by Benedetta Gillio | Sep 8, 2016 | EducationLabs, Luiss LabGov 2015-2016
On the 5th of March 2016, at the LUISS Campus of Viale Romania, LabGovers came together to discuss and find solution to the problems related to the School Pisacane. They divided themselves in five groups in order to organize the various activities for the days of 8 and 9 April. Each group had it’s own task. This division in groups allowed the labgovers to organize every single aspect of those two days of celebration at the school Pisacane. Two were the main issues of every discussion in each group: the sustainability and the duration of the effects created by the intervention of LabGov at the school Pisacane. The first group focused on different possibilities of games for the children involved in those two days; the second group had to think about a serious matter: cleaning the schoolyard and keep it clean also on the long term. The third group paid 
attention to the communication of the event, by preparing the script for a video that should narrate the event and explain the experimentations made by LabGov. A concrete sign of the intervention of the LabGovers was developed by the fourth group and it is the realization of small gardens for the schoolyard, realized by the children of the school with the help of the LabGovers and the parents and the teachers. The fifth group looked after another relevant feature: the illumination of the schoolyard; this is a problem underlined by the teachers and the parents. This day of reasoning and researches gave the labgovers the opportunity to improve their knowhow in organizing events and in taking care of a common good.
Nella giornata del 5 Marzo, nel Campus Luiss di Viale Romania, i LabGovers si sono riuniti ed insieme hanno organizzato le giornate dell’ 8 e 9 Aprile, nella scuola Pisacane. I due giorni saranno dedicati alla rigenerazione degli spazi costituenti la scuola e della comunità che la vive. Le attività, che verranno svolte dai LabGovers insieme ai bambini, insegnanti, genitori ed associazioni del luogo, saranno le seguenti: rigenerazione del cortile interno, costruzione e cura di orti in cassone, trovare delle soluzioni sostenibili al problema illuminazione, organizzazione dei giochi e video.
by Ornella Martinello | Apr 28, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
On May 5-7 Rome will host “Funding the Cooperative City. New models for community spaces“. The workshop is organized by Eutropian, a planning, policy and research organization helping urban regeneration processes, together with many institutional and private partners. The event aims at discovering new economic models for community-led urban development through experiences and initiatives from Italy and Europe.
Christian Iaione, LabGov founder and director, professor of Public Law at LUISS University, Rome and member of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, will intervene during the first session held on Thursday on “Community financing in collaboration with the Administration“, in dialogue with Stefania De Masi (Cascina Roccafranca, Turin), Annet van Otterloo (Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative, Rotterdam), Jeroen Laven (ZoHo – Stipo, Rotterdam), Massimo Allulli (Area Studi ANCI), Angelo Melpignano (WithYouWeDo Telecom Crowdfunding).
The next two day the two sessions will cover the following themes: “Self-organized financing and management of local resources” and “Workshop on territorial impact“.
Here is the program of the event.
More about Eutropian in our previous article.
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Dal 5 al 7 Maggio, Roma ospiterà “Funding the Cooperative City. New models for community spaces“, workshop organizzato da Eutropian al fine di scoprire, attraverso la condivisione di esperienze italiane ed europee, nuovi modelli economici che sostengano lo sviluppo urbano ad opera della comunità.
Qui il programma dell’evento.
by Cristiano Gatti | Apr 26, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
UrbanMeta represents a large part of the Venetian civil society and stakeholders of the building sector. This network includes economic groups, professionals, universities, trade unions, builders and environmentalists. These actors have decided to be a part of a worktable to face the issues of the government of the area and the land consumption in a multi-disciplinary approach that allows achieving a sustainable growth through urban regeneration processes.
UrbanMeta’s vision is explained by the manifesto “Un Patto per un programma regionale di strategie politiche di Rigenerazione Urbana Sostenibile – Obiettivi e valori per le città venete del futuro” in which it is said that the launch of urban regeneration innovative policies is fundamental and urgent for the cultural, economic, politic and social growth of the Region. In the report, urban regeneration projects aim to:
- Stop the expansion of new building;
- Connect urban areas with rural ones;
- Encourage the use of urban planning and rethinking administrative practices;
- Promote mixité, equity and social inclusion;
- Stimulate citizen participation;
- Innovate building practices;
- Simplify legislation and procedures.
According to this plan, UrbanMeta undertakes to build an integrated system of communication among stakeholders, became the local pivot in this sector, examine the possibilities given by the EU financing programmes and train experts in urban regeneration system. Then, stakeholders ask the Veneto Region to target EU funds at regeneration programmes, to work in Conferenza Stato-Regioni to promote a national legislation and to adopt a regional law on this matter.
