Amsterdam / Brussels. A major exhibition and convention complex for trade fairs, conferences, product launches, and international business events.
1. MISSION
Make New York’s FiDi the World Capital for Urban Solutions.
is rising. Power and water demand are surging. is adding new demand and new risks. The solutions exist. Deployment is the bottleneck.
Invent.City turns vacant FiDi offices into the place that breaks that bottleneck: a permanent Trade Mart for urban solutions. A new economic engine for FiDi.
For the world: one year-round market to compare, test, finance, buy, and deploy urban solutions.
For New York: 13,173 direct and tourism-supported jobs, $2.4B in annual activity, $219M in taxes and fees, and $71M in recurring real-estate revenue.
2. STRATEGY
Create a Trade Mart. Spark an Urban Solutions Cluster.
Policy has not delivered at the speed cities need. Current pledges still point to 2.3–2.5°C of warming, while current policies point nearer 2.8°C. The need is immediate, the spending is unavoidable, and the market is forming now. Invent.City starts there. The record of commitments and shows why cities need an implementation engine now.
The economic case combines market demand with the cost of inaction. By 2050, climate-related are projected to form a $43.3T annual urban market. Swiss Re Institute projects that the will cut global GDP by about 14%, or $23T, under the current temperature trajectory. That annual loss is roughly equal to the combined projected 2050 economies of California ($10T), Texas ($7T), and metro New York ($6T)—showing that climate risk operates at the scale of the world’s largest regional economies. Invent.City brings city buyers together with suppliers across infrastructure, energy, water, mobility, buildings, and , turning urgent demand into deployment.
Five forces are changing what cities must buy: hardens infrastructure; the transition rewires it; change how it operates; change reshapes demand; and is a major force in its own right. Its scale and speed are already redefining solar, EVs, and robotics—and will likely do the same in AI.
CLIMATE
CRISIS
Sea Level
Air Temperature
ENERGY +
RESOURCES
430 ppm
Energy Trends
EV Takeup
TECHNOLOGY +
INFRASTRUCTURE
AI Customers
AI Uses
NYC
PEOPLE +
SOCIETY
Population
Developing Markets
Migration Trends
ECONOMY +
GEOPOLITICS
The Gap
Chasm
Hotspots
Cities need a simpler way to procure urban solutions. Invent.City proposes a year-round B2B Trade Mart in FiDi: permanent showrooms that place working systems and their vendors side by side, giving buyers direct evidence for procurement decisions.

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
FiDi’s advantage starts with New York City: the nation’s largest urban market, at the center of a region of 58 million people, and a diverse global capital of finance, media, technology, tourism, and research. FiDi turns vacancy into economic infrastructure. Cushman & Wakefield counted of direct and sublease vacancy across Financial East and Insurance in Q2 2026, giving the Mart room for showrooms, companies, and events. Global visibility, exceptional transit, a working waterfront, and nearby innovation hubs give the Mart its reach and operating advantage. FiDi is a district .
Transit Access
Available Space
Blue Highway / Hubs
Institutional Anchors
Coastal Resilience
Global Recognition
Urban systems cannot be judged from a brochure. Across twelve immersive showrooms, city teams operate each system under real conditions. A common scorecard records performance, integration, emissions, resilience, lifecycle cost, and deployment readiness.
Transport
Reconfigure a full-scale street, then watch how curbs, micromobility, shuttles, charging, transit technology, and wayfinding reshape movement in real time.
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.
New York City already has major initiatives underway in FiDi: Blue Highways and the Downtown Skyport, the FiDi Microhub and curb-management programs, thermal energy and station modernization, commercial waste zones, and coastal resiliency. Invent.City brings this work into one visible district, where the Trade Mart can show progress, surface procurement needs, connect agencies and vendors, and help successful pilots become repeatable systems.
FiDi’s 10.7 MSF of vacant office space across Financial East and Insurance, measured by Cushman & Wakefield in Q2 2026, is the initiative’s strategic advantage. Residential works only where floorplates, cores, light, and economics align — so Invent.City does not compete with it. It completes it. Conversion takes the buildings that can become housing; Invent.City takes the deep floorplates and dark cores that cannot. That is how SoHo and Tribeca became mixed-use districts. Housing alone does not make an economic district.
