Design-Driven Innovation in Urban Context—Exploring the Sustainable Development of City Design Weeks

Abstract

As the imperative of sustainable development of cities has gained heightened attention within the global creative and cultural industries in the last decade, among all the relevant trials and practices, city design weeks are becoming a notable method offering diverse possibilities for the innovative approaches the cities could apply to their development. Therefore, the objective of the research is to understand how city design weeks facilitate urban sustainable development and how design-driven innovation is implemented in such a context. Employing a qualitative methodology, the study conducts a case study across 30 global design weeks, selected through a cross-validated process with the World Design Weeks global network and UNESCO City of Design network. Grounded in the design-driven innovation perspective, valid data from 2017 to 2022 is gathered in response to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) primarily through extensive interviews, official project reports, and media communication materials. The data are further cross-analysed by adapting the Creative Cities Index into 10 indicators suitable for the context of design weeks. Among the research findings, three types of design-driven models emerge for the innovation practice of city design weeks: metropolitan integrative transformation and innovation, inclusive cultural diversity communion and innovation, and cluster incorporation and collaborative innovation. In this way, the study provides both the practical significance in terms of supporting the design week organisation by implementing suitable approaches to drive the city’s sustainable development and the theoretical significance in extending the possible adaptation of a design-driven innovation model for the urban development context. Furthermore, the limitation of this qualitative study opens avenues for future quantitative impact analyses on individual design weeks, providing applicable evaluation methods to iteratively inspect and refine the models over time, which complement the limitations of the current qualitative research.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the comprehensive improvement of urban quality and the acceleration of transforming urban development have become important goals for urban development. Major cities worldwide have successively organised platform-based creative design events to stimulate industrial innovation and urban vitality. On a global scale, the transformation of public cultural activities triggered by public events, the international communication for cultural tourism, especially during and after the pandemic, and urban sustainable development and innovation have become important issues for the global creative cultural industry to explore together. Mature events such as Milan Design Week, Venice Biennial, and London Design Festival have emerged as a clear approach in the new era to drive sustainable tourism development in urban destinations through cultural events [1]. While in developing countries where art and design are attracting increasing attention as strategies for innovation, such as in China, events including Guangzhou Design Week (2006), Beijing International Design Week (2009), Shenzhen Design Week (2017), and Zhuhai Design Week (2019), etc., are providing new directions for improving the service quality of the cultural industry, cultivating public participation of cultural practice, and implementing city brand development strategies. Based on their development strategies, cultural traditions, resources, and industrial advantages, the city operators are paying more attention to the diversified impact of such urban platform-based events in creative industries represented by city design weeks. Given such practices, empowering urban development through the ‘design as a grand strategy’ approach is an active exploration of the design-driven innovation (DDI) model in the urban context.

Therefore, this study aims to explore the mechanisms of city design weeks and how these urban platform-based design events can provide a source of power that drives urban innovation and sustainable development through design. To achieve this goal, a discussion based upon the design-driven innovation model is conducted so as to better understand how to facilitate the urban innovation and sustainable development of different cities through design as a topic and as a strategy in the form of city design weeks.

1.1. A People-Centred Approach: Situating the Design-Driven Innovation in the Urban Context

Design-driven innovation (DDI), being recognised as the third type of innovation model that differs from market-driven innovation and technology-driven innovation, was proposed by Verganti and teams in 2003 [2] and has been widely explored by industries and academics worldwide over the past two decades. The core of this model lies in the innovation of the ‘intrinsic meaning’ of products and services, which refers to the value created for users, including functional, emotional, psychological, and socio-cultural values [2]. The essence of this model lies in value innovation driven by ‘design thinking’, which enables the organic integration of human desirability, technology feasibility, and business viability to create new value and meaning. In recent years, a significant amount of related research has been conducted with a focus on product innovation and design management, corporate innovation strategies, and other business contexts [3,4,5,6,7]. However, its application in the urban context has been less explored, which is the gap this study attempts to explore further, that is, to situate the DDI model in the urban context by treating city design weeks as aggregating carriers of urban products and services, and to understand the insight of the meaning and value creations generated.

In this way, the embodiment of design-driven innovation in the urban context represents a new paradigm for urban development boosted by creativity, human-centredness, and sustainability. This adaptation and implication of the model originate from the application of design thinking and emphasise integrating innovation into various stages of urban planning, construction, and management, thus shaping a more inclusive, ecologically friendly, and creatively inspiring urban system.

First, the DDI model stresses a ‘people-centred’ approach, broadening the design thinking framework from ‘user-centredness’ to focus on meeting the genuine needs of urban residents and stakeholders related to urban innovation and development [8,9,10]. This model creates spaces and public activities that resonate emotionally with the city by deeply understanding residents‘ lifestyles, cultural backgrounds, and social interactions with various urban participants [11]. This aligns with the collaborative innovation advocated by Manzini in his academic exploration of design for social innovation [12]. For instance, the city of Aarhus in Denmark has adopted a community engagement approach, involving citizens in the planning process to collectively create community spaces that cater to the needs of different groups, thereby promoting social cohesion and sustainable development [13].

Second, the integration of creativity and technology also plays a crucial role in design-driven urban innovation [14,15]. Cities worldwide consider the construction of smart cities as an essential approach to urban development, exploring new directions for urban innovation through intelligent technology, sustainable energy, and digital innovation. For example, Singapore, as a model smart city, has introduced innovative technologies through interdisciplinary design strategies, achieving efficient management of transportation, energy, and the environment, thereby creating conditions for the city’s sustainable development [16].

On the other hand, at the socio-cultural level, the DDI model encourages respect for cultural diversity and creative representation [17]. The cultural industry of creative cities not only injects vitality into the city but also plays a significant role in the balance between cultural heritage and urban vibrancy [18]. For example, Berlin’s art district, Potsdamer Platz, is not only a hub for the creative industry but also a representation of the integration of cultural creativity and urban innovation [19].

Therefore, studies on the research gap in terms of adapting DDI from the original business scenario to the embodiment in the urban context is not only an exploration of methodology but also a new way of thinking that guides cities towards sustainable development and creative prosperity. The implication of design events in urban planning, technological practices, and cultural development provides effective support for urban innovation and sustainability. This model, which focuses on creating new meaning and value for cities, will bring broader prospects for continuously driving future urban development [20]. This study aims to investigate how city design weeks form the DDI mechanism by integrating creativity, technology, and socio-cultural diversities in a people-centred design-driven approach that facilitates the cities’ urban innovation and sustainable development.

