Inclusive innovation and the dynamics of regional transformation: Reflections on NOIR’s contribution to RSA 2025

Jen Nelles (Oxford Brookes University)

NOIR had a strong presence at RSA 2025, organizing a session on “Inclusive innovation and the dynamics of regional transformation” (SS23), organized by NOIR co-director Michael Glass. The session featured presentations on inclusive innovation and innovation districts (Carlos Cadena-Gaitan, EAFIT University and Diane Morales, University of Oslo, presenting for co-authors David Marlow, Louise Kempton, and Michael Glass), emergent city regionalism through rail and housing infrastructure in Aukland (Michael Glass, University of Pittsburgh presenting for co-author David Waite), and on the regional contradictions posed by a Brazilian freight railway (Matias Chambouleyron, Sorbonne University). These rich presentations shared important insights that will continue to shape discussions about the equity impacts of infrastructure and how infrastructure might mitigate these. The following summarizes my discussant comments from the session, organized around a series of questions. While these questions are centered on the session’s presentations, they are also fundamental in shaping the NOIR agenda through this second phase.

Whither the region?

When we started this network, we specifically decided not to restrict our focus to a single definition of a region. This is partly because, in the course of our research, we have all adopted slightly different regional lenses but also because we wanted to allow ourselves and our membership to explore the topic without restrictions. Whatever the definition employed, however, we encouraged participants in the network and our events to consider how these definitions shape infrastructure and how infrastructure itself can shape perceptions (and institutionalization) of regionalisms. The presentations in this session engaged with three very different regional imaginaries. Glass’s presentation focused most specifically on an institutionalized region – the Super City city-region of Auckland – arguing that even though one of the ambitions of the Super City was to increase the efficiency of regional transportation planning there are some doubts as to whether regional priorities are being appropriately integrated into what appear to be city-centric expansion plans. The region Chambouleyron presented was not an administrative construction, but a regional territory set on the spine of the Carajás railway in Brazil between the mines in Parauapebas and the port of São Luís. This presentation questioned the degree to which this region adequately benefits from the rail line beyond mineral exports, concluding that, in its present form, it creates more obstacle than opportunity. Cadena-Gaitan et al’s contribution was a comparative interrogation of the hyper-local innovation infrastructure of innovation districts in four urban contexts. Here the regional was implicit, as innovation districts are often woven into narratives about expanding regional innovation capabilities. Their research interrogated the localized impacts of innovation infrastructure often designed to serve regional interests and minimizing scrutiny of their impact on local communities.

How do ambitions of inclusiveness align with reality?

In their critical approach to innovation infrastructure, Cadena-Gaitan et al. highlighted that inclusiveness was often part of the design of innovation districts but demonstrated very different track records to date in aligning the benefits with the needs of the adjacent, often historically marginalized communities. In considering this, I wondered whether part of the challenge might involve how inclusiveness is framed and, therefore, implemented as part of these projects. A recent analysis of innovation and economic policies in the UK showed that sustainable innovation is often framed in terms of economic benefit. The result is that while these policies use the “right” language, there is little prioritization of sustainability beyond advancing (or mitigating impact on) economic goals. As a result, where there is an attempt to maintain accountability, success is declared if the stated economic results were obtained (or in progress) while much less attention is paid to other equity or inclusion consequences of investment. It would be interesting to interrogate the inclusion narratives in these projects to explore the degree to which they are equally ambitious and meaningful in their efforts and execution beyond economic results. This is also worth exploring in the Auckland city-region, where the City Rail Link (CRL) project provides a technical fix to land use pressures and the affordability crisis but appears to be disconnected from the housing solutions tackling the same issues. Here there may be different perspectives of which inclusion challenges are the highest priorities and which “fixes” will be most effective that are tied to how the region is perceived and who gets do the seeing.

Where does governance fit?

The Aukland case is interesting as an example of an attempt to align governance with the geographies of infrastructure in order to better plan and manage the system. Improving transportation planning effectiveness was one of three explicit goals of metropolitan reform and the inclusion of all of the previously fragmented communities along the rail line was seen as crucial to enabling that ambition. Fifteen years on, however, territorial divisions persist within the amalgamated structures. While it does not invalidate the idea that efficiencies can be extracted from aligning institutional boundaries with regional infrastructures, this case does demonstrate that institutional fixes may not be a magic bullet to overcome challenges associated with regional fragmentation. Indeed, forcing communities together in top-down arrangements may exacerbate parochialism by denying actors within the structure independence to make deals. This raises questions for scholars of infrastructural regionalism and governance about which institutional structures and strategies are most effective in overcoming fragmentation. When effectiveness is viewed not only in operational terms, but through a lens of (regional) inclusion, further challenges become evident. Through this we return to a perennial question for our network of which actors get to “see” like a region, and which version of the region should be prioritized in infrastructure agendas.

What is infrastructure’s role in promoting inclusion and mitigating inequities?

There is little doubt that infrastructure can play an important role in both creating and mitigating inequalities. All of the presentations highlighted equity challenges, to local communities around innovation districts, to regional land use and housing affordability, and to cities and territories underserved by a private rail line. What is most interesting was that solutions (and work arounds) always seemed to be emerging around not one, but several, infrastructural fixes. In Brazil, roads and truck transport serve the communities not being served by the rail line, with attendant infrastructural and sustainability consequences. In Auckland, housing and rail are not effectively aligned, but provide competing (?) approaches to the problem of affordably housing (and moving) a metropolitan population. Innovation districts demonstrate that innovation infrastructure cannot promote inclusiveness (or innovation) effectively without incorporating displacement mitigation strategies, energy use considerations, or links appropriate links to digital and physical networks. As such, there is perhaps an interesting thread to pursue about the intersections and alignments of infrastructural fixes and how different perceptions of regionalism, and different governance coalitions, clash or become complementary at that interface.

We thank all of the participants and their co-authors for providing such a rich set of contributions to the evolving NOIR research agenda. This session clearly raised some interesting questions that will continue to fuel discussions within the network. We invite reactions and responses to these reflections on this forum or through future NOIR events.