by Rok Kranjc | Nov 6, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
World Game Seminar at New York Studio School (1969, New York). Courtesy of Stanford University Libraries Special Collections
»Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone« – Buckminster Fuller[1]
»Imagine a future where cities are modeled, tested, designed, and reshaped through interactive, collaborative games« – Ekim Tan[2]
In recent years there has been a major upsurge in theories around and prefigurative experimentation with various alternative institutional models (e.g. commons-based urban co-governance, platform cooperativism, alternative currencies,[3] universal basic assets,[4] circular economy) that challenge the unquestionability of the neoliberal narrative[5] and reflect and integrate to various degrees new and old ideas about possible alternative forms of societal and political economic organization. The many (political) challenges associated with the uptake, experimentation with and scaling of such path-deviant models have prompted parallell developments of more nuanced theories around innovation and institutional change,[6] as well as the articulation and development of novel techniques, tools and platforms that may help incite and facilitate transformations towards sustainability.
With regard to the latter, sustainability foresight is increasingly recognized as a key component. Foresight in short entails various typically participatory and transdisciplinary engagements – e.g. in the form of creating visions, scenarios, backcasts and transition pathways – that help actors better understand and account for possible futures and the processes of change, so that wiser preferred futures and pathways can be created.[7] Additionally, developments in experiential futures and speculative design,[8] generative city gaming[9] and internet and communications technologies (ICTs) enabled network foresight[10] have begun to outline exciting new possibilities of more engaging, strategic, cross-scale, multi-actor, collaborative and anticipatory (i.e. futures oriented) forms of deliberation, cosmopolitan city-making and governance.
Two concepts crucial to zoom in here are anticipatory governance and global foresight commoning. Anticipatory governance may denote practices that involve tools, systems and open knowledge platforms that empower futures-inquiry and futures-making by enabling the smaller and larger scale pre-imagining and exploration of dynamics of change and near and distant future possibilities and in turn informing the development of strategies, pathways, policies, designs and experiments.[11] Global foresight commons has been taken up by some scholars as a concept denoting »a network of globally distributed and shared resources between people, institutions, businesses and other communities, which provides an increasing and useful pool of knowledge, ideas and capabilities that potentiate all of humanity’s capacity to think about shared futures in effective ways.«[12]
While as of yet largely speculative and/or experimental, in very recent years projects have emerged that may be considered as prefigurations or components of more integrated, cross-scale, polycentric and collaborative foresight, knowledge, design and governance supporting systems, i.e. systems that support »wiki-commoning«,[13] social innovation, policymaking, socio-technical-ecological transition design[14] and reflexive transition management.[15] Interesting existing examples of such projects include:
- Seeds of Good Anthropocenes: a repository that maps more than a hundred initial case studies, and allows, by means of a questionnaire-type interface, for the crowdsourcing of ‘seeds’, i.e. initiatives, at least in prototype form, that represent diverse »social, technological, economic, or social–ecological ways of thinking or doing.«[16]
- TRANSIT Critical Turning Points: a platform that contains a database and global map of social innovation initiative case studies, and an overview of ‘critical turning points’; i.e. the »breakthroughs, setbacks, and surprises« concerning their emergence and development.[17]
- Open Futures Library: a »publically contributed, indexed, searchable collection of future scenarios and other images of the future.«[18]
- Play the City: a transdisciplinary research organization and online platform that researches, develops with urban stakeholders, and offers a database of games around issues such as urban transformation, social change, smart cities, and sharing and circular economy.[19]
- Foresight Engine: a »platform for engaging various publics in rapid conversation about pressing issues of the future, using basic game dynamics to make it fun and encourage participation.«[20]
The Co-Cities project’s Commoning.city (www.commoning.city) platform may also be regarded as a possible prefigurative constitutent of such systems, which, much akin to Seeds of Good Anthropocenes, counts more than a hundred initial case studies and offers a global map and questionnaire-based crowdsourcing of new entries, albeit with an explicit focus on forms of collaborative city-making and participatory urban governance, and the teasing out, application and refining of institutional design principles for the urban commons.[21]
Numerous questions regarding such systems however remain, of which, to conclude, I outline some of the most pertinent:
(1) In what ways may such and other (digital and/or face-to-face) tools and platforms complement each other in creating more robust and comprehensive toolboxes, or pooling, co-creative and moderation systems; e.g. linking »seed« case studies, designs, design principles and repositories; existing scenarios and other tools for and ways of expressing, experiencing, exploring, playing and experimenting with possible, plausible, probable, desirable, utopian, dystopian, heterotopic and other alternative futures (e.g. films, games, theatrical performances, comics, interactive virtual reality experiences, and artefacts from the future); with ICT enabled network capabilities; new tool and content generation; transition pathway mapping; »citizen sensing«,[22] simulations of (gl-)urban socio-ecological metabolisms; and value and »strong sustainability«[23] based service and product design; in virtuous cycles of open sharing, co-production, experimentation and co-evolution?
