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Transport
Reconfigure a full-scale street, then watch how curbs, micromobility, shuttles, charging, transit technology, and wayfinding reshape movement in real time.
Make New York's FiDi the World Capital for Urban Solutions.
Cities are under pressure from every side. Nearly all population growth through 2050 will be urban, straining housing, mobility, energy, water and everything else that makes dense places work.
It could cut outages on grids, in buildings and in traffic by up to half, but it can also fail at city scale and create new risks.
For some cities and people the threat is existential, and policy is not keeping pace: COP commitments have not closed the gap between climate goals and action, and U.S. policy reversals have widened it.
cooling, EVs and data centres are already overloading city grids, and data-centre demand will more than double by 2030.
Invent.City is a four-part initiative to turn these pressures into investment. It intends to use NYC's FiDi, including its underutilized assets, to get critical solutions sold and deployed in cities worldwide. Four components to the initiative:
For New York: 13,173 jobs, $2.4B a year in direct economic activity, $219M in taxes and fees, and $71M in recurring real-estate revenue. Empty floors, back to work.
2. STRATEGY
Create a Trade Mart. Spark a Cluster. Seed a Model City.
Events lay the foundation for the Trade Mart, Economic Cluster and Model City. They bring city buyers, solution providers, investors and institutions together around real demand, measurable value and investable projects. Those relationships and transactions turn urgent urban problems into an economic opportunity and build momentum for the three larger components.
Next, quantify the stakes. Swiss Re Institute projects the climate crisis could cut global GDP about 14% by 2050, or $23T a year. In Invent.City's model, the products that answer it are a $43.3T market: the global urban solutions market. Both figures exceed the projected 2050 GDP of California, Texas, or New York City. The base assumption is that Invent.City could help NYC attract much of the global urban expansion.
Cities are a huge and growing market. They are also complicated, with significant requirements across many industries. Invent.City is organized by the forces that drive demand and the industries that meet it. Five forces shape what cities buy: the climate crisis, AI and automation, urban growth, aging infrastructure, and the energy transition. Geopolitics, including China's rise, adds pressure.
CLIMATE
CRISIS
ENERGY +
RESOURCES
TECHNOLOGY +
INFRASTRUCTURE
PEOPLE +
SOCIETY
ECONOMY +
GEOPOLITICS
CES and other trade shows bring buyers and sellers together for a few days; a Trade Mart makes that market permanent. Invent.City proposes a year-round B2B Trade Mart in FiDi, where city buyers can see working systems, compare competing vendors, meet suppliers, and move from demonstration to financing and purchase. The idea builds on significant global precedent: permanent marts and showroom districts around the world show how co-location turns scattered sellers and buyers into a durable market.
RAI
Amsterdam / Brussels
Chelsea Harbour
London
The Mart
Chicago
World Trade Mart
Dallas / Austin
PDC
Los Angeles
World Trade Centre
Dubai
Hannover Messe
Hanover
Americas Mart
Atlanta
Location, location, location, FiDi is arguably the best location for a marketing engine focused on cities. It brings New York's buyers together with a global stage in finance, media and technology. It also has empty floors: Cushman & Wakefield counted 10.7 million square feet of in Q2 2026. The Trade Mart turns that space into showrooms, offices and venues.
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Transit
Subway + ferry
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Open Space
Space ready
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Blue Highway
Water + air links
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Institutions
Civic + culture
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Flood Defense
Flood work
FIDI ADVANTAGE
Global Reach
Wall to harbor
The Trade Mart will comprise immersive showrooms for each of the twelve industries. City teams operate, test, and compare complete urban systems under real conditions — a working district, not a convention hall. A showroom demonstrates a system; a living lab tests it in the street. This capability will be critical for the uses and risks of AI in cities.
Buildings
Turn up the heat, cut the power, and adjust controls inside occupied-room simulations to see how building systems protect comfort and continuity.
