15. The Impact of Innovation Economy on Urban Form and Its Transformation: Taking Cases on Shenzhen

With the trend of globalization and technological economy, innovation clusters have gradually become a new type of highlighted urban form in cities. More importantly, innovation clusters are the crucial driving force of urban renewal that generates more jobs and benefits the economy in urban central areas, making them worthy of in-depth urban research. In the 1980s, so-called “innovation districts” were formed in Kendall Square in Boston (Katz et al. 2013). Young people working in the innovation industries have been paying more attention to the central area with better amenities and opportunities when selecting office sites (Florida 2004). They hope to have more exchanges with their peers while maintaining the quality of life, and are willing to reduce rent by sharing office space with others. Thus, innovation districts developed in this background and were distributed in the central area of the city, usually concentrated in one or several blocks (Florida 2003).

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Brookings Institution, a renowned American think tank, conducted relevant theoretical research on the development of innovation districts driving the renewal of urban centers. Katz et al. (2013) summarized the theory of the innovation district, which garnered extensive attention from the academic community regarding this urban phenomenon. The emergence of innovation industries and the formation of innovation clusters in the urban core area have gradually changed the population composition and economic model of the urban center, leading to the renewal of the urban center and the gradual evolution of urban form (Katz et al. 2013). This paper aims to use Shenzhen as a case study, where a strong innovation industry has developed in recent years, to research the urban morphology of innovation clusters.

In 2021, the total market value of science and technology companies in Shenzhen reached 10.64 trillion CNY, ranking first in China. The number of patent applications in Shenzhen also ranked first among large- and medium-sized cities in the country. In addition to the early-founded high-tech park area, a number of industrial clusters have formed in Shenzhen, including various innovation clusters, especially the innovation districts created in the city to incubate startups and small scientific and technological entrepreneurial teams.

After just 40 years of urban development, Shenzhen has become a globally recognized innovation city that has undergone the industrial development process from manufacturing to R&D oriented. Within such a short period of time, the development trajectory remains clear, which allows for further study of how the innovation industry has developed and correlated with urban morphology. This paper firstly studies the spatial distribution principles of innovation clusters in the city. Secondly, it analyzes the classification of innovation clusters based on industrial characteristics. Thirdly, through a case study of a typical innovation district, the correlation between the innovation industry and urban morphology is researched.

The researches related to the topic of innovation districts can be categorized as two types. The first is focused on the economic aspect, with the formulation of the industrial cluster concept by Porter (1998). He argued that location remains the most influential factor for industrial development and that industrial clusters benefit all firms located in the area. Florida (2003) expanded on this concept with a focus on firms in cities and analyzed the driving factors of diversity and creativities in relation to innovation. Clark et al. (2010) analyzed regional-scale data on global patenting by large and small firms to examine the resilience of innovation ecology. Patenting data was used as an essential index for measuring the performance of innovation firms. More indicators of innovation districts were reviewed, by analyzing the regeneration strategies of 22@ in Barcelona, the business configurations of innovation districts were identified (Pareja-Eastaway, Pique 2011). According to the business models, the typical forms of innovation districts based on business models, classifying them into three types: science clusters, high-tech clusters, and creative clusters (Bröcker et al. 2012). Although those researches provided definition and general indicators of innovation districts, it lacked the analysis of the urban morphologies of innovation districts, which are the basis for formulating industrial clusters.

The second category of related research gradually shifted its attention to the built environment of innovation districts. Researchers analyzed the physical forms of innovation districts on a small to medium scale using a qualitative approach with regard to sustainable development (Forsyth, 2014). Hawken et al. (2017) investigated the spatial distribution pattern of innovation firms in relation to their business connections and physical connections to urban form. Pancholi et al. (2018) explored the key design attributes related to the placemaking of knowledge and innovation spaces, which enabled subsequent research to classify innovation districts according to the related concept framework of place quality (Yigitcanlar et al. 2020). This concept framework was further expanded into an operational framework that included four dimensions (feature, function, space, and context), 16 indicators, and 48 measures (Adu-McVie et al. 2021). However, few studies have analyzed innovation districts while considering their impact on the overall urban environment from the perspective of urban morphology.

