“Co-management city assets to improve the quality of democracy” – included within the report “A look at democratic experiments across Europe.”
Luiss professor Iaione calls “administrative collaborative democracy” the idea to establish civic collaborations with local communities, governments, businesses, academics and NGOs.
European cities and their residents are increasingly using collaborative tools which allow inhabitants to participate in the design and management of city assets, a practice which, according to experts, can create more democratic societies and markets.
The aim is to involve residents in the decision-making process and management of city assets or urban commons: “it’s not about just participating in local governments, but it’s about sharing the management of and co-owning the services and assets with city inhabitants.”
Turin’s Bee Ozanam, once a factory, has been turned into a multi-purpose building, comprising also a temporary house for migrants, a restaurant run by disadvantaged workers and a rooftop community garden. This example is the result of community initiatives aiming to regenerate the place. The regeneration process was funded through the ” Co-City” project, under the EU Urban Innovative Action programme.
The aim of the project was to promote collaboration between the local administration and citizens for the shared management and regeneration of urban commons.
We want to thank Silvia Ellena of Euractive for the interview.
In order to grasp an initial idea of what City Science Initiative is, it can be asserted that it is a program activated within the Joint Research Center of the European Commission which connects cities and urban contexts with science (therefore mainly universities) through a network of so-called City Science Offices (CSOs) that will be discussed in the following paragraph and that can have different configurations according to the city where they are located.
Professor Iaione explains that “a handful of European municipalities are experimenting with an organizational innovation: City Science Offices (CSOs). While CSOs are not a public-private-people partnership themselves, they are an organizational innovation that can create multi-actor partnerships, or they can be part of one. The phenomenon is still in its infancy, so it is too soon to tell, but it definitely is an innovation to keep under close observation”. (1)
In particular, it can be useful to know which cities are trying to connect innovation, technology and knowledge with urban policies to be implemented wisely, with the purpose of shortening the gap between the civil society, academia and decision-makers and to share best practices.
“Five cities lead each of the five working topics of the City Science Initiative:
– Air Quality (Paris)
– Circular Economy (Hamburg)
– Mental Health (Thessaloníki)
– Sustainable Mobility (Cluj-Napoca)
– Tech and the City (Reggio Emilia)” (2)
and major attention could be paid to the Italian case. This last example of the city in the Emilia-Romagna region can be helpful in understanding which role these offices can play: the CSO of Reggio Emilia is “a research unit in the field of urban and social innovation [also involving] three young researchers from Luiss Guido Carli University of Rome”. (3) The city is part of the broader network of municipalities “recognizing the importance of science, research and technology for the development of territories and thus implementing a structured approach to evidence-based decision-making”. (4)
Undoubtedly, such an approach to policy-making cannot avoid to consider the principle of environmental and climate sustainability: nowadays, these issues find juridical references, from the supranational level to local contexts and administrations, as well as a perceived social urgency increased by the energy crisis that has been going on for a very relevant time. In this regard, Berni, De Franco and Levi write that “the energy issue represents a fundamental challenge for the Italian public administrations as decisive players in promoting the creation of energy communities based on close collaboration with private sectors, associations and citizens. Based on previous experience focus on co-design and co-management of urban commons, Reggio Emilia has activated a pilot experimentation of renewable energy communities at neighbourhood level through the scientific support of the City Science Office, a research unit coordinated by the municipality with the collaboration of the Luiss University of Rome and the manager of the Open Laboratory at the Cloisters of San Pietro”. (5)
Furthermore, it is more and more incontrovertible that cities represent fundamental places of experimentation for the fight against climate change and to foster measures for the transition towards low-carbon economies that can achieve the fundamental objectives of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. Therefore, the assessment of the carbon impact of public policies represents a decisive challenge for local authorities which implies the search for tools of analysis useful for directing strategies and actions in territories. Certainly, science can play a role and in particular the City Science Office of Reggio Emilia can be better understood under these lenses:
“The unit is made up of three researchers mainly in the legal field with the task of developing applied research in the Reggio area with respect to three main themes:
a) administrative and social innovation, investigating the methods and tools useful for promoting collaboration between the private world and local communities in the context of activities of general interest promoted by the public body;
b) digital innovation aimed at achieving carbon neutrality through evaluation and strategic guidance tools for public policies;
c) eco-environmental transition to support the experimentation of collaborative governance models and related tools to be applied in the creation of renewable energy communities.” (6)
The ability to implement public policies oriented towards carbon neutrality will witness an essential role in the replicability of the best practices conducted in the territory, in order not to join forces for single initiatives, but to share those with the administrations that may be most in need. The purpose of cooperation and common efforts in these fields may regard many more projects:
“Other activities carried out by the City Science Office concern scientific and strategic support in the promotion of internationalization paths, in the search for funding and in scientific dissemination. The aim is to improve the effectiveness of the public administration through open innovation paths and the transversality between territorial policies and projects. The root of the experimentation lies in the experiences conducted in other European cities within the Joint Research Center (JRC).” (7)
In fact, “Reggio Emilia is part of the ‘City Science Initiative’ program promoted by the European Commission as a ‘lead city’ together with Amsterdam, Cluj-Napoca, Hamburg, Paris and Thessaloniki within an international network made up of around 35 European cities. These are initiatives capable of affecting the processes of ‘research policy gap’ in public policies or supporting the municipalities in decision-making and planning through applied research models” (8) that should regard a vast portion of the public heritage which the Municipality of Reggio Emilia has. Buildings of public offices, schools, civic centres, working-class districts and many more represent places that, for instance, could both be made energy efficient and transformed into physical incubators of innovation.