Power
Balance generation, storage, microgrids, charging, and demand from a live control room, then stage an outage to see which systems keep the district running.
Waste
Send materials through collection, sorting, composting, reuse, and energy recovery, tracing where contamination appears and where discarded material becomes a valuable input.
Agriculture
Harvest from working grow rooms, taste the output, and trace water, energy, compost, labor, and cold-chain decisions from seed to sale.
Consumer
Use low-waste products inside apartment, hotel, office, and retail settings, revealing how they perform where residents, guests, employees, and customers encounter them.
Energy
Combine solar, heat pumps, thermal storage, smart meters, and efficiency controls in a building-scale lab, then tune the system through changing demand.
Water
Trigger a cloudburst and heat wave across a working streetscape, then watch drainage, cooling, leak detection, irrigation, reuse, and flood protection respond together.
Wastewater
Follow a single stream through sensing, treatment, reuse, and nutrient recovery, seeing what can return safely to buildings, landscapes, or industry.
AI
Run a city digital twin from an immersive command center, testing permitting, emergency response, and daily operations as recommendations change under pressure.
Robotics
Direct inspection, delivery, cleaning, maintenance, and emergency robots through real street and building obstacles, exposing where autonomy succeeds, hesitates, or requires human judgment.
Logistics
Route one delivery from vessel to microhub, cargo bike, locker, and electric fleet, seeing how each handoff affects the curb and final mile.
Expanding on the Trade Mart model, Invent.City will extend and deepen the marketing efforts. Trade shows and virtual events reach new buyers; repeated demonstrations and follow-through build customer relationships.
FiDi's 10.7 million vacant square feet are the strategic asset. Residential works only where floorplates, light and economics align. Invent.City takes the buildings that cannot convert. Housing alone does not make an economic district. Phase one opens what earns first and expands where demand follows. Leases, sponsorships and events fund the next.
FIDI IS ALREADY MOVING FORWARD
Current Initiatives
Many Opportunities
New York is already building here: Blue Highway, the FiDi Micro Hub, curb management, subway thermal energy, commercial waste zones and coastal resilience.
That strengthens Invent.City’s strategy by providing active public partners, real infrastructure, and visible projects that can become demonstrations, attract companies, and accelerate investment instead of starting from scratch.
NYC already has in FiDi underway.
- Thermal Energy Network — Captures and redistributes excess subway heat.
- Microhub — Transfers freight to cargo bikes and small electric vehicles.
- Blue Highway-Pier 6 — Links marine freight to low-emission last-mile delivery.
- LMCR — Combines flood protection, drainage, infrastructure, and public space.
In contrast to a rigid urban plan like many future cities like NEOM or Telosa, Invent.City is flexible to respond to asset and market conditions. In that sense, it is much more using the approach used in Curitiba, Brazil. The Trade Mart fills FiDi’s vacant space with solutions cities can see, compare, finance, and buy. That permanent market pulls in companies, talent, research, and capital — an economic cluster. The cluster outgrows the showrooms and reshapes the district itself. But the cluster can evolve as the portfolio of vacant space changes.
TRADE MART
SEE • COMPARE
FINANCE • BUY
CLUSTER
COMPANIES • TALENT
RESEARCH • CAPITAL
CITY
JOBS • PUBLIC SPACE
HOSPITALITY • REAL ESTATE
A showroom displays a product. A model city shows the whole system: clean energy, water recycling, rooftop food, microhubs and new mobility running together in FiDi. City leaders see, test and buy before deploying at home, then reorder through the Mart’s online marketplace.
Transport
Buildings
Power
Waste
Agriculture
Consumer
Energy
Water
Wastewater
AI
Robotics
Logistics
The value doesn’t stop at the showroom door. The Mart puts tenants, buyers and visitors on the same blocks every week, bringing back foot traffic lost when offices emptied. It pays for better streets and cleaner sidewalks. Reclaiming the Streets → Vision Zero Reimagined →
3. TACTICS
Build the Market Now. Build Out the District Next.