(2) In what ways and by what means can lessons learned from such endeavors be transposed to the real world by trandisciplinary communities of practice?[24]
(3) How can such engagements commensurate different interests, worldviews and ways of knowing, and/or make any inherent tensions, discomforts and knowledge gaps productive?[25]
(4) Whose and what kinds of »transformative capacities«[26] are being and can be developed through the use of such approaches, and how do and can these contribute to smaller and wider transformative change?
(5) In what ways may these approaches represent new »emancipatory and egalitarian modalities of politics«[27] and cosmopolitan forms of city-making,[28] and how may these correspond to (i.e. be in conflict with, compliment, transform) existing institutional and actor constellations, norms, roles, responsibilities and power relations?
(6) What are the useful and appropriate forms of analysis, moderation, transposition, codification and meta-data enrichment of small and larger scale workshop, interview, questionnaire, deliberative poll, scenario, game-play, etc., results, for various applications in open knowledge pooling and (co-)creation?
(7) How can »seeds«, theories of change, design tools, etc., be integrated in the form of engaging game based, network enabled, and other (hybrid?) practices of foresight? How can and/or should the mechanics, design and set-up of these today account for and/or incorporate the politics of transformations towards sustainability?[29]
(8) What kinds of tools can enable the evaluation and (re-)combination (through »bricolage«) and multi-tier scaling (i.e. scaling up, out and deep)[30] of »seeds« or social innovations to foster more future-fit, multi-dimensional and complex socio-ecological systems oriented experiments, transition pathways and institutional alternatives?
(9) Assuming that today radical transformations are necessary to stay within surmisable planetary boundaries,[31] how can the design and set-up of such tools, systems and platforms ensure that co-creation involving different stakeholders is deliberatively yet normatively geared towards path-deviant and more radical innovation, rather than path-dependency and the status quo?
(10) Can immersive and confrontational experiential futures (e.g. confronting actors with ‘voices of future generations’,[32] or undesirable socio-ecological futures extrapolated from scenarios and simulations of continued status quo) accelerate (social, political, economic, etc.) paradigm shifts, and what may be the ramifications of such tactics and strategies?
[1] Fuller, B. (1971). The World Game: Integrative Resource Utilization Planning Tool. World Resources Inventory. Carbondale.
[2] https://dezwijger.nl/programma/the-future-of-urban-gaming.
[3] https://roarmag.org/essays/moneylab-conference-alternative-currencies/.
[4] https://medium.com/institute-for-the-future/universal-basic-assets-abb08ca2f0fc.
[5] Longhurst et al. (2017) Experimenting with alternative economies: four emergent counter-narratives of urban economic development. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 22, 69–74
[6] Haxeltine et al. (2016). TRANSIT WP3 Deliverable D3.3 – A Second Prototype of TSI Theory. http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/resource-hub/transit-wp3-deliverable-d33-a-second-prototype-of-tsi-theory-deliverable-no-d33.
[7] Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, 10(1), 4–21.
[8] Dunne, A., & F. Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge & London: MIT Press; Candy, S. (2010). The Futures of Everyday Life: Politics and the Design of Experiential Scenarios (PhD thesis). School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
[9] Tan, E. (2016) The Evolution of City Gaming. In: Portugali J., Stolk E. (eds) Complexity, Cognition, Urban Planning and Design. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham; Schouten, B., Ferri, G., de Lange, M. & K. Millenaar (2017). Games as Strong Concepts for City-Making. Playable Cities, Gaming Media and Social Effects; Other interesting examples of ‘commons transition’ games include Utopoly (http://www.neilcummings.com/content/utopoly), Transition Ingredients Cards (https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/transition-ingredients-cards-english-italian-chinese/) and C@rds in Common (http://www.bollier.org/blog/crds-common-learning-about-commons-through-play).
[10] Ramos, J.M, Mansfield, T. & G. Priday (2012). Foresight in a Network Era: Peer-producing Alternative Futures. Journal of Futures Studies, 17(1), 71–90; Raford, N. (2014). Online foresight platforms: Evidence for their impact on scenario planning & strategic foresight. Technological Forecasting & Social Change (97): 65–76.