1.2. Integration of Creativity and Technology: Creative Cities Empowering Urban Sustainable Development

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established the Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in 2004, with ‘City of Design’ being one of its important creative fields. Approximately 350 network cities worldwide are committed to promoting creative and cultural industries as important strategies for sustainable development and advancing international cooperation [21]. The UCCN has evolved into one of the most influential public activity systems, with academic research as a supportive force for its development [22,23]. Ever since Richard Florida and his research collaborators dedicated to the theoretical construction of a ‘creative city’ [24], global scholars have expanded and validated research on the creative economy, creative industries, creative clusters, and the creative class [25,26,27,28]. These studies have not only demonstrated that organising creative activities and events is an effective cultural strategy and important capability for driving urban innovation but have also provided corresponding evaluation indices and innovation toolkits for assessing the composition of urban vitality and guiding creative practices to effectively promote urban cultural development [29], which build a strong theoretical basis of this research.

To further explain, as a new urban development model, the concept of creative cities emphasises the integration of culture, creativity, and innovation, providing strong support for urban innovation and sustainable development [30]. It not only focuses on economic growth but also highlights the enrichment of social and cultural aspects and the comprehensive development of individuals, stressing the approach of attracting creative talents and nurturing industries [31,32]. Florida’s theory of attracting creative talent suggests that a city’s attractiveness depends on its inclusiveness and vitality toward creative individuals [32]. By providing an excellent cultural atmosphere and lifestyle, creative cities can attract creative talents, thus promoting the development of innovation and entrepreneurship. Building on this, the 3T theory was proposed, which considers technology, talent, and tolerance as important dimensions of the vitality of creative cities. This theory has established an important academic foundation for subsequent research, evaluation indices, and policy formulation and implementation related to the sustainable development of creative cities [33].

On the other hand, since the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established by the United Nations in 2015, the corresponding implementation period of these goals is extending to 2030, with the intention of comprehensively addressing development issues in the social, economic, and environmental dimensions to guide the world towards sustainable development [34]. In 2015, UNESCO established an International Center for Creativity and Sustainable Development (ICCSD), which aims to promote the combination of creativity and sustainable development and explore new models of urban development. In 2021, ICCSD developed a Creative Economy and Sustainable Development Index (CSDI Index), which assists creative cities in assessing and monitoring the positive contributions of the creative industry to the SDGs [35]. Therefore, the development of creative cities during this period focuses not only on the prosperity of the ‘new economy’ [36] but also on the balanced development of social and cultural aspects and the whole environmental ecosystem [37].

In conclusion, it is suggested by both the practice and the literature that, with the attraction of creative talents, cultivating cultural diversity, and promoting social participation, creative cities inject new vitality and momentum into urban sustainable development, and the continuous development of this approach is contributing to comprehensive urban innovation and sustainable prosperity. Among the relative literature and policies on this issue, the lexical inclusion of design is mainly either mix-categorised as fashion design or industrial design into one of the subjects under the creative industries along with industries like film and music [27] or referred to the design for urban landscape and environment [38]. However, due to the disciplinary development of design in academia, design as a strategic approach for innovation and sustainability is being fostered nowadays, especially in terms of design for social innovation [12]. Hence, scholars in the notion of creative cities indicate a knowledge gap urging the reconsideration of the value of design in the urban development process. Therefore, this study draws its focus on this gap by exploring the role of design not only as a subject but also as a strategy to facilitate urban innovation and sustainable development, in a possible mechanism, that is, the city design week.

1.3. City Design Week: An Effective Mechanism for Facilitating Sustainable Urban Development

City design week, by building a creative platform and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations, is now recognised as one of the important mechanisms in the development of creative cities, in providing emerging strong support for the construction of innovative models that promote sustainable urban development [39]. With such shared interests, the World Design Weeks (WDW) city network, which encompasses over 40 design week organisations worldwide, was established in 2014 to facilitate global dialogue and exchange driven by design [40]. City design week now serves as a vital public event platform organised by creative cities with the goal of cultivating cultural value and innovation capacity. Through the integration of regional resources and global-scale public exchanges, it has been regarded as one of the important mechanisms supporting sustainable development and city branding in the leading creative cities such as Milan, London, Helsinki, and Tokyo, as well as becoming an innovative development approach for cities that are latecomers to this field in the country with emerging large potential of creative economies, such as the city of Bangkok, Dubai, and Shenzhen. For example, the government of Shenzhen even clearly indicates in its 3-year City of Design Master Plan (2022–2025) that Shenzhen Design Week is one of its essential actions to foster urban innovation and development [41]. Thereby, with distinct regional characteristics, the cities on a global scale are trying to develop their own way to build the city design week platform and form a driving force of urban innovation and sustainable development.

In practice, city design week is not just a series of public activities such as exhibitions and forums. It is a platform for collective brainstorming and interdisciplinary collaboration. This cross-disciplinary collaboration helps combine knowledge and ideas from different fields, leading to more forward-thinking and innovative urban solutions. Therefore, city design week plays an important role in resource integration and facilitation of innovative forces; by attracting domestic and international design teams, experts, institutions, and organisations to participate, it can effectively mobilise more academic, industrial, and social resources for creative and collaborative practice, which introduces innovative concepts from different cultures and experiences, injecting more creativity and imagination into urban sustainable development, meanwhile showcases creative achievements, stimulates public engagement, and promotes corresponding cultural consumption [39]. Through open calls for creative designs and collaboration with cultural and creative consumption venues, it creates innovative consumption spaces, allowing citizens and various stakeholders to organically integrate into a ‘design-led’ ‘knowledge society’ that is made tangible and visible to forge the sustainable cycle of production and consumption [38]. This deep involvement of multiple stakeholders of the society facilitates urban innovation and drives sustainable development.

However, city design weeks around the globe demonstrate rich diversity in terms of organisational and operational forms, while few studies have explored the insights, especially from the design arena, responding to the sustainable development of the cities. Therefore, this study aims to explore and better understand the diversity of city design weeks and how it is performed in promoting the sustainable development of creative cities so as to provide inspirational guidance for the practitioners in organising and operating city design weeks, meanwhile, explore a possible pathway in applying the design-driven innovation from the theoretical framework into the urban practice.