Invent.City brings buyers, suppliers and investors together around , and . Building on TransTrans with the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and Cargo Wars, roundtables turn ideas into pilots and deals before the Mart opens. Every session is published.
A Future City exhibit shows two versions of 2100. In the city, climate action and accountable AI make life safer. In the city, delay, extreme heat and unsupervised AI overwhelm public control. New York, Lagos and London show both.
Current
Utopian
Dystopian
At full build, the Trade Mart occupies 1 MSF and draws 2 MSF of supporting offices: 3 MSF in all, over a quarter of FiDi’s vacancy. It is not bought at once. Real-estate debt, sponsorship, venture and private equity, and civic tools each fund the phase they fit.
| Funding Tier | Capital Source | Target Allocation | Primary Use Cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase I: Pre-Development & Site Selection | Public-Private Grants, Anchor VC, Sponsor Equity | $50M – $100M | Master planning, digital twin software, initial lease commitments, regulatory approvals. |
| Phase II: Real Estate & Buildout (FiDi Mart) | Commercial Real Estate Debt, PILOT / IDA Bonds, Con Edison / NYSERDA Incentives | $500M – $1.2B | Commercial lease acquisitions, physical infrastructure (microgrid, water systems loop, street labs). |
| Phase III: Showroom & Sub-Market Expansion | Corporate Anchor Tenant Capital, Vendor Fit-Out Financing | $300M – $500M | Immersive sector room buildouts (AI, Energy, Transport, Robotics, Water). |
| Phase IV: Global Project Fund (Invent.City Capital) | Infrastructure Funds, Green Bonds, Sovereign Wealth | $1.0B+ Deployment Pipeline | Direct project financing for cities purchasing turnkey urban solutions from showroom vendors. |
Near-Term (Months 0–12):
Secure seed funding from anchor real-estate partners and non-binding letters of intent from 20–30 founding vendors.
Medium-Term (Months 12–36):
Finalize NYC incentives (IDA/PILOT), explore bond financing through NYC IDA or Build NYC, and sign anchor leases in Lower Manhattan.
Long-Term (Months 36+):
Launch the project-finance marketplace linking cities that buy in the Mart with infrastructure funds.
Pilots stall because nobody funds the step after them. Invent.City opens four places to invest: the initiative, the buildings, a single showroom, or projects buyers have already committed to. The money goes where demand is proven.
Cities are the buyer, the regulator and the problem owner at once. Invent.City engages all three, at city, state, federal and international levels. No other partner is all three.
Evidence and access come from groups already in the field. Invent.City partners with and that identify needs, document what’s failing and convene the residents these systems serve.
The Mart needs its suppliers in the room first. Invent.City recruits the companies that design, build, finance and operate : the sell side of the market. Founding partners bring products, delivery capacity and the credibility that draws the rest.
Every showroom needs something new in it next year. Incubators and accelerators are where that comes from — a global network already selecting, funding, and testing the companies the Mart will host. Invent.City connects to that pipeline rather than rebuilding it.
100%
Invent.City is scoring FiDi buildings and public spaces on visibility, access, flexibility, cost, ownership readiness and event capacity. A three-stage sorts each property into an anchor, cluster, flex or pop-up tier. The portfolio flexes with FiDi’s market.
FiDi Venue
4. BENEFITS
Cities Get Solutions. New York Gets a New Economic Engine.
| Base-case annual public revenue reconciliation | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tourism taxes and feesFrom 4.1, excluding tourism PIT | $ 86,751,875 |
| Trade Mart modeled public revenueFrom 4.2, including payroll-related and sales taxes | $ 132,569,719 |
| Gross recurring NYC real-estate revenue capacityFrom 4.3; gross capacity, not net incremental revenue | $ 70,675,722 |
| Combined modeled public revenue and gross capacity$ 219,321,594 modeled taxes and fees + $ 70,675,722 gross capacity | $ 289,997,316 |
How these numbers were built
These are planning scenarios, not forecasts. The headline combines three cases: tourism, the Mart and real estate. Tourism models visitor volume, mix, stay, spending, taxability and jobs. The Mart models occupied area, job density, wages, procurement and tax rates.
