The NoI
The Neighbourhood of Ideas
Activating Spaces, Empowering People, Unlocking Value.
At coLARGE, we believe cities are more than buildings, they are living ecosystems of people, ideas, and opportunities. Yet too often, communities, businesses, and researchers struggle to connect and collaborate.
The Neighbourhood of Ideas (NoI) is our response: a collaborative place-activation service, that transforms spaces into platforms for innovation and long term growth. The NoI is designed to unlock the hidden potential of places by bringing together academia, business, and community. Within these spaces, we create environments where learning, experimentation, and enterprise can flourish side by side.
This is more than placemaking it is about consciously shaping how our cities grow and ensuring that we support, nurture, and foster the ecosystems that exist all around us.
Together, we can turn our cities into engines of growth, equity, and innovation for all.
Why It Matters
The NoI is more than just placemaking. It is about shaping and actively nurturing how cities evolve. Its a tool for creating shared purpose, long-term value, and sustainable ecosystems that works with communities to unlock future growth.
For communities: NoIs open doors to opportunity, connection, and resilience.
For developers and asset owners: NoIs can help steer the direction of future developments or reposition vacant, hard-to-lease properties as vibrant, value-generating assets.
For local authorities: NoIs deliver jobs, skills, and regeneration outcomes aligned with policy priorities.
A Visionary Approach
The NoI approach is built around on our ABC model for shared, collaborative innovation:
A - Academia brings research, credibility and innovation capacity.
B - Business provides investment, enterprise and scaling potential.
C - Community ensures relevance, activation and social impact.
By connecting these three forces within a common environment or location with a common purpose, the NoI creates sticky ecosystems that grows talent, attracts investment, and generates lasting civic value.
These ecosystems lead to new business opportunities, new ways to skill and reskill communities and help drives research that has real world impact.
What makes the NoI Special?
Innovation as growth strategy – positioning places at the forefront of economic renewal and as future hubs of growth.
Catalyst for regeneration – reducing vacancy, stimulating activity, and building demand, where demand has fallen.
Hyper-local and multi-user – rooted in lived experience while linked to broader innovation systems.
Future-ready activation – aligning with emerging funding and policy frameworks that emphasise the importance of place in growth strategies.
From Concept to Impact
The NoI is not just a design for today. It is a blueprint for future-ready, resilient cities, and places where buildings become incubators of innovation, and where people, purpose, and place are seamlessly connected.
Together with our partners, we are turning spaces into Neighbourhoods of Ideas: collaborative, adaptive, and alive with possibility.
Be part of the Future of Places
Whether you are a developer, asset owner, local council or community group, we invite you to explore how your site can become your own Neighbourhood of Ideas, a living hub of innovation, growth, and renewal.
