Julie Wagner

Julie Wagner, president of the newly established Global Institute on Innovation Districts, is an expert on urban innovation geographies, described as innovation districts. At The Global Institute, she recently co-authored “The evolution of innovation districts: The new geography of global innovation,” expanding on the findings of the original paper on innovation districts published with Brookings. She is also president of Urban Insight, a boutique consulting practice that each year selects only a few projects determined to be of particular promise in shaping cities and communities.

Julie is a nonresident senior fellow at Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. She often writes articles and blogs about the changing role and power of small-scale, walkable innovation geographies and the value of growing local and regional residents into new jobs.

Julie served as co-director for the Bass Initiative on Placemaking and Innovation at Brookings between 2015 and early 2018. In 2014, she co-authored the paper “The rise of innovation districts: A new geography of innovation in America,” which observes how new geographies of innovation are emerging in response to broad economic and demographic forces that value specific place-based attributes and amenities. She has also co-authored several papers that address the changing role of innovation and place, including “Innovation spaces: The new design of work” and “Advancing a new wave of economic competitiveness: The role of mayors in the rise of innovation districts.” Julie is a visiting scholar with the Esade Business School’s Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics. She has written articles on the new geography of innovation for the Harvard Business Review, Fortune Magazine, Quartz, and The Guardian.

Living in Europe, Julie continues to help advance the competitiveness of cities and regions globally, including Amsterdam, Be’er Sheva (Israel), Copenhagen, Melbourne, Milan, Silicon Valley, Sheffield, and Sydney.

A trained city planner, Julie served as a deputy planning director for the District of Columbia, where she developed the city’s long-range plan, orchestrated the development of plans for more than one hundred neighborhoods, and managed all controversial land use disputes associated with projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Julie earned a master’s degree in city planning from MIT and holds a bachelor’s degree in organizational communication from Northeastern University. She has received several planning awards from MIT and the American Planning Association for her work. She is also trained in conflict resolution and police mediation.