[11] Ramos, J.M. (2014). Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design. Journal of Futures Studies, 19(1), 35–52; Boyd, E., Borgstrom, S., Nykvist, B., & I.A. Stacewicz (2015). Anticipatory governance for social-ecological resilience. Ambio, (44): 149–161.; Ravetz, J. (2017). From “smart” cities to “wise”: synergistic pathways for collective urban intelligence, JPI Urban Europe – Urban Transition Pathways Symposium; http://actionforesight.net/anticipatory-governance-and-the-city-as-a-commons/.
[12] http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_a_global_foresight_commons/.
[13] Iaione, C. (2016). The CO-City: Sharing, Collaborating, Cooperating, and Commoning in the City. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 75(2): 415-455.
[14] Irwin, T. (2016). Transition Design: A Proposal for a New Area of Design Practice, Study, and Research. Design and Culture, 7(2), 229–246.
[15] Voß, J., & B. Bornemann (2011). The politics of reflexive governance: challenges for designing adaptive management and transition management. Ecology and Society 16(2): 9
[16] Bennett et al. (2016). Bright spots: seeds of a good Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(8): 441–448.; https://goodanthropocenes.net/.
[17] http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/discover-our-cases; http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/sii
[18] http://openfutures.net/; see also Priday, G., Mansfield, T., & J.M. Ramos (2014). The Open Futures Library: One Step Toward a Global Foresight Commons? Journal of Futures Studies, 18(4): 131–142.
[19] https://www.playthecity.nl/; http://gamesforcities.com/.
[20] http://www.iftf.org/foresightengine/.
[21] http://www.commoning.city/; see also https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2017/08/20/ostrom-city-design-principles-urban-commons/.
[22] Gabrys, J. (2014) Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(1): 30 – 48
[23] Hobson, K. (2013). “Weak” or “Strong” Sustainable Consumption? Efficiency, Degrowth, and the 10 Year Framework of Programmes. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 31(6), 1082–1098
[24] Cundill, G., Roux, D. J., & J. N. Parker (2015). Nurturing communities of practice for transdisciplinary research, Ecology and Society, 20(2): 22.
[25] Vervoort et al. (2015). Scenarios and the art of worldmaking. Futures (74): 62–70.
[26] Wolfram, M., Frantzeskaki, N., & S. Maschmeyer (2016) Cities, systems and sustainability: status and perspective of research on urban transformations, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (22): 18–25.
[27] Swyngedouw, E. (2016). Unlocking the mind-trap: politicising urban theory and practice. Urban Studies, 54(1): 55-61
[28] Manzini, E., & M. K. M Rithaa (2016). Distributed Systems And Cosmopolitan Localism: An Emerging Design Scenario For Resilient Societies. Sustainable Development, 24(5): 275–280
[29] Patterson et al. (2016). Exploring the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 1–16; Avelino, et al. (2016). The Politics of Sustainability Transitions. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 18(5): 557–567
[30] Moore, M.-L., Ridell, D. & D. Vocisano (2015) Scaling Out, Scaling Up, Scaling Deep: Strategies of Non-profits in Advancing Systemic Social Innovation. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship No. 58, Large Systems Change: An Emerging Field of Transformation and Transitions (June 2015), 67–84; Olsson, P., M.-L. Moore, F. R. Westley, & D. D. P. McCarthy (2017). The concept of the Anthropocene as a game-changer: a new context for social innovation and transformations to sustainability. Ecology and Society 22(2):31.
[31] Steffen et al. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223): 1259855
[32] Y. Kamijo, A. Komiya, N. Mifune & T. Saijo (2017) Negotiating with the future: incorporating imaginary future generations into negotiations, Sustainability Science, 12, 409-420.
Un focus sul gaming applicato ai nuovi modelli di collaborazione tra gli attori operanti a livello urbano, uno sguardo sui progetti sperimentali già attivi a livello internazionale, e alcune domande aperte sui tool digitali che sono emersi e quelli che emergeranno.
by Giulia Ganugi | Oct 23, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
Credits: pictures from http://www.socialstreet.it
Four years ago, in September 2013, the Facebook group Residenti in Via Fondazza – Bologna was born: after a fast growth of its members and thank to a strong mediatic interest, the group triggered the Social Street phenomenon. The Social Street is a form of neighbourhood communities, whose purpose is to «promote socialization between neighbours in the same street in order to build relationships, to interchange needs, to share expertise and knowledges, to implement common interest projects, with common benefits from a closer social interaction […] It is a no-profit activity with social purpose. Social Street is not pursuing any political, religious, ideological view. It brings people together with the sole criterion of the proximity between area residents»[1].