To summarise, this research aims to offer practical and valuable references for urban innovation and sustainable development through the lens of creative cities and, at the same time, to explore the practical methodology of DDI in an urban context through the mechanism of platform-based creative design event represented by city design weeks. Hence, the specified research objectives are to explore how city design weeks are organised as the design-driven innovation mechanism to drive urban innovation and sustainable development, how it is performed in regard to the diversities of the creative cities, and how the diverse models influence sustainable development in practice. In order to achieve these objectives, a qualitative case study is implemented with the data collected from 30 city design weeks around the globe considering its relevance to SDGs; the data collected from various resources (long interviews, reports, official media communications) are analysed by the Creative City Index and interpreted by the DDI framework. As a result, three DDI models have emerged catering to diverse city design weeks in response to the possible ways of driving urban innovation and sustainable development. In this way, the research contributes practical value to support design week organisations with effective approaches for driving sustainable urban development, holds theoretical significance by extending the possible adaptation of the design-driven innovation model to the broader context of urban development, and brings enlightenment not limited to single cities, but also to regional development and the global intercultural communications. Additionally, due to the limitation of the qualitative methodology of this study, future studies are encouraged to examine the impact of the model in each city on a large quantitative basis of participant analysis so as to further develop the overtime inspection tools supplementary to this study.

Lastly, the remainder of the paper is organised as follows: in Section 2, Materials and Methods are introduced in terms of sampling design, data source, and analysis methods, and the construction of analytical DDI model; in Section 3, three DDI models emerging as results and discussions are elaborated by the in-depth interpretation of the adapted DDI with a representative case as explanations; in Section 4, the article is concluded with implications and recommendations to apply the DDI model, as well as the limitations and future research the current study initiates.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Sources and Analysis Methods

A qualitative case study is employed as the main strategy of this research. After conducting preliminary research on all the design weeks within the WDW case list and UCCN City of Design case list, a meticulous screening process is conducted by inviting experts from WDW, UCCN, and organisers from different design weeks for recommendation and cross-verification to better avoid the bias caused by the subjectiveness of the researchers. Subsequently, the existing cases are selected, and additional cases with significant reference values not initially included in the preliminary research list are supplemented (refer to Appendix A for the case sampling record). With this case sampling process, taking into consideration the effectiveness, sustainability, and diversity of the cases, 30 representative cases of city design weeks are purposively selected for in-depth analysis (as shown in

Table 1. List of admission cases in this study.

City Design Weeks
Bangkok Design Week	Helsinki Design Week
Barcelona Design Week	London Design Festival
Beijing Design Week	Milan Design Week
Berlin Design Week	New York Design Week
Business of Design Week (Hong Kong)	Paris Design Week
Chengdu Creativity & Design Week	Qingdao Design Week
Chiang Mai Design Week	San Diego Design Week
Design Indaba Festival (Cape Town)	San Francisco Design Week
Design Miami	Seoul Design Festival
Design Shanghai/Shanghai International Design Week/World Design Cities Conference (WDCC)	Shenzhen Design Week
Design Week Mexico (Mexico City)	Stockholm Design Week
Dubai Design Week	Suzhou Design Week
Dundee Design Festival	Venice Design Week/Venice Biennale
Dutch Design Week	Zhuhai Design Week
Guangxi Design Week	3daysofdesign (Copenhagen)
Guangzhou Design Week

).

With the support of WDW and UCCN, a sustainable development case database was established to retrieve, collect, categorise, and analyse relevant materials from city design weeks within the past five years. The materials include data sourced from official reports released by the design weeks, membership monitoring reports released by the UCCN City of Design cities, government project reports, and official media communication materials. It is important to point out that, due to the abundance and complexity of data from each design week, this study purposively focuses on the description relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) regarding the content, planning, and executing method, and the impact of the design weeks. In addition, semi-structured long interviews are also conducted with design week practitioners as supplementary data collection and verification (data source is as shown in

Table 2. Summary of the data source.

Data Type	Long Interviews	Project Reports	Official Media Communication Materials
Resource	2 WDW experts 2 UCCN experts 5 Design Week planners	Design Weeks Project Reports Membership Monitoring Reports (UCCN) Government Project Reports	Official Design Week website Government website Official WeChat post Official Facebook page Official Instagram page Official Youtube page Other official channels if there is

). To better understand and summarise the development patterns of various city design weeks and their impact on urban cultural innovation, cross-case analysis is conducted with the Creative City Index [42] and the SDGs (refer to Appendix B) and further interpreted by design-driven innovation models regarding the key ‘roles’ and their interactions (roles as ‘firms’, ‘interpreters’, ‘consumers’, the detailed adaptation of the original model to the analytical tools of this study refer to Section 2.2 in the following part of this article). As a result, three types of DDI platforms are summarised.

2.2. Construction of Analytical Model

Firstly, design-driven innovation (DDI) serves as the theoretical foundation of this study, emphasising the relationship among firms, interpreters, and people. In the notion of DDI, firms aim to understand people’s needs and address the interpreters with cultural prototypes to process the needs into values, then further disseminate the value through interpreters’ seductive power. Interpreters play an important role as a bridge between the two in terms of listening and transforming meaning into values (as shown in Figure 1) [17].

Adapting the DDI model to the context of this study, the city design week platform plays the role of ‘firm’ in the model, while professional producers and collaborators act as ‘interpreters’, and public participants serve as ‘people’. The relationship among these three roles then forms two channels of meaning creation and value transformation: listening and processing and communication and influence. In this way, the city design week platform collaborates with professional producers and collaborators to offer various products and services to the public: with the platform of projects (‘cultural prototypes’) operated by the design week, professional producers and collaborators transform their expertise resources and knowledge to create diverse and coherent experiences for public participants, simultaneously, the city design week platform disseminates content directly to public participants through media promotion and public services. In the channel of ‘communication and influence’, the three roles form various public urban practices, while in the ‘listening and processing’ channel, they engage in value co-creation and meaning innovation through the design process of the cultural prototypes (products and services of projects the design week platform provides) (as shown in Figure 2). Based on this, design-driven urban practices form a circular structure of ‘meaning’ production and consumption: urban residents and creative clusters participate in the design projects collaborated on the city design week platform, which, in turn, contributes to urban development; conversely, city design week platform is also supported and complemented by the urban development policies and actions, which enables and enriches the public products and services of the city for the provisions of services and experience that the urban residents and creative clusters can enjoy. In this cycle, the three entities contribute to the sustainable development of the city, forming a ‘participatory enabling ecosystem’ [43] (as shown in Figure 3).

On the other hand, city design weeks in the global context have now evolved into diverse models due to the different situations of creative cities. To better understand the dynamics and power transmission between design weeks and creative energy, this study introduces the Creative City Index as an anchor point, which better provides an adaptable reference for the development needs of different cities.

Landry’s Creative City Index, currently a mainstream statistical system for measuring creative cities, divides the factors that drive urban creativity into ten groups of indicators. It has a close correlation with both the Creative City Index and sustainable development indicators (refer to Appendix B). The index includes the following categories: politics and public structures; uniqueness, diversity, vibrancy, and expression; openness, trust, inclusivity, and accessibility; entrepreneurship, exploration, and innovation; strategic leadership, agility, and vision; talent development and learning environment; information exchange, connectivity, and network construction; locality and local construction; liveability and well-being; and professionalism and effectiveness [42].

