Growing a Community-Supported Ecosystem of Future Living: The Case of NICE2035 Living Line

This paper reports a design-driven social innovation initiative titled “NICE2035 Living Line” that Tongji University College of Design and Innovation recently launched in collaboration with the local administrative authorities in Siping community (Shanghai, China). While there is great demand for social and economic innovations that can address the challenges the city faces today, urban communities, especially the old ones, lack the vitality needed to support the city to achieve its goal. The urban community has long been seen as merely a place for living and leisure, and therefore a place where innovation outcomes are consumed not generated. The NICE2035 Living Line project challenges this dominant view of communities and adopts a design-driven approach to building an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship on a small street within an old residential community where the college resides. Within this ecosystem, labs and start-ups produce diverse prototypes of alternative future ways of living. This paper examines the purpose and function of the ecosystem (why it exists), the system elements (what is systematized), and the process by which the elements interact with each other (how the system operates). This preliminary study of the project provides a basic framework for further studies on the mechanisms of such complex sociotechnical systems.