Indeed, since every group is organized around a specific urban area – street, square, park, part of neighbourhood – the territory takes on strong importance, because it becomes the basis for the construction of a shared identity among Social Street members. These ones share, moreover, three main values:
- Sociality;
- Gratuitousness;
- Inclusion.
The sociality, as well as being the primary need from which the experience was born, also becomes the most important goal to reach. All the initiatives organized have the single purpose to stimulate citizens in socialising and participating in common projects. Semantically the gift implies gratitude and allows to activate virtuous circles of reciprocity and trust[2]; in addition, every donated goods and services implies a bonding value[3]. Lastly, the access to Social Street is open to everyone for total participation, regardless any ethnical, political or religious differences.
Currently there are 397 Social Street in Italy and 8 abroad – Portugal, Netherlands, Poland, US, Canada, Brasil and New Zealand. In Italy they spread more in the North and gradually less in the Centre-South of the country: Milan 86, Bologna 67, Rome 45, Palermo 21 (data are updated on 13/10/2017). Among all neighbourhood groups there is a huge diversity due to:
- geographical position;
- collocation within cities;
- birth year;
- type of activities;
- internal/external governance.
Here what I want to focus on is the external governance, meaning the relational network established by every Social Street with other socio-political subjects of the territory, such as the Municipality, the local administrative institutions and any other kind of associations belonging to civil society. From the beginning Social Street groups chose different approach to deal with this issue. The website, opened by the first Social Street’s founders, underlines that reaching the goal of sociality does not require funding, private spaces to be rent or any formal collaborations with municipalities. Therefore some group decide to follow strictly these guidelines and maintain just an informal dialogue with other urban actors. The fear to be exploited by public administration and the will not to be identified as a possible solution to local collective problems affect this choice as well. On the contrary, other groups that engage in urban regeneration or participatory projects feel the necessity to collaborate closely with public administrations, sometimes even applying for common projects with other civil society actors.
The structure arising from these practices recall the concept of multi-level governance, namely new forms of state power organization based on a double process: an increase in the distribution of power between different levels of government and the creation of policy making coalitions that only in part consist of representatives of the state, opening the participation to private and civil actors[4]. These network-based forms of governance, though, do not always have codified rules and regulations that shape or define participation and identify the exact domains or arenas of power. On the one hand, such absence of codification potentially permits socially innovative forms of organisation and of governing; on the other hand, it also opens up a vast terrain of contestation and potential conflict[5]. The innovation occurs when bottom-linked governance is achieved, that is when bottom-up initiatives combine with top-down policies, including alternative mechanisms of negotiation between various groups and networks, potentially empowering local government and embracing who disagrees with mainstream policy formulation and who presents alternative creative strategies[6]. In Italy, already in 2001, the constitutional reform of Title V – Article 118 – defined the principle of horizontal subsidiarity, underlining the support that State, regions and municipalities must give to the free exercise of general interest activities by citizens as individual and as organizations. Moreover, in 2014 the City of Bologna implemented the Regulation on civic collaboration for the urban commons, that allows to establish collaborations between local governments and citizens in order to care, re-generate and manage urban commons, tangible and intangible, functional to the individual and collective wellbeing.
Going back to Social Streets, there are many examples of both choices.
The first Social Street, Residenti in Via Fondazza, strongly claims its independence from every type of stable and formalized relationship with the public administration. This choice, nevertheless, does not prevent its members from organizing many activities and events for the realization of which they regularly ask for permissions about public spaces’ use to the City of Bologna. One of the services that this group has implemented is a system of bike sharing, after the request to the public administration to install more bicycle parking spots. Some residents have offered unused bicycles to the neighbours; now these bicycle are identified by a signboard saying that they belong to the Social Street. When one of the members needs a bicycle, he/she can directly ask for the key to the greengrocer of Via Fondazza, use the bicycle until he/she needs it and bring it back to the square at the end.
Credits: picture from the Facebook group “Residenti in via Fondazza – Bologna”
From three years, Via Fondazza is also the location of Muri Di Versi, an event of poetry, music and culture aiming to animate the surrounding area and to invite everyone to socialise exchanging every existing type of art.