To authentically and comprehensively explore the interpretation of the city design weeks through the lens of DDI relating to CCI and SDGs, long interviews are further conducted with network experts and organisers of the design weeks (refer to Appendix C). By taking city design week as the core, using the DDI model as a framework, and considering the Creative City Index as a perspective on dynamics, 10 structural patterns can be derived as data indicators for the qualitative interpretation of the data in this study, including the following:

(1)

Under the dynamics of politics and public structures, the power source radiates from the City Design Week platform to professional producers, collaborators, and public participants, establishing the platform for city design week;

(2)

Under the dynamics of uniqueness, diversity, vibrancy, and expression, the city design week platform emphasises differentiation and vitality. Producers and collaborators strive for diverse vitality in their work, while participants can also collaborate with producers through co-creation mechanisms. The collective efforts continually amplify the design power of cities;

(3)

Under the dynamics of openness, trust, inclusiveness, and accessibility, the city design week platform attempts to create chances for different producers, collaborators, and participants to enter urban practices. All three demonstrate the flow of this dynamic in their attitudes. With mutual support, there is a deepening understanding of differences, fostering cross-cultural dialogues and achieving sustainable communication cycles;

(4)

Under the dynamics of entrepreneurship, exploration, and innovation, the city design week platform, as the underlying support, provides energy for producers and collaborators. Both parties, as practitioners, continuously disseminate this energy, constituting an important innovative driving force for cities;

(5)

Under the dynamics of strategic leadership, agility, and vision, the platform serves as a power source, constantly adjusting and constructing mechanisms. City design week serves as a bridge, continuously delivering creative energy to the city and even the world;

(6)

Under the dynamics of talent development and learning environment, the city design week platform, as a power source, promotes multi-party cooperation and builds a platform for talent cultivation for producers, collaborators, and participants;

(7)

Under the dynamics of information exchange, connectivity, and network construction, the city design week platform, as a power source, is the main constructor. Producers, collaborators, and participants act as sources of information. Therefore, they engage in a sustainable cycle within the network;

(8)

Under the dynamics of locality and local construction, the city design week platform, as the main power source, together with producers and collaborators as auxiliary power sources, drives the development of locality and local construction, radiating energy to participants;

(9)

Under the dynamics of liveability and well-being, producers, collaborators, and participants act as the main power sources, emitting a stable and comfortable living concept and atmosphere;

(10)

Under the dynamics of professionalism and effectiveness, the platform serves as the organiser of activities, while producers and collaborators act as professional practitioners. Together, they serve as power sources to provide participants with high-quality city design week events.

3. Results and Discussion

The integration of data related to the 10 driving indicators from various cases of city design weeks can be summarised into five dimensions for each ‘role’ in DDI: in the role of ‘professional producers and collaborators’, the dimensions are localisation, aggregation, specialised resource, foresight, breadth, and popularity; in the role of ‘city design week platforms’, the dimensions are cultural inclusion, sector structure, resource integration, innovation mechanism, operation mechanism, and industrial involvement; in the role of ‘public participants’, the dimensions are citizens, business representatives, professionals, industry practitioners, global visitors, and cultural consumers.

Based on the differentiation by the indicators derived from the Creative City Index (explanation of the 10 indicators referred to in Section 2.2) and the SDGs, three types of DDI platforms are summarised after cross-case analysis of the data retrieved from each case of the sampled city design weeks (refer to

Table 3. Summary of the cross-case analysis based on DDI models.

		DDI Structure and Creative City Index
DDI Model with Design Week as the Core	Professional Producers and Collaborators	Localisation (2) (8) (9)	Aggregation (10) (8)	Specialised Resource (2) (4) (6) (7) (10)	Foresight (2) (3) (4) (5) (10)	Breadth (3) (7)	Popularity (2) (3) (7)
	City Design Week Platform	Cultural Inclusion (3)	Sector Structure (1) (4) (5)	Resource Integration (5) (7) (10)	Innovation Mechanism (1) (2) (3) (4) (6) (10)	Operation Mechanism (1) (5) (7) (8)	Industrial Involvement (5) (7) (10)
	Public Participants	Citizens (8) (9)	Business Representatives (4) (5) (7) (10)	Professionals (2) (3) (6) (7) (10)	Industry Practitioners (4) (6) (7) (10)	Global Visitors (3) (7)	Cultural Consumers (2) (3) (7)
Types of Design Weeks and Related SDGs	Metropolitan Integrative Transformation and Innovation SDG16\SDG17\SDG9\SDG11\SDG12\SDG10\SDG4\SDG3\SDG8\SDG13\SDG14\SDG15\SDG7\SDG6\SDG5\SDG1\SDG2		Milan Design Week, London Design Festival, Beijing Design Week, Shenzhen Design Week, Design Shanghai/Shanghai International Design Week/World Design Cities Conference (WDCC), Guangzhou Design Week, Dutch Design Week, Helsinki Design Week, Barcelona Design Week, Seoul Design Week, Business of Design Week (Hong Kong), Venice Design Week/Venice Biennale, Paris Design Week, New York Design Week
	Inclusive Cultural Diversity Communion and Innovation SDG11\SDG12\SDG17\SDG9\SDG15\SDG14\SDG3		Design Week Mexico, Bangkok Design Week, Chiang Mai Design Week, Suzhou Design Week, Chengdu Creativity & Design Week, Design Indaba (Cape Town), Guangxi Design Week, Stockholm Design Week, San Diego Design Week
	Cluster Incorporation and Collaborative Innovation SDG9\SDG8\SDG12\SDG11\SDG4\SDG17\SDG7\SDG13		Zhuhai Design Week, Qingdao Design Week, Dubai Design Week, San Francisco Design Week, Berlin Design Week, 3daysofdesign (Copenhagen), Design Miami

The order of SDGs listed in this chart is arranged according to the relevant strength of the case data in this DDI, with higher significance given to those further forward.

). Subsequently, the following sections will integrate case studies to explore how city design weeks contribute to the sustainable development of the vitality of the cities, thereby fostering the emergence of an organic community of life.