Real estate models 3 million square feet (1 million direct, 2 million supporting offices): rent, operating costs, capitalization, assessment, tax rates, phase-in and commercial rent tax.
Real-estate capacity is gross, not net: existing assessments, taxes, exemptions, abatements and transitional values are not deducted. Sections 4.1–4.3 show the assumptions, formulas and sources.
700K annual visitors $1.31B annual impact 6,173 supported jobs
| Tourism summary | Downside | Base | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual visitorsFrom 4.1.2 Details: Table 1, Base assumptions | 400,000 | 700,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Traveler spending ($/yr)From 4.1.2 Details: Table 2A, Hotel and other traveler spending | $379,000,000 | $864,500,000 | $1,620,000,000 |
| Total economic impact ($/yr)From 4.1.2 Details: Table 2B, Total economic impact | $576,080,000 | $1,314,040,000 | $2,462,400,000 |
| Tourism-supported jobsFrom 4.1.2 Details: Table 3, Tourism-supported jobs | 2,706 | 6,173 | 11,567 |
| Modeled taxes and fees ($/yr, no PIT)From 4.1.2 Details: Table 4C, Tax totals roll-up | $38,518,438 | $86,751,875 | $160,889,063 |
| Rounded taxes and fees ($/yr, no PIT)From 4.1.2 Details: Table 4C, rounded grand total | $38.5M | $86.8M | $160.9M |
| Tourism PIT is excluded pending a separate tourism wage-and-residency model. Jobs scale with direct traveler spending using NYC's 2025 spending-to-jobs ratio. Scenarios assume 1.25 guests per occupied room and a 75% taxable share of non-hotel spending. | |||
7,000 on-site jobs $1.2B on-site payroll $1.5B direct activity
| Trade Mart summary | Base |
|---|---|
| On-site jobs (1,000 showroom + 6,000 supporting offices)From 4.2.2 Details: Table 1, Jobs based on area | 7,000 |
| On-site payroll ($/yr)From 4.2.2 Details: Table 2B, Base-case payroll detail | $1,165,000,000 |
| Local procurement ($/yr)From 4.2.2 Details: Table 3, Local procurement | $349,500,000 |
| Total direct activity ($/yr)From 4.2.2 Details: Table 4, Direct campus activity | $1,514,500,000 |
| Note: Direct activity shown here is kept separate from tourism and real-estate modules to reduce double counting. | |
The 3 MSF is 1 MSF of Trade Mart plus 2 MSF of supporting offices it draws in. Invent.City proposes taking it in phases, not at once.
3 MSF back to work $1.8B implied asset value $70.7M/yr recurring NYC revenue
| Real estate summary | Downside | Base | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stabilized leased area (sf)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 1, Leasing assumptions | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Annual rent ($/yr)From 4.3.2 Details: Tables 1 and 1A, rent total | $165,000,000 | $165,000,000 | $165,000,000 |
| NOI ($/yr)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 2B, Total NOI on 3.0 MSF | $102,000,000 | $106,860,000 | $111,750,000 |
| Illustrative implied value at 6.0% cap ($)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 2C, Implied value from capitalized NOI | $1,700,000,000 | $1,781,000,000 | $1,862,500,000 |
| Modeled recurring NYC revenue capacity ($/yr)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 4C, Total modeled recurring NYC revenue capacity | $66,744,900 | $70,675,722 | $74,303,100 |
| Rounded recurring NYC revenue capacity ($/yr)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 4C, rounded total | $66.7M | $70.7M | $74.3M |
| Gross capacity is shown separately from modeled taxes and fees because current assessments, existing taxes, exemptions, abatements, and transitional values have not been deducted. | |||