Credits: picture from the Facebook group “Residenti in Via Fondazza – Bologna”
Similarly, one of the Social Streets in Verona, Residenti in Via Venti Settembre, refused the Municipality request to work closely for drawing a call for new Social Street creation. Furthermore, even if the members adopted a garden placed along the street and the small building inside it as location for their weekly meetings, taking care of both regularly, they prefer to ask the City for permission about public space use each time, instead of setting a permanent collaboration.
Credits: picture from Facebook group “Residenti in via Venti Settembre – Verona – Social Street”
Opposite attitude characterizes decisions taken by other groups. Another Social Street of Bologna, Residenti in Via Duse, was the first group of citizens to sign a collaboration pact with the Municipality through the Regulation mentioned above. Thanks to this partnership, citizens have obtained the possibility to use and take care of a public notice board, otherwise left unused, for advertising their activities/events/projects and for exchanging useful information. Moreover, they managed to associate with other civil actors active in the same urban area, such as a neighbourhood committee and a cooperative of architects, in order to develop together participatory projects and to rent an indoor space where to gather in.
Credits: picture from Facebook group “Residenti in Via Duse e dintorni Bologna – Social Street”
Similar is the case of Residenti in Via San Pio X, Social Street in Trento, where the members, animated by strong interest in networking with the local area and in spreading a conception of common management for public spaces, are collaborating with public institutions and many associations and schools. They took care of regenerating a public wall along the street; since one year and a half they garden regularly local flowerbeds; a notice board and a book-crossing library have been installed. Besides, the Social Street implemented a project within schools, spreading among students the idea of active citizenship and of common responsibility towards the local territory.
Credits: picture from Facebook group “Residenti in via San Pio X e dintorni Trento – Social Street”
Preferring to avoid the use of money, other Social Streets simply signed the collaboration pact with their own Municipality: it is the case of Residenti in Via Pitteri, in Ferrara, for example, where members, among many other activities, take care of a little urban area and a park, receiving in exchange from the City the material to keep it clean and the maintenance necessary for structures.
Credits: picture from Facebook group “Residenti in via Pitteri e dintorni – a Ferrara”
In conclusion, Social Streets can take different directions when they network within the city. This does not mean though that the groups, not willing to establish collaborations, are less careful about the local territory or about collective needs, but it only means that the latter are diverse in every context. Different are also the population living in a specific area, services offered by public institutions or third sector, the geographical configuration of the space. Therefore, it is unreasonable to identify the most efficient practice, rather it is important not to forget an analysis of geographical, social, economic and political aspects of local contexts, considering the path-dependence rooted in every Social Street and, generally, in every bottom-up movement.
Il fenomeno Social Street ha appena compiuto quattro anni dalla nascita del primo gruppo di residenti. Dopo una breve introduzione riguardo ai principali valori alla base dell’idea, in questa riflessione si vuole portare l’attenzione sulla differenza che caratterizza i vari gruppi. In particolare, i diversi approcci con cui ogni Social Street si rapporta alla pubblica amministrazione e agli attori di terzo settore, delineando diversi assetti di governance.
[1] http://www.socialstreet.it/
[2] Riccardo Prandini, 1998, Le radici fiduciarie del legame sociale, Milano: Franco Angeli.
[3] Jacques T. Godbout and Alain C. Caillè, 1998, The World of the Gift, Canada; McGillQueen University’s Press.
[4] Pradel M, Garcìa M. & Eizaguirre S., 2013, Theorizing multi-level governance in social innovation dynamics. In: Moulaert F., MacCallum D., Mehmood A. & Hamdouch Abdelillah (Eds.), The International Handbook on Social Innovation. Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research, pp. 155-168, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
[5] Swyngedouw E., 2005, Governance Innovation and The Citizen: The Janus Face of Governace-beyond-the-state, Urban Studies, 42 (11), 1991-2006.
[6] Eizaguirre S, Pradel M., Terrones A., Matinez-Celorrio X., Garcìa M., 2012, Multilevel Governance and Social Cohesion: Bringing Back Conflict in Citizenship Practice, Urban Studies, 49 (9), 1999-2016.
by Chiara De Angelis | Oct 2, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
The ERSCP Conference (see: www.erscp.eu) is the annual european convenings of scholars and policy makers addressing the issue of Sustainability in both industrial production and consumption, taking place since 1994.