Berni, F., De Franco, L., Levi, N. (2023) The City Science Office of Reggio Emilia: pathways to energy and social research and innovation. Diritto e Società
Berni, F., De Franco, L., Levi, N. (2023) The City Science Office of Reggio Emilia: pathways to energy and social research and innovation. Diritto e Società
Berni, F., De Franco, L., Levi, N. (2023) The City Science Office of Reggio Emilia: pathways to energy and social research and innovation. Diritto e Società
Berni, F., De Franco, L., Levi, N. (2023) The City Science Office of Reggio Emilia: pathways to energy and social research and innovation. Diritto e Società.
This article discusses the concept of Urban Sustainable Development and Innovation Partnerships (USDIPs) as a tool for designing and managing policy experiments in cities to accelerate technological and ecological transitions while ensuring accountability and equality among stakeholders. The article examines inclusive and innovative forms of public-private partnerships, urban co-governance, and citizen science in the context of global and European policy initiatives. The EU Urban Innovative Actions Initiative and the “UIA Co-City Turin” project are used as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of USDIPs in promoting sustainable development.
The article identifies four key tools that are instrumental in creating USDIPs:
innovation procurement;
social and sustainable finance planning;
digital tools for multistakeholder cooperation;
investment in capacity building
The article calls for concrete policy action at the EU level to use USDIPs to bridge the gap between different policy agendas related to sustainable development in cities.
Click on the links below to read more about this article.
Many scholars, experts, authors and policymakers have expressed their opinions about Cities and Urbanism today on Sloglaw. Amnon Lehavi, Professor of Law at the Harry Ledzyner Law School, Reichman University also shares his thought-provoking opinions on Sloglaw about the Co-cities book authored by Professors Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione.
He shares how beneficial the co-city framework has been to his hometown, Tel Aviv and how useful this framework will be to other cities in the world.
Professor Lehavi believes that this book: Co-cities has taken an essential journey through space and time. He shares that the co-city framework will help cities be transformed no matter the challenges: be it social crises, financial or economic crises and the many urban issues that come up in cities today.
To read more of this, find below the link and join the urban and city conversation. Don’t forget to share your thoughts. We welcome them and we love to hear what you think.
What key principles underpin a Co-city model of urban governance, and how can they be applied to promote more collaborative and inclusive approaches to urban planning and development?
Following our previous discussion which introduced the book, this session brings us to comprehend the first chapter. Entitled “Rethinking the City”, the chapter capitalizes on Polycentrism and the Quintuple Helix Approach for approaching governance issues (public, community, civic, knowledge, and private). It sets the stage for the book’s exploration of how cities can become more collaborative and inclusive in their governance structures. In response, the writers advocate for a new model of urban governance that is more participatory, bottom-up, and collaborative.
First off, the chapter outlines immersion and provides examples of the various synergies by residents of communities, emphasizing the efforts and challenges they put into co-create, co-produce, and co-share a common good or resource. This is done by the application of innovative, skillful techniques and mechanisms leading to a total transformation of the common good. The created resource is not left as a stand-alone project but then each member who contributed towards it, one way or the other feels a sense of belonging. This is where the concept of stewardship is introduced “Resident transformation of previously vacant lots into community gardens represents a form of local environmental stewardship” (pg.34). Building on the concept of environmental stewardship as provided by the Aarhus Convention, the section explains local environmental stewardship as a course of action taken by individuals, groups, or networks of actors, with various motivations, to protect, care for, or responsibly use valuable or scarce resources in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes. This brings to light one benefit of stewardship, that it strengthens collective capacity and resilience for urbanization.
Then, the chapter proceeds with six sections: “Who owns the city”, “The city as a Commons”, “Constructing Urban Commons”, “Urban Pooling Economies” and “Enabling a polycentric system of Urban Co-governance”.
