Cities play an important role in regional economic development, however often the lack of coordination among sectors and the lack of a clear vision or framework for action can undermine this potential. Living Cities’ Design Labs bring together public, private, and philanthropic leaders from an array of fields to work collaboratively to develop actionable frameworks for driving urban innovation and transformation. Through these intensive, hands-on, multi-party sessions, participants focus on important issues or opportunities within cities and work to identify the networks, concrete actions and innovative practices that public and private institutions across a region can adopt in order to maximize cities’ economic potential and ensure benefit for all residents.

Upcoming Design Lab: Harnessing the Full Economic Impact of Anchor Institutions
Today, the largest economic force in 66 of America’s 100 largest cities is a university or hospital. Despite this reality, few, if any, regional economic development strategies are built around these stable and rooted institutions. Some leading anchor institutions have changed their procurement and hiring processes and become real estate developers to more intentionally benefit the local economy. However, no framework exists that articulates how other sectors (government, business, philanthropy and civic) can work collaboratively with these institutions to harness their full economic potential regionally. On March 19-20, 2012, we are inviting a select group of multi-disciplinary leaders together to design just such a framework.