The 2017 edition of the Conference is taking place in Skiathos Island, Greece, from 1st to 5th of October 2017 and is organized by the Environmental Economics and Sustainability Unit, Sector of Industrial Management & Operational Research, and the School of Mechanical Engeneering of the National Technical University of Athens. This year, the conference addresses the issue of green production and green consumption challenges in the framework of the circular economy, with a special attention to smart cities. The main themes of the conference can be summarized in the following categories: circular economy; zero-waste management; eco-innovation; eco-design; eco-efficiency; advances in sustainable consumption; sustainability in production and design; food waste prevention; challenges for making progress in cross-cutting themes such as green and inlcusive entrepreneurship and sustainability; ethical investments.
The Sessions number 3 is focused on sustainable/smart cities and smart communities. It includes contributions on the enterpreneurship in urban areas, case studies of political ecology and socio-environmental conflicts in Germany and social innovation and practicing of sustainability transitions in Dutch eco-villages, cooperative urban development with a focus on a case study of the Smart City Project of Graaz and an analysis of urban spatial scenarios for local energy and transport systems with regional integrated models. In this Session, Enea and LabGov will present a paper titled “Empowering Urban Community Towards Smart district co-governance”, introducing the theoretical framework and the first results of the three-years research program on Smart City and Smart Community funded by the Ministry of Economic Development that ENEA (the National Agency for Research on Renewable Energy) is carrying out at the national level, with the collaboration of LabGov for the part related to the urban co-governance at the district level and to an applied experimentation in the city of Rome.
The paper introduces the national strategic projects for energy transition funded through the Fund for Research into Electrical Systems (RSE), that covered the following aspects: technical, economic, organizational and institutional aspects associated with the sustainable development of the Italian electrical power network and related infrastructures (safe and effective use of primary sources of energy and of hydrogen as energy vector; power generation, transport and distribution, and end-use energy efficiency). The paper than introduces the Three-Years Plan (2016-2018), a part of this program that provides a specific task devoted to the empowerment of urban communities for the development of Smart solutions and Smart district co-governance. This task consists of two main activities: the development of technological infrastructure named SUN (Social urban Network) and the implementation of collaborative processes applying the urban co-governance methodology to the district level and thecircular economy approach with the involvement of urban inhabitants and local stakeholders. In the final part, the paper then develops a reasoning over the connection between urban co-governance at the district level and the issue of circular economy and collaborative economy.
Thanks to a cooperative approach and to resource sharing solutions it is possible to reach a mutual competitive advantage. In particular, the implementation of collaborative processes intends to strengthen the capacity of citizens and local stakeholders to participate in the decisions and to the local government. The engagement in the design and the implementation of community services has the ambition to reduce the energy-related environmental impact of the urban community. Example of co-designed solutions could be: sharing/collaborative/pooling economy and co-production of services initiatives/platforms (i.e. re-use centers, cohousing or shared use of spaces in housing complexes, co-working spaces, community gardens, foodbank, etc.) and experiences of smart waste-management. The paper than explains the design of the field-work to be realized in the city of Rome where, following an urban-living-lab approach based on circular economy principle and on a Quintuple Helix Model of urban co-governance, urban inhabitants and local stakeholders will be engaged in co-designing different solutions to transform the current “linear” system into a circular economy models at a district scale. This phase will be realized in the Fifth District of the City of Rome, where in the framework of the Smart City and Smart Community project and with the involvement of young students from the Soft Skills program of LUISS University, LabGov, a two years mapping, practicing and co-design phase was already implemented in the context of the Co-Rome process (see: www.co-roma.it).
The conference has a rich program, including keynotes speeches from international scholars and policy makers. Among the keynotes, Dr. Paolo Taticchi from Imperical College of London on the bssiness case for sustainability; the Ministry of Infrastructures and the Environment of the Netherlands, Robbert Droop, will explain how the process and policies towards a circular economy lead to major knowledge questions; Anna Davies, Principal Investigator of the SHARECITY: Assessing the practice and sustainability potential of city-based food sharing economies. The research project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) program, investigates the landscape of ICT-mediated urban food sharing and provided a database with information for over 4000 cases available in an open access format here: http://sharecity.ie/sharecity100-database-use/; Nancy Bocken, who will talk about sustainable business models and sustainable consumption, exploring the role of business experimentation.
Information and material of the conference are available here: erscp2017.eu.
ENEA e LabGov presenteranno il paper “Empowering Urban Community Towards Smart district co-governance” alla conferenza ERSCP 2017, che avrà luogo nell’isola di Skiathos, Grecia, dal primo al 5 ottobre 2017. La conferenza è interamente dedicata alla “green production” e alle sfide della “green consumption” nell’ambito dell’economia circolare, con particolare riguardo all’argomento Smart Cities.
