INTRODUCTION

The "introduction" is the introductory chapter of the book "Innovation Capacity and the City". This open access book makes up one of the key milestones of the DESIGNSCAPES project, a H2020 CSA (Coordination and Support Action) research project funded by the European Commission under the Call “User-driven innovation: value creation through design-enabled innovation. It shows that adopting Design enables to embed Innovation within the City in order to conceptualize feasible answers to complex global challenges. By so doing, innovation can become disruptive for the values it brings while at the same time igniting dynamics of gradual change in the "urbanscape" it acts within. To explore this potential, the concept is developed of “Design enabled Innovation in urban environments” looking at the role that the City can play in promoting and facilitating the adoption of Design by public and private sector innovators. This leads to a possible evaluation framework whereby an urbanscape is considered with respect to both its innovation generation capacity and to the nature (more or less Design dependent, or prone) of the innovative initiatives it hosts. This thread of reasoning has many promising implications, including the proposal of a "third way" between the dreamers of an alternative economic model where revenues and growth are sacrificed on the altar of social and environmental respect, and the supporters of traditional market based view, who think it is enough to add a touch of responsibility and concern to a system that should continue rewarding the profitability of innovations.