3.1. DDI Type 1: Integrative Transformation of Metropolitan Resources and Innovation

This type of platform is primarily found in metropolitan cities, playing an operational role in serving the versatile functions of the city amidst the high complexity of resources. They drive the sustainable development of platform brands and urban formats synergistically through the organic integration of industrialisation, commercialisation, and public engagement. Hence, the design weeks of this type are more able to encompass a comprehensive achievement of SDGs, as their integrative structure and full-scale touchpoints not only contribute to enhancing urban influence (e.g., SDG17, SDG11) but also propagate forward-thinking sustainable ideas (e.g., SDG16, SDG10). In the DDI structure, the design week platforms involve multiple stakeholders, including the government, mass media, associations, and organisations in the design-related industries, with other public resources. They from a stable-structured mechanism with creative planning and operational service for content collaboration and experience generation: the platform comprises professional producers and collaborators as advantageous specialised resources, emphasising the diversity and forward-thinking attributes of design; public participants benefit from a wide range of coverage, with professionals in the design field engaging in extensive and in-depth knowledge transfer and exchange through the open project entry provided by the design week platform. Urban residents actively participate in citywide innovative activities by experiencing concentrated urban space vitality and cultural consumption. Meanwhile, global visitors become content creators and disseminators of high-density design-oriented media, continually expanding the global influence of city brands.

In the resource-aggregation-oriented activity platform driven by design, the city design week platform, in collaboration with professional producers and collaborators, builds a networked project-based dynamic within the metropolitan city’s resource structure; professional producers and collaborators, along with public participants, jointly create a highly open environment for public experience and value co-creation; the city design week platform continuously expands its influence through mass media and offers provides comprehensive public services, creating diverse cultural consumption scenarios (as shown in Figure 4). Notable instances such as Milan Design Week and London Design Festival exemplify typical cases of this type of DDI.

Milan Design Week—A Comprehensive New Catalyst for City Development

The ‘DNA’ of Milan Design Week is characterised by a bottom-up value creation trait, demonstrating remarkable flexibility. Originating from the spontaneous organisation of furniture trade shows by local furniture industry enterprises to the Milan Furniture Fair (Salone del Mobile) orchestrated by the industrial association (Federelegno-Arredo Trade Association), and further evolving into the Milan Design Week, which now permeates the entire city with the integration of other artistic and innovative sectors, each exhibition area emerges from the grassroots development of collaborative entities formed by creative design industry-related enterprises, institutions, and urban commercial ecosystems. Indicated by the star-clustered layout from the main exhibition hall (Fiera at the Rho) to various off-site exhibitions dispersed throughout the city (Fuorisalone), Milan Design Week has evolved into a highly influential urban design event with a comprehensive system, diverse industry categories, and an innovative vitality that drives the metropolis’s various sectors through design-led convergence.

Milan Design Week emphasises the provision of autonomous spaces for businesses and individuals, enabling the latent artistic and design forces within the city to collaborate. This integration not only infuses the essence of the design week but also activates the city’s creative genes. Main universities in the city of Milan also open up their campuses as exhibition areas, enhancing the coverage and academic depth of the design week while lowering the participation threshold for students outside creative disciplines, thus making Milan Design Week a crucial nexus for urban public education (Figure 5 shows the Panasonic Exhibition in Brera Academy of FIne Arts, 2018 Milan Design Week). Furthermore, Milan Design Week revitalises numerous historical landmarks as exhibition venues or stages integrated with contemporary art, thereby fostering urban cultural and tourism development.

The core strength of Milan Design Week lies in the all-encompassing participation from the city of Milan to the global public, businesses, and academic communities. Leveraging the design week as a platform, stakeholders actively consolidate resources to cultivate soft power, collectively shaping a new urban development engine. Consequently, Milan undergoes a transformation from an industrial hub to a creative city across sectors ranging from industry and space to the whole society. Therefore, it provides a robust model for metropolis cities to leverage the platform of design weeks in constructing a multifaceted integrative transformation model for innovation. This approach better facilitates the creation of design-driven momentum, capitalising on the capabilities and strengths of the domestic resources to global industries and reciprocally fuelling the city’s local innovative development with global value co-creators.

London Design Festival—A Fountain of City Vitality Rooted in Public Spirit

London Design Festival has been held continuously for 20 years since 2003. It showcases exhibitions in landmark buildings and civic spaces across London, with hundreds of design festival events taking centre stage in rotation. This design extravaganza provides an excellent platform for designers, artists, and architects from around the world to exchange ideas. Simultaneously, the London Design Festival has become an effective avenue for conveying design concepts to various sectors of society and the public.

Taking the London Design Festival’s signature project, the Landmark Project, as an example, this initiative invites outstanding designers from around the globe to engage in design practices by creating installations at key locations in London (Figure 6 as an example, Swivel--Sabine Marcelis’ installation for St. Giles Square). It not only communicates the issues that the London Design Festival focuses on to the public but also serves as a concentrated representation of London’s design prowess and atmosphere. After years of accumulation, these projects have expanded to encompass the most popular spaces in London’s urban neighbourhoods, such as the V&A Museum, Southbank Centre, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern. Furthermore, the London Design Festival places a strong emphasis on creating a ‘strolling’ experience by spreading design activities throughout the entire city. This approach seamlessly weaves the festival’s design-driven energy into the fabric of London life. Additionally, the integration of design events with a unique online tour-guide system provides a clearer and more accessible exhibition experience to all participants.

As Sir John Sorrell, the Chairman of the London Design Festival, aptly puts it in the interview, London boasts designers from around the world, enabling the development of exciting projects, which not only showcases the joyful aspect of design but also demonstrates how design can shape our society and foster innovation. The London Design Festival, as an integrative platform, nurtures the blossoming of design and innovation and ensures the city’s continuous advancement and vitality while significantly assisting in the regeneration of the innovation power of the metropolitan city through design.

To sum up, adapting DDI to metropolitan creative cities requires integrating the city’s all-round resource advantage of the city with a focus on the stability of the organisational operating platform structure as a sustainable mechanism that allows all content creators (interpreters) continuously contribute innovation value, meanwhile, building module for open innovation collaboratively with the public (consumers), which drives a more comprehensive contribution to SDGs [44,45]. Such structural stability and open innovation scenario [46] encourage the transformative empowerment between people as citizens (users) and people as city innovators (producers) (for instance, the designers in London can be both the audience as citizens and the leading practitioners in the industry or content creators of the design week projects, so are the students and professors in the design schools in Milan). Therefore, when implementing this DDI model in practice, the management task of the city design week should put the central effort into constructing a stable ‘sector structure’, and basically position the design week as a public innovation service platform with daily operation support and multi-media communication offerings; in the meantime, it is vital to develop signature projects/venues for collaboration as a special ‘operation mechanism’, energise the city landmark/knowledge centre as an innovation engine, closely link cultural production with consumption through the design week public events. Through such a platform of meaning and value co-creation, the ‘specialised resources’ of the design industry are integrated with the ‘popularity’ of the design market, the ‘foresight’ of design as a disciplinary knowledge is integrated with the generality of design as a strategy; hence, the design week transforms design activities from a notion of ‘professionals’ to an open innovation dialogue embedding into the public life experience of the ‘citizens’ and the ‘global visitors’. Additionally, the challenges of implementing this DDI model in practice are (1) the larger employment of operational management resources, (2) the cooperation with diverse layers of urban administrators, (3) the identification of the entry points for signature projects within the highly concentrated resources of cities with a significant presence of the creative industry. These also present potential for future studies.