UrbanMeta is not the only project in this field, another one is Eutropian. According to the website, it is “a
planning, policy and research organisation helping urban regeneration processes”. They offer assistance to municipalities, NGOs and community groups, policy development and fundraising, cooperation and communication activities. Their specialization concerns “urban regeneration, cultural development, community participation, local economic development and social innovation”. Eutropian offer, also, a multi-disciplinary approach (such as UrbanMeta) that allows activating urban unused resources with the help of experts and citizen knowledge. The main difference with UrbanMeta is about the dimension: Eutropian operates at world level whereas UrbanMeta at local one. This international know-how follows different tiers:
- Environmental Planning: open spaces in urban areas are more than just recreational purposes: they can lead economic local growth in a natural environment. It is possible to bring together offer and demand to a balanced solution for both sides;
- Urban Regeneration: it relates to the involvement of human and financial capital to reuse abandoned industrials sites, cinemas or schools. Regeneration might be the way to discover the potential of the city;
- Cultural Development: the identity and the meaning of a city is done by a “permanent yet constantly changing culture”.
- Smart City: ICT is a tool that can improve our lives, on the condition that it is used wisely. A multi-disciplinary approach is fundamental to reach energy efficiency in buildings, smart grids, digital platform, etc.
To develop local cohesion, Eutropian offers different services: fundraising, international cooperation, project management, participatory planning, policy development and communication.
UrbanMeta and Eutropian’s community-led approach is surely an innovative perspective to face the problem of urban regeneration but there could be some issues.
“Capacity building for community-led regeneration. Facilitating or frustrating public engagement?” by Paul O’Hare is a study of community organization, operating within a UK neighbourhood, supported by an “infrastructure organization”, namely Community Empowerment Network (CEN), a local authority and community and voluntary sector.
According to the author of the paper, the engagement of communities is a revered and integral aspect of governance processes. On the other hand, statutory initiatives raise serious issues although they provide opportunities and support for engagement with the inhabitants of local communities. Moreover, “there was a lack of clarity regarding the definition of “capacity building” but, in broad terms, it refers to the practical support provided to communities to contribute to governance as equal partner, or to enable the wider community to engage in the opportunities provided by economic and social regeneration” (Diamond and Liddle, 2005).
Theoretically, capacity building holds the potential to help communities understand decision-making processes, to communicate more effectively at differing tiers of governance, to take decision, and to eventually “manage their own destinies” (Schuftan, 1996, p. 261). In this case, the focus is turned toward organizational and managerial capacity of local communities to assume responsibility leading regeneration programmes. In practice, capacity building takes a variety of forms, namely, the provision of practical support and the development of skills and structures (Diamond and Liddle, 2005, p.148). A range of agencies, i.d. CENs, may build this capacity: here, CENs, primarily established to help local communities pursue the UK Government’s Neighbourhood, play a supporting, coordinating, representative, policymaking and developmental role for other voluntary and community organization.
This research shows many problems such as:
- Groups can become preoccupied with top-down forms of fiscal and operational accountability rather than bottom-up forms of accountability;
- Partnership established may in fact be manipulated in a variety of manners and to a range of ends (Rowe, 2006):;
- Dilemma of institutionalization;
- Restrictions upon activity of actors are enacted through regulation, incentivisation and surveillance (Richards and Smith, 2002);
- Governance becomes more complex;
- Groups engaged in activities for which they receive payment from the state may neglect the important function of campaigning (result of coercion, self-censorship, lack of time, etc.);
- Funders can be more interested in how money is spent than in the merits of projects;
- Given that the group was spending public money, there were a set of “absolutely legitimate formalities they have to cover” and local government becomes a manifestation of centralised control;
- The group is entirely formed by volunteers that lack the capacity to address problems as and when they arise, so they depend upon the CEN to take care of such issues.
In conclusion, according to this article, we discover that community organisations may develop a significant degree of dependency upon facilitators such as CENs. Thus, there is the risk that capacity becomes something developed rather than built in a linear style. Furthermore, the external initiatives can restrict the autonomy of the community-based groups. These outcomes are very important because they give us the opportunity to understand community-led approach vulnerabilities and a try to improve this policy.