Phase one starts light. Adapt existing shells, open the spaces that can earn revenue first, and expand only where buyer demand follows. Initial capital funds tenants, demonstrations, and sales instead of a district-wide buildout, while leases, sponsorships, and events begin funding the next phase.
Pedestrianization
Turns traffic corridors into economic and civic space.
The value does not stop at the showroom door. Invent.City brings tenants, buyers, visitors, and investment into FiDi; supports local businesses; funds better streets and public spaces; and improves logistics, sanitation, and public amenities. The Mart grows by making the neighborhood work better. Explore the Mart’s and plan for .
The Trade Mart is physical, but the market is . Events concentrate demand. Media builds trust and reach. Digital showrooms, data rooms, simulations, and AI matching keep evidence, relationships, and next steps moving across time zones.
3. TACTICS
Build the Market Now. Build Out the District Next.
Join Invent.City’s roundtables on , , and . Put your solutions in front of buyers and partners, help shape FiDi’s future, and build awareness through shared insights and stories beyond the room.





Invent.City stages a Future City exhibit presenting two versions of 2050: a shaped by technology, design, and effective policy, and a shaped by delay, climate stress, failing systems, displacement, and surveillance. Together they make the stakes tangible — the choices cities make now decide which one arrives.
New York, 2100
Lagos, 2100
London, 2100
Capital is the gap between interest and deployment — pilots stall because nobody funds the step after them. Invent.City connects investors to the initiative itself, to individual showrooms, to real estate activation, and to the projects buyers commit to.
The Trade Mart needs its suppliers in the room before it needs anything else. Invent.City recruits companies across that sell, buy, finance, insure, design, install, and operate city systems. Founding partners bring products, demand, implementation capacity, and credibility.
Cities are the buyer, the regulator, and the problem owner at once. Invent.City engages public partners at city, state, federal, and international level — as customers, as hosts for demonstrations, and as the source of the problems this market exists to solve.
Evidence and access come from organizations already in the field. Invent.City partners with and that identify needs, build evidence, convene communities, and represent the residents these systems ultimately serve.
Invent.City is evaluating FiDi buildings and public spaces for visibility, access, flexibility, cost, ownership readiness, and event capacity. A three-stage screens for meaningful vacancy, scores Trade Mart suitability, and sorts each property into an anchor, cluster, flex, or pop-up tier. The portfolio expands and contracts with FiDi’s real estate market rather than competing with it.
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 the base tourism, Trade Mart, and real-estate cases. Tourism uses assumptions for visitor volume, visitor mix, length of stay, spending, taxability, economic impact, and jobs. The Mart case uses assumptions for occupied area, job density, wages, procurement, and effective tax rates. The real-estate case uses three MSF with assumptions for rent, operating costs, capitalization, assessment, tax rates, phase-in, and commercial-rent-tax coverage. Gross real-estate capacity is not net incremental revenue: existing assessments, taxes, exemptions, abatements, and transitional values have not been deducted. Sections 4.1–4.3 show the assumptions, formulas, and sources.
| 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 | $160.9M |
| Tourism PIT is excluded pending a separate tourism wage-and-residency model. Jobs scale with direct traveler spending using NYC’s 2025 spending-to-jobs ratio. Scenarios assume 1.25 guests per occupied room and a 75% taxable share of non-hotel spending. | |||
| Trade Mart summary | Base |
|---|---|
| Direct on-site jobsFrom 4.2.2 Details: Table 1, Jobs based on area | 7,000 |
| Direct payroll ($/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 | $1,514,500,000 |
| Note: Direct activity shown here is kept separate from tourism and real-estate modules to reduce double counting. | |
| Real estate summary | Downside | Base | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stabilized leased area (sf)From 4.3.2 Details: Table 1, Leasing assumptions | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Annual rent ($/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. | |||

































