Abstract

AbstractStart-up cities are an attempt to show the way out of the economic stagnation and urban development paralysis that has engulfed all of the most advanced societies. They attempt to make a new start with a new, voluntary population, trying to attract those entrepreneurial individuals and firms that feel stifled in the currently prevalent conditions of highly risk-averse and over-bearing regulatory regimes that stifle innovation and economic progress. The paper discusses the urban planning and design aspects of start-up cities, with a special focus on the prerequisites of urban vitality. This paper explores the urban design strategies necessary to initiate and sustain start-up cities as hubs of economic innovation. Framing these cities as alternatives to stagnating urban centres hampered by overregulation, the paper emphasizes the need for economic specialization, co-location synergies, and market-based planning to catalyse urban dynamism. The paper illustrates how spatial design, architectural coherence, and participatory digital platforms can foster community formation and entrepreneurial collaboration. Drawing from libertarian urbanist principles, the proposal promotes a differentiated urban fabric that enables social self-sorting and economic interaction. Emphasizing figure-ground reversals, modular systems, and semiological richness, the paper positions architecture as a key enabler of societal functionality. The key reference project discussed and illustrated is a planned start-up city promoted by Praxis Society and designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). The paper also refers to and illustrates a number of tech incubation city districts that ZHA designed in China. These projects can in some respects serve as inspiration for start-up city urban design with a strategy for bootstrapping urban vitality through design innovation in the context of a deregulated development framework.