The Nexus Between Urban Innovation and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Urban areas are regarded as knowledge hubs and innovation cradles by intensive literature, indicating their critical roles in producing, spreading, and accumulating knowledge while reducing transaction costs in transmitting, translating, and exploiting new knowledge and hence fostering and boosting innovations (Caragliu and Bo, Technol Forecast Soc Chang 142:373–383, 2019). It is argued that cities are the “ultimate enablers” of innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth, which act as alternatives to corporations, working as main organizing units in the present knowledge economy.