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Ivan Zhao, the co-founder of Notion, a productivity app serving over half of the Fortune 500 companies, declared history an undervalued resource for those in tech. As I sat in the audience, I was searching for elements that made DEP successful in the past and lessons I could replicate for its contemporary goals. It wasn’t the mere accessibility to top-of-class technology of the times, it was how they implemented it to create real benefits.",[],{"_type":291,"alignment":292,"aspect":293,"contained":8,"media":335,"size":311},{"asset":336,"autoplay":136,"caption":343,"crop":8,"hotspot":8,"videoType":8,"videoUrl":8},{"altText":8,"metadata":337,"originalFilename":341,"url":342},{"dimensions":338},{"_type":142,"aspectRatio":339,"height":340,"width":175},1.7630853994490359,1089,"elsa-gonzalez-uzNKrcsAAbA-unsplash.jpg","https://cdn.sanity.io/images/aj6e31np/production/9f9c63395bf4400692a8475c706a89dcb5abce81-1920x1089.jpg",[344],{"_key":304,"_type":13,"children":345,"markDefs":349,"style":38},[346],{"_key":307,"_type":17,"marks":347,"text":348},[],"Image by Elsa Gonzalez on Unsplash",[],{"_type":269,"content":351},[352,360,368,390],{"_key":353,"_type":13,"children":354,"markDefs":359,"style":22},"4854cf2336b8",[355],{"_key":356,"_type":17,"marks":357,"text":358},"335819aa7f39",[],"The hidden power of life-changing innovation—collaboration",[],{"_key":361,"_type":13,"children":362,"markDefs":366,"style":367},"10f72b19d9dd",[363],{"_key":364,"_type":17,"marks":365,"text":36},"749355cee3a2",[],[],"bigTitle",{"_key":369,"_type":13,"children":370,"markDefs":384,"style":38},"d9eb2e9ba756",[371,375,380],{"_key":372,"_type":17,"marks":373,"text":374},"4c1075a1dfa5",[],"Joseph Schumpeter, the 20th century economist who popularized the term “",{"_key":376,"_type":17,"marks":377,"text":379},"0404358a29e4",[378],"b3acf66b0fb7","innovation",{"_key":381,"_type":17,"marks":382,"text":383},"1cb107d00833",[],"”, drew a distinction between an inventor, someone who discovers new methods and materials, and an innovator, someone who applies those new discoveries to often highly resistant markets and creates value. Take the discovery of penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming identified this bacteria-killing substance in 1928 after a summer holiday when he came back to his lab at St Mary’s Hospital medical school to find that mold had destroyed his bacteria cultures and studied said mold. This miracle of a discovery is responsible for reducing mortality rates worldwide and enabled high-risk procedures like organ transplants and cancer chemotherapy. You would think the world embraced it, thanked Fleming and reaped the benefits immediately. He did end up getting a Nobel Prize in 1945. Two years after penicillin came into widespread use and 17 years after his discovery. It took more than a lone brilliant scientist to change the world. Fleming’s two co-awardees, University of Oxford’s Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Howard Walter Florey, discovered his paper a decade after it was published. They found a way to isolate and produce penicillin quantity then ran experiments that showed extraordinary results. This was another breakthrough but we were still not at the end of the story. The two researchers lacked capacity to manufacture the substance in mass quantities. The Rockefeller Foundation stepped in to provide funding to further develop the methods that allow for large-scale production. When the United States entered World War II, federal authorities recognized an urgent need to ramp up medical supply chains. By 1943, the War Production Board had coordinated a consortium of 21 manufacturers to mass-produce penicillin, transforming what had been a laboratory curiosity into a battlefield necessity and, in doing so, launching the modern age of