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L’approccio community-led alle pratiche di riqualificazione urbana riscuote un grande successo nelle odierne esperienze di settore. Riprova di questo, sono il network UrbanMeta e l’associazione Eutropian, che seppur in modo diverso, lavorano nel campo della riqualificazione urbana mantenendo salto il riferimento al coinvolgimento della comunità. Il community-led approach, però, mostra però alcune problematicità che si sostanziano principalmente nella dipendenza degli attori locali nei confronti dei facilitatori pubblici.
by Lucia Pizzari | Jan 29, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
How many times have we heard about the “digital divide” problem in our country?
To address this issue, it is necessary to make some clarifications.
Telecommunications networks are divided into access networks and transport networks; the first related to a connection of individual users within a specific area (for example, a town of small or medium size or the town hall of a big city) and the transmission of a relatively small amount of data, while the second, called also network’s “backbone”, related to the connection of large geographical areas and the transport of large amounts of data.
As part of access networks, and in particular their more remote areas called “last mile”, the “digital divide” is defined as the gap between those who have effective access to information technology and those who are excluded.
Due to the difficulty of Internet Service Provider (ISP) business in responding to the growing demand for connectivity in the territory and of the corporate policies of the telecommunications company (geared almost exclusively in generating short-term profits), network users are accustomed to using of asymmetric Internet connectivity services (ADSL). The ADSL has an ability to receive higher network data (download), in relation even 20: 1, compared to that applicant to send (upload). This context, especially in Italy, favors the consumption of IT services generated in the central parts of the network controlled by the ISP business, all this at the expense of a free exchange of information and services between the individual users of the network, places in the network edge and relegated to play the role of mere consumers, in stark contrast with the thinking of one of the founding fathers of Internet, Jonathan Bruce Postel.
For these reasons and due to the spread of new low-cost technologies, such as wi-fi, numerous initiatives have risen in Italy, promoted by small business owners and / or local communities to address the problem of the digital divide.
Among the commercial initiatives stands certainly EOLO, NGI’s network, the largest Italian Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP), which, however, merely offers an asymmetric Internet connectivity in areas not served by ADSL. It is not in fact a long-term solution to the problem (service costs are higher than the average cost of the same services offered via cable).
Among the social initiatives instead, the most interesting was the Noinet one: a no-profit cooperative founded in July 2011 in Lazio region thanks to the meeting between Pierluigi Paoletti (former President of the circuit of solidarity economy “Arcipelago SCEC”) and Remo Tabanelli (Member of ISOC Italy and expert in computer security and telecommunications). The cooperative, based solely on the economic resources (dues) and the logistics (the roofs) of its members and young volunteer graduates from the University Roma Tre, has created an independent wireless network infrastructure, offering service to almost all of its members, distinguishing itself from a technical point of view (the cooperative has provided members a broadband symmetrical Internet connectivity) and also a cultural point of view (based on the idea of the Internet as a “commons”).
Another very interesting experience entirely Italian is Ninux: a community of professionals and amateurs of telecommunications that created a wi-fi “mesh” that interconnects all its members. The network, however, does not provide any services to Internet connectivity but it is limited to ensure the free exchange of information between the only members of the community.
Initiatives as those of Noinet, Ninux and generally speaking of Wireless Community Networks (WCN) are all experiences laudable but unable to tackle and solve the problem of the digital divide.
To determine the success or failure of an attempt rather than the other is the interest that animates his actors.
If the interest in building a telecommunication network is to achieve a particular benefit, both in the case of the largest ISP with a dominant position in the market (TIM) or smaller WISPs (NGI), compared with a very high social cost, anyway it delivers a range of connectivity unable to meet the demands of the territories. In fact all commercial initiatives if following a logic of profit and profitably selling their services tend to make a scarce resource, the band, which in itself would be unlimited.
In contrast, the social initiatives aimed at achieving long-term solutions are animated only by an interest in utilitarian (users self-organize) or cultural interest (engineers that do by themselves) are not equally able to pursue their goals as incapable of doing (or not interested in doing) business and managing a real company of TLC.
That is why now more than ever it is necessary to recover the meaning of “commons” and the Internet as a commons. The network problem is not solved today by the “private” as it has not been solved in the past by the “public”. Only a non-profit initiative that sees the active participation and common interest of both sectors can address and resolve long-term problem of the digital divide in Italy.
