nEGOTIATING INNOVATION IDENTITIES

Two emerging innovation districts in downtown Birmingham, Alabama serve as a critical case study. The Switch is a former industrial neighborhood centered around the city's historic 14th Street Switchyard and located adjacent to the City's Civil Rights District and historic 4th Ave. Business District. Edgehill at Southtown is located near the University of Alabama at Birmingham on the former site of Southtown Court, a historically segregated low-income neighborhood. Collectively these districts represent the challenges and opportunities embodied in other communities across the U.S. that seek economic growth and social equity through entrepreneurial urbanism. 

Above image: The Switch Innovation District Rendering (Source: Willam Blackstock Architects). Below image (left): The Switch (Source: K. Schneider); (right) Aerial rendering of Edgehill (Source: Southside Development Company).

Grounded in theories of relational space (Lefebvre 1974 [1991]; Soja 1996; Murdoch 2006; Mitchell 2008, 2021; Massey 1994, 2005), this study conceptualizes place as socially produced, racialized, multi-scalar, and historically co-constituted through physical, social, and affective dimensions. A collaborative planning (Healey 2006) and relational placemaking framework (Martin 2003, Pierce et al. 2011), operationalized through utilization of Schmid’s (2004) Situation-Structure-Performance implicit equation model, guides this study's epistemological and methodological perspectives. Relying on multiple forms of data, including in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups, the study employs a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2014) informed by both discourse and spatial analysis to qualitatively analyze how place is conceptualized and articulated by stakeholders, activated and negotiated through formal and informal planning processes, and (re)produced through policy and partnerships.  

The Purple Places Project aims to illuminate the magnitude of social equity challenges AND opportunities inherent to entrepreneurial urbanism through representation and analysis of spatial data.  A work in progress, this map displays the adjacency of institutional coalitions and emerging innovation districts throughout the U.S. to predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and low-income neighborhoods, historically redlined neighborhoods, Justice40 Districts, and neighborhoods that have been subject to past displacement due to urban renewal. Grounded in the Birmingham case study, its purpose is to draw attention to the scale and scope of historic place-based inequities and the ongoing displacement risks faced by existing populations, while also highlighting opportunities for institutions to advance equity objectives by centering relational space in their planning and placemaking processes. 

To add additional innovation districts to this atlas or to edit existing information, use the form provided via the link below.

Why purple? The color symbolizes the negotiation of opposing ideologies: neoliberal urbanism, which privileges private property and corporate wealth accumulation, and progressive urbanism, which strives for social justice, spatial equity, and community wealth building. It also represents the place-based reconstruction of resistance identities, which argued by Castells (2004), gain force through communal practices of opposition and collective agency. 

Above image:  Historic 4th Ave. Business District (Source: K. Schneider).

Advisor: Mallika Bose,  PhD. Associate Dean for Research, Creative Activity, and Graduate Studies and Professor of Landscape Architecture, Pennsylvania State University.

Members: 

• Theodore Alter, PhD. Professor Emeritus of Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Economics and Past Co-Director, Center for Economic and Community Development, Penn State University.
• Joshua Inwood, PhD. Professor of Geography and African American Studies (courtesy appointment), Affiliate Faculty Rock Ethics Institute, Pennsylvania State University.
• Lisa Iulo, Professor of Architecture and Director, Hamer Center for Community Design, Pennsylvania State University.
• Alexandra Staub, PhD. Professor of Architecture, Affiliate Faculty Rock Ethics Institute, Pennsylvania State University.

• Castells, M. (2004). The Power of Identity. Blackwell.
• Healey, P. (2006). Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies, 2nd Ed. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Katz, B. and Wagner, J. (2014).  The Rise of Innovation Districts:  A New Geography of Innovation in America,  Brookings.
• Katz, B. and Wagner, J. (2024). The Next Wave of Innovation Districts, Global Institute of Innovation Districts.   
• Lefebvre, H. (1974). The production of space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith [1991]. Blackwell.
• Logan, J. R., & Molotch, H. L. (1987). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place. University of California Press.
• Martin, D.G. (2003). Place-Framing as Place-Making: Constituting a Neighborhood for Organizing and Activism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93: 3, p. 730-750.
• Murdoch, J. (2006). Post-structuralist Geography. Sage.
• Pierce, J., Martin, D. G., & Murphy, J. T. (2011). Relational place-making: the networked politics of place. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(1), 54–70.
• Massey, D. (1994). Race, Place, and Gender. University of Minnesota Press.
• Massey, D. (2005). For Space. SAGE Publications.
• Mitchell, D. (2008). New axioms for reading the landscape: Paying attention to political economy and social justice. Political Geography, 27(6), 681–694.
• Mitchell, D. (2021). Geography sculpts the future, or: escaping—and falling back into—the tyranny of absolute space. Studia Neophilologica, 93:2, 136-154.
• Soja, E. W. (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Blackwell.
• Schmid, A. A. (2004). Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional and Behavioral Economics. Blackwell.

For more information about this study, contact Krista Schneider via email at kls126@psu.edu. 

Full dissertation title: Negotiating Innovation Identities through Place, Race, and the Networked Politics of Urban Redevelopment

IRB STUDY00025605: Exempt.

This research is partially funded by a 2025 Penn State University, College of Arts & Architecture Graduate Student Research Support Program Grant.