Emerging Interpretation Models of Social and Institutional Innovation in the City. The Role of ‘Intermediate Places’ Between the USA and Italy

Distinguished schools of thought, within the increasing impact of the ‘Innovation District’ phenomenon, have highlighted the ‘Innovation Center’ idea and its interpretations as physical structures able to build a powerful nexus for social and institutional innovation in urban regeneration. These ‘intermediate places’ can be considered interactive playgrounds, triggering new horizons in urban policies toward shared, inclusionary solutions more likely to meet the needs of local communities. Social innovation is strictly path-dependent, enabled by ‘opportunity windows’ in which local actors get mutual engagement and advantage, addressing contextual needs, while creating virtuous cooperation and new governance arrangements. The thesis of the paper is that innovation centers—as ‘intermediate places’— can be successful if they are built to recover direct relationships between the various stakeholders in the urban arena; consequently, the operative capacity of practices can expand the planning strategies providing the perspective of a long-term change. Through comparisons and drawbacks arising from case studies selected from different cultural and physical geographies (City of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and Bologna, Italy), the paper emphasizes the recognition of the variety of ‘intermediate places’, encompassing the diversity of actors, within a strategy for an authentic urban innovation ecosystem.