On the one hand, innovation districts demonstrate strong internal connections between firms located within them. On the other hand, innovation districts are also related to a diversity of built environments, which can be mapped and classified into various types. This phenomenon has spurred the study of how clusters of innovation firms are related to certain urban forms. This paper aims to investigate these correlations, categorize them into different types, and provide insights into their functions as parts of the city.

As one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, Shenzhen celebrated its 40th birthday in 2020. In a remarkably short period, the city has grown from a small town with just 30 thousand people to a megacity with nearly 20 million people, a miraculous feat in the history of urban development. One key factor contributing to Shenzhen's rise is the beneficial policies that have arisen from China's economic reform since 1979. In 1980, the Chinese central government officially designated Shenzhen as the country's first special economic zone. Located adjacent to Hong Kong, Shenzhen became the ideal place for building factories with cheap labor and land resources. Additionally, policies allowed investment from overseas and Hong Kong to build factories, which became the foundation of Shenzhen's manufacturing industry. In 1982, Shenzhen municipality released its first master plan, which indicated that industrial areas would be evenly distributed along the linear border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong (see Fig. 15.1). During the early 1980s, Shenzhen's development was hampered by a limited budget for constructing infrastructure. The linear city layout was designed for efficiency, with one main thoroughfare (Shen-Nan Road) linking all industrial plots together and evenly distributed along the two cities’ shared border, which established the industrial spatial framework of the city (Zacharias et al. 2015).

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In 1983, the total industrial output value of Shenzhen was 720 million CNY, with the electrical industrial output contributing 45.4%, nearly half of all industries. The consistent growth of the electrical industry not only led to further geographical expansion of factories toward the northern suburb area but also caused the industry to transform toward an upgraded industry with a completed cycle. Besides, the successful development of the electrical manufacturing industry generated huge opportunities for upstream businesses, meaning the R&D sectors. Such a phenomenon released the full potential of transforming the manufacturing industry into an innovation-oriented business. During the industrial development, the manufacturing industrial areas were sequentially replaced by the innovation industry. The manufacturing industrial areas had been gradually pushed away from the city center, just like other post-industrial cities. However, the transformation of industries happened so quickly that the original industrial areas in the city center gained the opportunity to be renewed rather than abandoned, and those industrial areas became the starting point of the innovation industry in Shenzhen. In order to understand the development of innovation clusters, it is worth looking at the development of industrial areas initially.

The development of industrial land-use distribution indicates the spatial pattern of industrial areas in the city (see Fig. 15.2). From 1984 to 2003, in nearly just 20 years, the surface area of industrial areas grew from 2.5 km² to 208 km², nearly a hundred times. The whole process went through four stages of industrial growth. The first stage was the beginning of the manufacturing industry, which appeared near the demands of goods around the border. In 1984, industrial areas were mainly concentrated around the town center for better connection to Hong Kong by railway (Luohu port) and ships (Shekou port). The second stage was the formation of the industrial spatial framework, which had a strong correlation with the city's existing infrastructure. In 1994, along with the expansion of the city's territory, the distribution of industrial areas indicated an apparent spatial pattern in line with the development of highways. This pattern remained obvious from 1994 to 2000, and the industrial areas started to grow around the existing clusters in 2003. The third stage was the formation of industrial clusters, which was the process of intensification of industrial areas. The geographical growing pattern of industrial areas was driven by the manufacturing industrial chain, which further enhanced the industrial clusters. The fourth stage was the transformation of industrial clusters. More specifically, the industrial land in the outer city areas had reached 188 km² compared to just 20 km² within the inner-city area in 2003. Following the economic growth, the increasing land value of the city gradually pushed the manufacturing industry away from the city center areas. As a result, all industrial areas within the city center areas also transforming to another function in different ways. These areas were required to be integrated with their surrounding urban environments. Consequently, the spatial pattern of industrial land became the foundational framework for the distribution of the innovation industry.