3.2. DDI Type 2: Inclusive Communion of Cultural Diversities and Innovation

This type of platform is primarily concentrated in worldwide cities, where the cultural heritage of the specific region in which the city is located plays a crucial role in shaping the city’s identity and competitiveness of development. Hence, the design weeks of this type mainly exhibit their tending efforts in projects of the cultural inheritance of the city and the upgrade of the relative cultural industry and consumption market, achieving SDGs relating to cultural and social sustainability (e.g., SDG 11, 12, 17). These cities’ design week platforms fulfil the role of nurturing and maintaining local cultural diversity using design as a platform through unique content planning and operation of design-related projects. In the DDI structure, government and cultural organisations or institutions play significant roles within the city design week platforms. They construct mechanisms for cultural heritage and industrial innovation and provide diverse cultural consumption opportunities throughout the city design week period. Professional producers and collaborating partners act as facilitators by leveraging geographical advantages to shape a collaborative development environment with distinctive local cultural characteristics; the public participants are experiencers encompass both cultural industry practitioners and cultural consumers in related fields, as well as a local residence: cultural industry practitioners and cultural consumers gather in the projects organised by the design week, becoming co-builders of the city culture through innovative practice; in the meantime, the local residents enhance their cultural literacy through platform activities, thereby contributing to the cultivation and inheritance of cultural heritage for the sustainable development of the city’s cultural competence.

In urban practice, this type of DDI forms city design week platforms through collaborative projects engaging professional producers and various collaborators to create resource-based events and activities rooted in local culture; professional producers and collaborators bring integrated cultural experiences through the projects to engage the public, facilitating cultural inheritance, dissemination, and innovation; city design week platforms utilise social network media for dissemination, offering an inclusive communion of service-oriented, experiential, and social drivers to uncover diverse cultural consumption scenarios for the public participants (as shown in Figure 7). Examples of typical cases of this type of innovation model are Chiang Mai Design Week and Suzhou Design Week.

Chiang Mai Design Week—Creative Integration of Traditional Industries

From the themes of Chiang Mai Design Week over the years (Theme of Chiang Mai Design Week (2018–2022): 2018·Keep Refining; 2019·Lived Well; 2020·Stay Safe Stay Alive; 2021·Co-Forward; 2022·Local ‘rise’ action), it is evident that the objective of building the platform is to support local industries while also promoting the internationalisation of local craftsmanship. Chiang Mai Design Week is divided into five major segments: Creative District, Creative Market, Forum and Lectures, Industrial and Agricultural Product Exhibitions, and Local Specialty Design Exhibition. These segments complement each other and, through a forward-thinking approach to content planning, integrate and operate local resources: the Creative District and Creative Market involve the creative integration and layout planning of existing traditional commercial markets and mobile handicraft stalls; the Forum and Lectures serve as professional forums aimed at gathering designers, artists, folk artisans, and the general public interested in design, enhancing the social awareness of local craftsmanship and cultural heritage; the Industrial and Agricultural Product Exhibitions and Local Specialty Design Exhibition, distinct from the commercial nature of the Creative Market, aim to showcase high-quality industrial and agricultural products and designs representing Chiang Mai’s culture.

In addition, Chiang Mai Design Week has innovatively integrated traditional tourist routes to promote citywide collaboration. It incorporates areas where folk artisans are concentrated and handicraft markets derived from tourist attractions into recommended travel routes during the design week. This integration combines local industries, tourism, and design to showcase the best tourism environment, activities, and consumption to visitors. Furthermore, after Chiang Mai Design Week concludes, local artisans can connect with domestic and international revenue streams and business resources during the tourism off-season, enabling local tourism activities to reach a higher level of quality and abundance.

The Chiang Mai Design Week provides a variety of design-oriented projects that concentrate on promoting an inclusive platform transforming the power of local cultural heritage with the world, with the value of design on different levels: it combines local agricultural and artisanal products with local market culture through the aesthetic value of design; leveraging the service value of design, it creates a distinctive cultural tourism experience in Chiang Mai, attracting global tourists and professionals; through the strategic value of design, it empowers the city’s human resources, further promoting a healthier and more sustainable cycle and development of tourism and handicrafts in Chiang Mai. This showcases the driving force of design in urban development. The Chiang Mai Design Week offers a compelling example for cities rich in local traditional cultural resources, demonstrating how they can use the design week platform to foster multicultural integration and innovation. It aims to better establish a design-driven platform momentum, promoting the sustainable development of cultural tourism and urban culture through design.

Suzhou Design Week—A Design Narrative of ‘Suzhou Aesthetics’

Since its establishment in 2018, Suzhou Design Week has consistently pursued its primary mission of creating a City of Design and serving as an industrial hub with a strong traditional cultural heritage among cities of the Yangtze River Delta in China. The target of being ‘more forward-looking, more Suzhou, more international’ was set by the Suzhou Government (Suzhou Design Week is hosted and sponsored by Suzhou Municipal Government. This targeted has been retained since it was put forward in Suzhou Design Week in 2019), it vividly presents the achievements in urban revitalisation, industrial upgrading, livelihood improvement, cultural inheritance, and other fields achieved through innovative development advocacy. Hence, each edition of Suzhou Design Week sets new objectives and devises fresh strategies, aiming to showcase and disseminate Suzhou’s distinctive innovations in design and culture from a multidimensional perspective. For instance, during the 2021 Suzhou Design Week with the theme of ‘Renaissance’ (Figure 8), the ‘Q4 Discovery of Ancient City’ activity was organised in the ancient streets and lanes of Gusu Ancient City. It tailored several urban walking routes with different themes specifically for Gusu Ancient City. These routes showcased the achievements of Gusu’s recent years in urban renewal, cultural tourism integration, and creative design consumption. The event offered immersive city tour experiences with a comprehensive reach, injecting new vitality into the overall revitalisation of the ancient city. As another example, during the 2022 Suzhou Design Week with the theme ‘New Intangible Cultural Heritage, New Aesthetics’, the event focused on themes of urban renewal, innovation of intangible cultural heritage, integration of culture and tourism, and life aesthetics. It aimed to explore the unique beauty of local intangible cultural heritage (especially Su Embroidery and Kun Opera) by involving physical tour sights as well as connecting diverse design-related social resources from the industries and the public in the context of urban renewal so as to showcase and promote Suzhou’s distinctiveness through design as projects, as experience, and as innovation engines.