antibiotics.",[385],{"_key":378,"_type":75,"externalUrl":8,"internalLink":386,"isInternalLink":78,"title":8},{"_id":387,"_type":222,"slug":388},"f0c400bd-5535-4a6b-8ad3-dd17b085f5b2",{"_type":95,"current":389},"sparking-innovation-cities-aparna-ramanan",{"_key":391,"_type":13,"children":392,"markDefs":397,"style":38},"38083791dfca",[393],{"_key":394,"_type":17,"marks":395,"text":396},"f529a2297ee3",[],"\n",[],{"_type":266,"author":251,"bigTitle":78,"contained":8,"title":399},"«An inventor discovers new methods and materials. An innovator applies those discoveries to resistant markets and creates value. But nothing is possible without the hidden power behind all life-changing innovation — collaboration. And nowhere is that value more apparent than in urban ecosystems.»",{"_type":269,"content":401},[402,409],{"_key":403,"_type":13,"children":404,"markDefs":408,"style":38},"9fda87232cc6",[405],{"_key":372,"_type":17,"marks":406,"text":407},[],"Even though this is the second bacteria story I’ve cited, I am less fascinated with them than I am with the hidden power of life-changing innovation—collaboration. The partnerships in the penicillin story involve healthcare, academia, philanthropy, government, and private companies. Nowhere else is the value of these relationships more apparent than in urban ecosystems, where innovators can also partner directly with the communities they aim to serve.",[],{"_key":391,"_type":13,"children":410,"markDefs":413,"style":38},[411],{"_key":394,"_type":17,"marks":412,"text":396},[],[],{"_type":415,"gallery":416,"slider":136},"projectBuilderGallery",{"allowLightbox":8,"caption":417,"images":426},[418],{"_key":419,"_type":13,"children":420,"markDefs":425,"style":38},"6571f00b95b8",[421],{"_key":422,"_type":17,"marks":423,"text":424},"9bb6d9280a15",[],"Images by Taylor Heery and Wolfgang Rottmann on Unsplash",[],[427,434],{"aspect":293,"asset":428,"caption":8,"crop":8,"hotspot":8,"size":433},{"altText":8,"metadata":429,"originalFilename":431,"url":432},{"dimensions":430},{"_type":142,"aspectRatio":206,"height":187,"width":175},"taylor-heery-XHUxtHoK4c0-unsplash.jpg","https://cdn.sanity.io/images/aj6e31np/production/e7d752b9ac8e5f75e8c032eb0f49076f8ae733f7-1920x1280.jpg","large",{"aspect":293,"asset":435,"caption":8,"crop":8,"hotspot":8,"size":433},{"altText":8,"metadata":436,"originalFilename":438,"url":439},{"dimensions":437},{"_type":142,"aspectRatio":196,"height":197,"width":175},"tanya-barrow-ATrBNY88uLg-unsplash.jpg","https://cdn.sanity.io/images/aj6e31np/production/418a14f65fd5ed6e5b42611167805c95e42ea611-1920x1273.jpg",{"_type":269,"content":441},[442,450,455,470,488],{"_key":443,"_type":13,"children":444,"markDefs":449,"style":22},"811cf6fec0eb",[445],{"_key":446,"_type":17,"marks":447,"text":448},"4b755caf9e7d",[],"Partnerships in the City",[],{"_key":361,"_type":13,"children":451,"markDefs":454,"style":38},[452],{"_key":364,"_type":17,"marks":453,"text":36},[],[],{"_key":456,"_type":13,"children":457,"markDefs":467,"style":38},"6f0ba658e00a",[458,463],{"_key":459,"_type":17,"marks":460,"text":462},"fc6fc7507449",[461],"9a6f6d2704d0","In 2018, the City of Detroit government partnered with a coalition of automotive manufacturers,",{"_key":464,"_type":17,"marks":465,"text":466},"c86f2a22b42f",[]," energy utilities, real estate developers and philanthropic organizations alongside BCG Consulting on a 12-week sprint to redesign urban mobility, gathering input from residents before narrowing 120 ideas to six pilots. 51% of working Detroiters cite access to a car as a top employment barrier, in a city where average annual car insurance premiums were the highest in the country. Pilots directly targeted this gap: Car4You gave residents US$7/hour vehicle access for job interviews and medical appointments, MicroTransit ran demand-responsive shuttles with fewer stops to cut commute times, and ChargeD built EV fast-charging infrastructure in public parks. The sprint also institutionalized Detroit's Office of Mobility Innovation as a standing city function, which later launched a free autonomous shuttle program specifically