TITLE:
Between Innovation, Sustainability and the City: Placemaking and Urban Design in the Socio-Spatial Performance of the PIT (São José dos Campos) and the DTPP (Buenos Aires)
AUTHORS:
Marcel Fantin, Matheus de Souza Oliveira da Veiga, Osvaldo Battistini, Ania Tizziani
KEYWORDS:
Innovation, Placemaking, Urban Design, Technology Park, Innovation District
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.9,
September
10,
2026
ABSTRACT: This article analyzes, from a comparative and relational perspective, the socio-spatial performance of two Latin American territories of innovation: the São José dos Campos Technology Innovation Park (PIT), in Brazil, and the Parque Patricios Technology District (DTPP), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The central argument is that technology parks and innovation districts cannot be assessed only by the attraction of firms, the presence of universities, the production of corporate buildings or the construction of urban images of sustainability and smartness. They must also be evaluated by their capacity to generate urban porosity, institutional cooperation, productive inclusion, territorial permanence and spatial justice. The article mobilizes placemaking as an analytical framework and proposes the concept of placemaking dissonance to identify the distance between the landscape promised by innovation and the social, productive and territorial conditions effectively produced. The PIT is interpreted as an urbanized technology park grounded in a long historical formation of public missions, aerospace industry and scientific institutions. The DTPP is interpreted as a reimagined urban area produced through legal, fiscal, symbolic and real estate reclassification over a working-class neighborhood. The comparison shows that both cases perform innovation through urban design, but face limits when image does not translate into collective capabilities, redistribution and democratic territorial integration.