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“Il digital divide rappresenta un problema molto sentito oggi nel nostro Paese. Gli Internet Service Provider commerciali non sono in grado di dare risposta alla sempre più crescente domanda di connettività proveniente dal territorio. Per questo motivo e grazie alla diffusione di nuove tecnologie a basso costo (come il wi-fi) sono sempre più numerose le iniziative in Italia che cercano di abbattere il divario digitale; alcune di queste sono di carattere commerciale (ad es. EOLO), altre di carattere sociale (ad es. NOInet). Per far si che tentativi simili abbiano lunga vita, occorre recuperare il significato di ‘bene comune’ e considerare Internet come bene comune”.
by Marco Quaglia | Jul 13, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
“Praise be to you, my lord” is the recently published encyclical written by Pope Francis. The sub-title is “on care for our common home”. “Care” and “common” made a ring bell here at LabGov, so we decided to take our time to read the text carefully and critically in order to understand the point of view of the Pope on these topics.
To be very clear the whole encyclical embrace many topics, spirituality and faith of course, but the whole structure is organized to put at the center our “common home”: the Earth. In the 6 chapters, the Pope challenges mainstream paradigms of our society, such as consumerism, short-termism and industrialisation at all costs. Climate change, water scarcity, air pollution and loss of biodiversity are just some of the consequences underlined.
More interesting to us, as LabGov, is when the analysis moves to human activities. Along these lines, on chapter 4, it is launched the concept of “cultural ecology”. Citing from the encyclical: “together with the patrimony of nature, there is also and historic, artistic and cultural patrimony (…). This patrimony is a part of the shared identity of each place and a foundation upon which to build habitable city” (par.143).
This ecology is worth considering and needs to be fostered. It is the ecology of our daily life that makes us work for an “integral improvement” in the setting of our lives: our home, our workplace and our neighbourhoods. According to Francis, mega cities, the experience of overcrowding and social anonymity are creating social bombs within our societies; a communitarian salvation is possible only through creative ideas. Taking into consideration how important is the interrelationship between living space and human behaviour, often to save a building or a neighbourhood, can be enough to save a community. The same can be said for the necessity to protect common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes (par.149-150-151).
Another issue is the one of the importance of a re-balance between politics and economy; specifically in the light of our institutional framework. The Pope reminds us the principle of subsidiarity “which grants freedom to develop the capabilities present at every level of society, while also demanding a greater sense of responsibility for the common good” (par.196).
The last part of the encyclical is devoted to the “environmental education” of a new “ecological citizenship”. Little daily actions can contribute directly to the world around us; among those cited – less consumption, social housing and so forth – there is, interestingly, car-pooling as an example of a successful sharing economy practice.
At the end of the day, the encyclical is an interesting read and a must read for all of us. It draws fully from a vast literature – religious and scientific – offering a fresh and inspiring insight on some of the most debated topics of our time. In particular, the focus on life in the cities – with the care and regeneration of urban landscapes, the re-thinking of common spaces and the development of sharing economy practices – is a much welcomed news for LabGov and the international community we are part of.
To read the encyclical: full text
“Laudato Si’” è il titolo della nuova enciclica di Papa Francesco. Il testo, di ampio respiro, prova a mettere in discussione il modello di sviluppo della nostra epoca a favore di una nuova ecologia integrale. Secondo il Papa, è necessario ribaltare questo modello con il fine ultimo di salvare la nostra casa comune, il pianeta. Interessante è l’attenzione dimostrata per le tematiche familiari anche a LabGov e la sua comunità internazionale: la vita nelle città, la cura degli spazi pubblici, e la promozione di pratiche di sharing economy. Sono queste le pratiche che, secondo il Papa, dovrebbero diffondersi tra i nuovi cittadini ecologici.
Marco Quaglia
On the 5th of March 2016, at the LUISS Campus of Viale Romania, LabGovers came together to discuss and find solution to the problems related to the School Pisacane. They divided themselves in five groups in order to organize the various activities for the days of 8 and 9 April. Each group had it’s own task. This division in groups allowed the labgovers to organize every single aspect of those two days of celebration at the school Pisacane. Two were the main issues of every discussion in each group: the sustainability and the duration of the effects created by the intervention of LabGov at the school Pisacane. The first group focused on different possibilities of games for the children involved in those two days; the second group had to think about a serious matter: cleaning the schoolyard and keep it clean also on the long term. The third group paid 
attention to the communication of the event, by preparing the script for a video that should narrate the event and explain the experimentations made by LabGov. A concrete sign of the intervention of the LabGovers was developed by the fourth group and it is the realization of small gardens for the schoolyard, realized by the children of the school with the help of the LabGovers and the parents and the teachers. The fifth group looked after another relevant feature: the illumination of the schoolyard; this is a problem underlined by the teachers and the parents. This day of reasoning and researches gave the labgovers the opportunity to improve their knowhow in organizing events and in taking care of a common good.