for residents over 65 and people with disabilities.",[468],{"_key":461,"_type":75,"externalUrl":469,"internalLink":8,"isInternalLink":136,"title":8},"https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digitizing_Transforming_Mobility_Systems_2020.pdf",{"_key":471,"_type":13,"children":472,"markDefs":485,"style":38},"748afa6eac81",[473,476,481],{"_key":459,"_type":17,"marks":474,"text":475},[],"In the early 1990s, South Korea's primary landfills reached capacity, forcing a national rethink of waste policy. The Seoul Metropolitan Government led the response, partnering with civic organizations, community monitoring groups, and private technology manufacturers. The government banned food waste from landfills entirely in 2005 and introduced RFID-based weighing bins in the early 2010s, billing households monthly based directly on the weight of their output. ",{"_key":477,"_type":17,"marks":478,"text":480},"b9d26a31f09d",[479],"6b8c281a7a3d","In 2025, Seoul extended the system with a points program rewarding households that cut their output further with credits redeemable for tax payments",{"_key":482,"_type":17,"marks":483,"text":484},"cb85d1f3b24f",[],", utility bills, and local gift certificates. Seoul's RFID bins alone reduced food waste in the city by 47,000 tonnes in six years, with South Korea's national recycling rate rising from 2% in 1995 to 95% in 2025.",[486],{"_key":479,"_type":75,"externalUrl":487,"internalLink":8,"isInternalLink":136,"title":8},"https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10638389",{"_key":489,"_type":13,"children":490,"markDefs":500,"style":38},"37f330c66d47",[491,496],{"_key":492,"_type":17,"marks":493,"text":495},"5ba82e171e30",[494],"dcbcb364e32e","The oyster did not evolve to clean the Chesapeake Bay for human benefit.",{"_key":497,"_type":17,"marks":498,"text":499},"800715150b37",[]," It evolved to feed itself, filtering up to 50 gallons (189 litres) of water a day as a byproduct of its own survival. For thousands of years, the Bay's vast reefs kept the entire estuary in balance. Then came overharvesting, disease and runoff. By the late twentieth century, only 1 to 2 percent of the historic native oyster population remained. What followed was one of the most unlikely coalitions in American environmental history: NOAA supplied funds and monitoring, the Army Corps of Engineers built reef foundations from stone and shell, the University of Maryland's Horn Point Laboratory produced billions of juvenile oysters, and nonprofits including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation distributed them throughout the underwater sanctuaries — alongside the Maryland Watermen's Association, the commercial fishermen who had historically harvested oysters for a living. By 2025, partners had planted approximately 7.5 billion oysters across 2,400 acres (970 ha) of restored reef habitat in 10 tributaries. It became the world's largest oyster reef restoration project. Cleaner water is not only an ecological outcome. It supports the blue crab fishery, reduces algal blooms that close swimming beaches, and protects the drinking water and coastal economies of millions of people across Maryland and Virginia who never once thought about an oyster.",[501],{"_key":494,"_type":75,"externalUrl":502,"internalLink":8,"isInternalLink":136,"title":8},"https://www.chesapeakebay.net/news/blog/chesapeake-bay-partners-complete-the-worlds-largest-oyster-reef-restoration-project",{"_type":266,"author":251,"bigTitle":78,"contained":8,"title":504},"«From Detroit's streets to Seoul's bins to the oyster reefs of Chesapeake Bay, the pattern repeats: life-changing innovation is never the work of one actor. It always depends on collaboration.»",{"_type":269,"content":506},[507,537],{"_key":508,"_type":13,"children":509,"markDefs":532,"style":38},"22fbd3d2fc95",[510,514,519,523,528],{"_key":511,"_type":17,"marks":512,"text":513},"08247d76d789",[],"Back in New York, our own waterways have grown cleaner