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This paper is aimed to study the typology of innovation clusters in terms of the companies’ constitution and their relations with urban morphology. The research also intended to investigate how innovation clusters responded to urban form. The research methods included quantitative and qualitative approaches. In general, the companies’ register information was collected by the open data platform of Shenzhen (https://opendata.sz.gov.cn/). There are in total 19,232 companies with high-tech certifications in the city or national level. The companies’ employee numbers were sourced from Shenzhen administration for market regulation (https://amr.sz.gov.cn/). The intellectual property data was sourced from China national intellectual property administration (https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/). All data was used together with the GIS model of Shenzhen to analysis the distribution of those high-tech companies, in order to map how collective firms formulated the innovation clusters. Further analysis with urban morphology approaches were used to map the spatial form of different innovation clusters, including satellite images analysis from the 2000s to the 2020s. Detailed case studies were conducted by field survey during both the working days and holidays in 2022.

The research includes three parts of analysis (see Fig. 15.3). First, the distribution of high-tech companies in the city scale was studied to locate and map the distribution patterns of innovation clusters, as well as investigate the principles of the spatial framework for innovation cluster distribution. Second, innovation clusters were researched according to their business compositions and industrial performances, in order to classify them. The morphology of specific innovation clusters was studied, and their spatial characteristics were analyzed. Third, a case study of the innovation district, the Che-Gong-Miao areas, was conducted to further research the urban morphology of innovation districts. This part of the study aimed to find out how urban morphology impacted the formulation of innovation districts’ characteristics.

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In general, the innovation clusters are active and diverse in Shenzhen. They are attracted to places with excellent accessibilities and good connections for transportation. Amount all type of the innovation clusters, the most innovative area is still the one which led by the large firms and also collaborating certain number of small firms around them. The large firms should make up over 40% of the working population in the area, while small firms should not be less than 25% of the total. Industrial diversity does not seem to be as important for innovation capacity, but it is crucial for the vitality of the area, just like the diversity of building typologies. The industrial diversity is not developed by well-planned area, rather grew up naturally rely on the flexibility of building typologies, which demonstrated strong ability to adapt to the developing economy. The development of the Che-Gong-Miao area exemplifies this phenomenon.

In the 1990s, Che-Gong-Miao was originally an industrial area. It was successfully transformed with the development of the stronger western of Shenzhen, especially following the established Futian district as the new center of Shenzhen. The increased land value of Che-Gong-Miao presented opportunities for the conversion of old factories, some of which were transformed into offices that attracted innovation firms. The construction of the metro system accelerated the process, and soon Che-Gong-Miao became a place with a high concentration of innovative businesses and a diverse mix of industries. This urban renewal process also resulted in a mixture of building typologies. In comparison to the mono-functional new-built office towers, the renovated old factories demonstrated their advantages of being adaptable to various converted functions due to their spatial flexibility. Therefore, the old factory buildings not only functioned as renovated offices with lower rent for small innovation firms, but were also converted to commercial functions such as shops, restaurants, bars, and sports facilities for young people working in the area with strong consumption demands (see Fig. 15.18). Due to its central location and excellent accessibility, Che-Gong-Miao has become a destination for nightlife for young people. The area is home to well-known restaurants and bars that have branded the area. In other words, the old factories filled the gap of mono-functional industrial areas that lacked amenities and helped integrate the area with the surrounding city.

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Although the high-tech park-6 area has a higher innovation capacity index value, the urban morphology of such an area appears homogeneous. Newly built offices, such as high-rise towers, appear to have weak adaptation to the surrounding city. At night, the high-tech park-6 area lacks vitality. The difference in urban form affects the industrial and social activities in such areas. In recent years, resilience has become a topic of urban research. The degree of functional flexibility in terms of urban morphology could be further researched in order to understand its adaptation to the developing economic environment. This research could potentially provide value for the economic resilience of the city.