Districts to employ district-scale infrastructure and systems and to implement flexible policies and practices that allow for experimentation and innovation consistent with City goals. 

Innovation Districts are an increasingly common tool in cities used to spur and facilitate growth of quality jobs; to coordinate district approaches to stormwater, energy, parking, place making, green space, and waste management; and to increase the tax base. Innovation Districts deliberately form stakeholder collaborations, bringing businesses, residents, non-profits, academia, government, and major institutions together to organize development, manage district systems, and act as a living laboratory for future-oriented research to make progress on big challenges like inequality and climate change.

The Brookings Institution, Project for Public Spaces, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, among others, all recognize the importance of innovation districts. To make these districts thrive, they must be walkable, transit accessible, compact, and include a mix of residential, business, cultural, and retail uses—these attributes help facilitate established institutions and businesses clustering around incubator spaces, maker spaces, and start-up hubs. 

Innovation districts are opportunities to experiment with, visibly demonstrate, refine, and produce replicable models of best practices in planning and district systems. This innovation results from intersecting ideas, cultures, and income strata. Innovation should also reside in the infrastructure and systems of an Innovation District, which should be designed to tackle Minneapolis’s and the country’s greatest challenges, from inequality to climate change.