too, the product of grassroots projects like the Billion Oyster Project, the federal Clean Water Act, and DEP's decades of investment in gray and green infrastructure. From the Cornell Tech campus, where I convene with other Urban Innovation Fellows once a week, I look out at the East River hoping to catch sight of the dolphins that have made their way back, drawn by fish that could not have survived there a generation ago. My fellowship feels like its own small emblem of collaborative innovation. Funded by ",{"_key":515,"_type":17,"marks":516,"text":518},"72f953114ad0",[517],"2a856fb0f2f8","Bloomberg Philanthropies",{"_key":520,"_type":17,"marks":521,"text":522},"a45bf186f6ce",[],", it takes mid-career professionals, mostly from the private sector, ",{"_key":524,"_type":17,"marks":525,"text":527},"5af27b8da82a",[526],"8041ba74a0d8","and embeds us inside government agencies, hosted at Cornell Tech",{"_key":529,"_type":17,"marks":530,"text":531},"e73542ae3a11",[],", the applied science graduate campus of Cornell University where research in urban and health tech is happening down the hall. Everyday we work with our agencies, startups and other partners in the innovation ecosystem to apply new technologies and practices that can make life better for New Yorkers, whether that means protecting them from air pollution and stormwater, managing the infrastructure under their feet and under the water, or decarbonizing the assets the whole city runs on.",[533,535],{"_key":526,"_type":75,"externalUrl":534,"internalLink":8,"isInternalLink":136,"title":8},"https://urbaninnovationfellows.com/",{"_key":517,"_type":75,"externalUrl":536,"internalLink":8,"isInternalLink":136,"title":8},"https://www.bloomberg.org/",{"_key":538,"_type":13,"children":539,"markDefs":553,"style":38},"c64eedcb794c",[540,544,549],{"_key":541,"_type":17,"marks":542,"text":543},"4397e70e7627",[],"My favorite activity in any city is watching its inhabitants interact with one another. ",{"_key":545,"_type":17,"marks":546,"text":548},"8e95e43e5d1a",[547],"105a553ee16d","Jane Jacobs",{"_key":550,"_type":17,"marks":551,"text":552},"21f1fc439d85",[]," said that cities are ecosystems, not metaphorically, but structurally, governed by the same principles as living systems: diversity, feedback, and co-development. What makes them work is not any single actor or technology, but the relationships too numerous and too intricate to fully see. ●",[554],{"_key":547,"_type":75,"externalUrl":8,"internalLink":555,"isInternalLink":78,"title":8},{"_id":556,"_type":222,"slug":557},"232104d8-974b-489e-bc68-b6eb77e4840c",{"_type":95,"current":558},"jane-jacobs-eyes-on-the-street","2026-06-30T11:52:00.000+02:00",{"ogdescription":561,"ogimage":562,"ogtitle":564},"What I found chasing the hidden collaborations behind urban innovation — the agencies, the companies, the communities, and, it turns out, my own job.",{"asset":563},{"url":263},"The Infrastructure You Never Think About – by Anh Nguyen",{"_type":95,"current":566},"the-infrastructure-you-never-think-about","The Infrastructure You Never Think About",{"relatedStories":569},[570,590,628,676],{"_id":571,"authors":8,"categories":8,"contributors":572,"featuredImage":578,"orderRank":586,"overlay":78,"slug":587,"title":589},"4e471797-3af4-41fd-8c11-1ddb55708634",[573],{"_id":574,"name":575,"role":8,"slug":576},"0bba2fa1-25ad-4502-8976-f5d95fe0a8ac","CitiesToBe Editorial Board",{"_type":95,"current":577},"citiestobe-editorial-board",{"asset":579,"crop":8,"hotspot":8},{"altText":8,"metadata":580,"originalFilename":584,"url":585},{"dimensions":581},{"_type":142,"aspectRatio":582,"height":583,"width":187},0.8,1600,"DTS_Shadow_Tech_Fanette_Guilloud_Photos_ID9367 (1).jpg","https://cdn.sanity.io/images/aj6e31np/production/d4bfbe874125400775fbc08e12467f1a72376c64-1280x1600.jpg","0|100014:2",{"_type":95,"current":588},"whats-new-at-the-new-citiestobe","What's New at the New CitiesToBe? 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",1784026193940]