With such a strategy of planning and organising, Suzhou Design Week introduces new distinctive sections and highlighted projects every year according to its theme, continuously evolving its content. It proactively integrates local cultural resources, showcasing Suzhou’s achievements in culture, art, and industries through the lens of design and creativity from various perspectives, revitalising Suzhou’s city brands in its unique local culture. This initiative adds even more vitality to the development of the city.

To conclude, this DDI type is adapted mainly to serve the tourism-oriented creative cities rich in local cultural heritage but experiencing moderate economic growth to leverage ‘incremental improvement’ in urban development [47,48]. It emphasises design as an innovation tool, integrating cross-disciplinary resources to conduct cultural research and participate collaboratively in the design process, to together create cultural artefacts that foster cultural consumption [17,49,50]. With such design tools, a meaning and value co-creation pathway is built up, which facilitates cultural inheritance and innovation while meeting SDGs related to sustainable culture inclusivity [51,52,53]. When implementing this DDI model in practice, the management task of the city design week should focus on conducting thorough field research rooted in the local culture so as to strategically construct distinctive projects as mechanisms for innovation. Design weeks are suggested to set up the distinctive project as sustainable development-oriented “design projects” for cultural products, and create interdisciplinary collaboration spaces for local cultural practitioners, promote a series of actions in facilitating the introduction and exhibition of such design outcomes to the public market during public cultural events, so as to flourish the cultural consumption experience, respectively. Simultaneously, the design week should strategically promote the city’s cultural branding and cultivate a friendly public environment for sustainable consumption. In doing so, the city design week not only enriches urban innovative cultural activities but also provides better employment opportunities and development prospects for local craftsmen, cultural inheritors, and the residents, thereby contributing to achieving related SDGs. However, challenges in its practical implementation include ensuring the quality and avoiding homogeneity in the cultural products as design outputs and effectively introducing more internationalised design resources to bring about cross-cultural innovation conducive to the sustainable development of local culture.

3.3. DDI Type 3: Collaborative Incorporation of Creative Clusters and Innovation

This type of platform is mostly concentrated in emerging cities where industry drives urban upgrading. Hence, the design weeks of this type are found to show more emphasis on SDGs relating to industrial development and resource aggregation and distributions (e.g., SDG 9, 8, 12). They have the advanced capabilities to leverage urban innovation resources by employing a design-driven platform with distinctive positioning and unique mechanisms. In the DDI structure, governments, design-related industry associations, or organisations collaborate closely to support city design week organisation and operation by providing cooperative opportunities as the core mission of the platform. In this way, industry-oriented resource aggregation platforms are created with an integrative participant portfolio: professional producers and collaborators from various sectors harness the advantages of the industry–academia–research integration to significantly enhance the professionalism and innovation capacity of design; public participants are primarily composed of global professionals from various relevant industries who regard the city as a competitive economic market for future industrial development; simultaneously, the local citizens and residence, through public activities, foster civic awareness and enhance their design literacy, all while contributing to the promotion of city brand development and internationalisation.

In urban practice, this type of DDI forms city design week platforms collaborating with professional producers and various collaborators to create complex resource-based projects that align with regional economic development, which drives the sustainable development of urban innovation with the design week platform itself synergistically. With such a platform of projects, professional producers and collaborators exchange industry experience and competence through a series of public events and activities; the public participants acquire more accessible knowledge and development opportunities also in these events and activities that are with high-quality professional content; the city design week platform meanwhile disseminates its events and activities through mass media, enriching the public’s cultural experiences and innovation awareness (as shown in Figure 9). Examples of typical cases for this type of innovation model include San Francisco Design Week, Dubai Design Week, etc.

San Francisco Design Week—Local Collaboration in the Bay Area

San Francisco Design Week is one of the representatives where ‘creative output’ is implemented in large cities. Unlike other design weeks, it does not solely serve one single city but rather caters to the entire Bay Area. Its mission is to ‘raise public awareness of the impact that design has on innovation and explore the emerging disciplines driving design in San Francisco and around the world.’ San Francisco Design Week establishes a thriving ecosystem that integrates the industrial strengths of the Bay Area: it has created a comprehensive platform that seamlessly combines industry, education, and research, fostering inclusivity for various cities and cultures, which allows each city and individual to discover their own role and competence for development within the framework. Meanwhile, the favourable policy environment grants San Francisco Design Week a high degree of autonomy, allowing it to maximise corporate initiative. For example, ‘Studio Tour’ is a classic sector that runs every year during the design week, which invites numerous design studios to open creative design activities/workshops for the public to visit and participate in. The studios include many leading local companies, such as Adobe. These companies plan events and visuals independently, while San Francisco Design Week handles media releases and promotional production of the projects and delivers them to the public applicants. Through this kind of project, San Francisco Design Week broadcasts the design competence of the industrial clusters in the region to the public, enhances the design literacy of the citizens, energises the industry through co-design dialogues with fresh power by enabling more people to design and transform their creativity to clusters of power for continuous innovation in the region.

From the case study of San Francisco Design Week, it can be observed that the creation of a regional ecosystem that combines humanistic and industrial capabilities, along with mutually beneficial policies, is crucial for avoiding platform homogenisation among the global design weeks, establishing platform brand differentiation, and deepening the local influence of the city design week for regional urban innovation.

Dubai Design Week—Exploring Future Development Strategies

‘Resources are limited, creativity is unlimited [54]’—Dubai attaches great importance to the role of design, innovation, and creativity in sustainable development, actively exploring more sustainable ways of development at both the city and national levels. Dubai Design Week was initiated at the core strategic level of the country’s future development, with the mission to select talent for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and explore more forward-thinking initiatives to achieve sustainable urban development. As a result, it has acquired a unique geopolitical significance and a futuristic perspective.

Despite its late start, Dubai Design Week has become the regional capital of design and a global hub for the international design industry with the support of numerous government organisations in Dubai. In addition, Dubai Design Week offers multiple perspectives on future solutions, enriching the global exploration of sustainability through a series of projects inviting design professionals from all around the world from different areas in various stages, including both existing influential design power and the potential power for the future, locally and globally. For example, the ‘Global Grad Show’ section focuses on attracting young creative talent and exploring innovative approaches to sustainable development; the ‘2040: D3 Architecture Exhibition’ provides a new perspective on the city’s future appearance over the next 20 years in terms of global sustainable development; the ‘UAE Designer Exhibition’ section encourages creative practitioners with local traditional skills to learn modern techniques and promote local culture. Additionally, the ‘Downtown Design’ is established to attract global brands and showcase original design works, creating an open and creative business environment in Dubai.

Dubai Design Week, by addressing topics that are of common interest to all of humanity with foresight, creates a DDI platform that leverages global resources and social forces due to its local economic and development competence, thereby expanding the effectiveness of collaborative innovation by forming creative clusters from around the globe to co-create a shared vision for sustainable future. Within the framework of sustainability, it is forging new bonds that promote mutual growth, symbiosis, and shared benefits.

Ultimately, the adaptation of DDI in this situation mainly serves the creative cities with concentrated industrial clusters, driving urban and regional development through innovation led by design in industries. It emphasises design as a professional aggregation competence that generates diverse advantages of innovation resources in urban development, bringing radical innovation vitality to the city as a hub for technological talent aggregation [46,55,56]. The primary focus is to enhance the design literacy of ‘everybody’ and promote widespread collaboration, with the aim of achieving the SDGs more related to industrial development and resource aggregation and re-distribution [12,57]. When implementing this DDI model in practice, the management task of design week should concentrate on establishing collaborative design events that involve industry and talent education (such as global-influenced design competitions and public design education activities): the design week organisers need to be capable of understanding core industrial forces driving urban economic development and their impact on the city’s sustainable development, effectively utilise local advantageous industrial resources, and align the city’s vision for sustainable development with regional and even global communities. The design events then can be performed as an industry–academia mechanism, which effectively connects global design expertise, business environment advantages, and local industrial innovation capabilities, thereby enhancing the design awareness of all citizens and nurturing sustainable innovation opportunities continually. In this case, the practical challenge for the design weeks to implement this DDI is to identify a sustainable business model for a reciprocal relationship among the various stakeholders and create a value co-creation platform mechanism that breaks down barriers between industries and between industries and the public, designing for the future together.

4. Conclusions

From a global perspective, city design week platforms present a rich and diverse range of forms, which provides strong evidence of implementable possibilities in cultivating multi-stakeholder partnerships for a future sustainable agenda [58]. As a geographically based creative and innovative force-aggregation platform, city design weeks in the global portfolio have demonstrated the strategic principle of combining the public and professional attributes of the platform in mutual-beneficial structures for meaning and value co-creation. From a multidimensional perspective, city design weeks have realised their significance as a design-driven platform for driving urban innovation and sustainable development.

Overlaying the radar charts of six features of three actors (professional producers and various collaborators, city design week platform, and public participants) is explained in the Results and Discussion parts. It reveals 18 specific driving features that can be categorised into two dimensions with four directions: localisation and internationalisation under the public communication dimension and diversities and forward-thinking under the content construction dimension. Horizontal comparisons can swiftly highlight characteristic tendencies and structural differences among the three design-driven innovation types: Type 1 (Integrative Transformation of Metropolitan Resources and Innovation) promotes design as urban practice to transform aggregated resources into forward-thinking content production and international influence (as shown in Figure 10), which might be more suitable for supporting the sustainable development and urban innovation of well-established metropolitan cities, capable in achieving comprehensive SDGs; Type 2 (Inclusive Communion of Cultural Diversities and Innovation) treat design as urban practice to leverage geographical advantages of resources especially in terms of cultural heritage and tourism to enhance bidirectional communication and integration of both localisation and internationalisation (as shown in Figure 11), which might be able to effectively drive the sustainable development and urban innovation of the cities with abundant cultural tourism and intangible cultural heritage resources, responding SDGs more relating to cultural and social sustainability (e.g., SDG 11, 12, 17); Type 3 (Collaborative Incorporation of Creative Clusters and Innovation) plants design grounded in industry, to mobilise various resources from industry, education, and research with forward-thinking and extensive content to boost regional economic development with shared vision co-created by design practice (as shown in Figure 12), which might be more supportive for the cities that are implementing technology-driven or/and regional-economy-driven approaches for development and innovation, with relative reactions to SDGs relating to industrial development and resource aggregation and distributions (e.g., SDG 9, 8, 12).

At the theoretical level, this research extends the application of design-driven innovation in the urban context, particularly concerning SDGs. Employing a perspective that prioritises a “people-centred” design approach and utilising platform-based creative design events as vehicles for constructing meaning and value, the study explores various dynamic relationships between urban innovators, design events, and city residents within the creative city ecosystem. It investigates how design, as both a professional subject and a strategy, can methodologically and systematically drive urban innovation under the prerequisite of achieving SDGs. The research presents a perspective for urban development policy researchers, suggesting ‘design as a possibility’ and introducing a multiple choice of value creation tools for urban innovation and sustainable development. However, this study only explores the possibilities of adapting the design-driven innovation model to a potential urban practice at the introductory stage with the generalisability to similar city platform-based creative design events, as the case study is limited to the context of city design weeks as a form of urban innovation activity. Consequently, the applicability of design-driven innovation in a broader context of urban sustainable development and innovation requires further research, particularly by varying research subjects beyond city design weeks.

On the practical level, this research, by integrating SDGs and the Creative City Index based on the theoretical framework of design-driven innovation, categorises three major directions within the diverse forms of global city design weeks, providing focused, practical key pathways for the organisation and planning of design weeks. Practical recommendations include identifying key management tasks, corresponding objectives, and challenges for different creative cities in directing the focus of their design week platforms. The study offers general suggestions for practitioners while considering the specificity of different creative cities. Moreover, it provides the policy-makers with valuable insights for comprehensive resource allocation to city design week development, as it encourages them to consider the impact on urban innovation development, regional linkages, and global influence when investing resources in the city’s public platform-based creative design actions/projects like city design weeks. However, since the study is limited to qualitative interpretation using the data mainly from the organisational planning perspective, it necessitates future quantitative research as supplementary studies, such as impact analyses based on user studies with big data, to produce practical tools like real-time monitoring indicator systems for precise strategy adjustments and evaluation criteria for policy decisions.

In conclusion, this study, based upon the design-driven innovation framework and with a focus on urban sustainable development, conducts a global in-depth case analysis, explores the different driving forces that various design week platforms provide for urban innovation and sustainable development, and outlines three types of design-driven innovation based on city design weeks as a mechanism of urban practice for meaning and value co-creation. The significance of the study is revealed to expand the adaptation of the theoretical design-driven innovation model in the urban practice context, explore methodological values of such adaptation, and provide practical directions for promoting sustainable development in cities by planning and organising platform-based creative design events to stimulate continuous innovation and urban vitality for the future.