The first one is introduced by a provocative question: “Who owns the city?” Answering is difficult, considering the numerous characters living within a city and the circumstances or occurrences of a city’s past and present. These do not make room for a definite answer but this part of the book highlights that a city is also owned by its inhabitants. A definite answer cannot be given to the above question posed due to factors such as decisions made by public authorities regarding resources, their allocation, and distribution. Another factor is the issue of capture agglomeration benefits, security, and trust.
“The city as a Commons”, the second section, presents the opportunities for shared stewardship of cities assets by urban communities. In this case, the well-renowned theories by the scholar Elinor Ostrom are recalled as a starting point. She advanced criticism of the powerful account of the tragedy of commons given by Garett Hardin. The dominant view of the “tragedy of the commons” emphasizes that free use of open-access resources that are unregulated by private property mechanisms will result in its destruction. Ostrom opposed this saying that “the choice between central government regulation and private property rights does not capture the full range of approaches to managing or governing the commons” (pg.42). The Co-cities book builds on Ostrom’s urban commons insights and methodology, but it is more adapted to urban environments. It is based on progressive observations of the authors, Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione, on the dynamics and challenges specific to those environments. The section further gives examples of the “city as a commons” in existence such as Neighborhood commons, place-based institutions, and many more.
“Constructing Urban Commons” emanates from the concept “Comedy of the Commons” which involves granting access to resources that the community values and that increases the solidarity between urban residents. Carol Rose (1986) first brought up this concept and stated that the more people come together to do something, the merrier and better, especially in the construction of the Urban Commons. There is collective action and stewardship as people interact, communicate, and integrate. Therefore, the definition of constructing the urban commons came up and is defined as “a result from a process of bringing together a spectrum of actors that work together to co-design and co-produce shared, common goods and services at different scales from existing shared urban infrastructure”. An example of constructed urban commons is community land trusts (CLTs). These are flourishing worldwide as a vehicle to allow community control of land toward stabilizing communities vulnerable to being displaced by market forces. CLTs come with numerous benefits such as a form of stewardship for preserving to promote growth without displacing people and to keep housing and other land uses as inexpensive and accessible for future generations. It is also utilized to acquire and develop existing urban land and buildings to provide underdeveloped urban areas with affordable housing, commercial space, and green and recreational amenities, just to mention a few. Other examples of constructed urban commons include wireless mesh or broadband networks, energy microgrids, and other essential social infrastructure as well as community-created and user-managed mesh networks.
The last but one section framed as “Urban pooling economies” focuses on diverse means, strategies, and mechanisms to pool and gather resources (financial, human, knowledge) to scale initiatives across a city and improve collective control of shared urban resources. Relying solely on State funds to finance development activities has proven futile and weak in most cases due to corruption and lack of resources (pg.53). Iaione & De Nictolis 2017 delineate that “pooling economies” are a vital feature of a networked economy and of urban commons. The process is known by other scholars and writers as “solidarity economy” or “collective economy”. The concept is used to capture how new economies and assets are being collectively created in the city, that are unique from a sharing economy point of view, which too frequently relies on the commodification of shared goods. In fact, local authorities, private sector institutions, regulatory bodies, and other urban stakeholders have various roles to play. Pooling economies are usually done through the central government’s effort by reducing costs of cooperation and relevant actors to leverage their efforts to achieve high economic and social payoffs from their collective action. Other means to pool resources are through incentivization, increasing the capacity of communities and other stakeholders by the local government as well as the transfer of financing or physical resources to community land trusts, notably, to engage in co-design activities and co-governance projects.
The final section, “Enabling a Polycentric system of urban co-governance”, elucidates the concept of “polycentrism”, which is a response to the criticism of top-down or command and control public governance approaches that exercise monopolies on power and decision-making in complex resource contexts. In many instances, this top-down method of governance has been seen to be less effective and democratic since it limits the “opportunity for ordinary residents to join in local problem-solving.” (pg. 57). Therefore, polycentrism comes up where co-cities are not only more effective at addressing complex urban challenges but reveals that the idea of the state as a facilitator of pooling economies and collective resource stewardship is part of the move from a centralized system of government to a system of urban governance that redistributes decision-making power and influence away from the center and toward independent and autonomous self-organized units of resource management. Also, a more democratic and inclusive system is viewed by involving a range of stakeholders in the decision-making process. In an ideal model of a Co-city, decision-making is shared among citizens, community groups, and local businesses. This can lead to more equitable outcomes and a stronger sense of community ownership over urban projects and allows for a more diverse range of perspectives which is essential in decision-making, leading to more innovative and effective solutions. For instance, in a study of local school districts in Chicago, the local participants in education-related polycentric governance, “devised the specific means for cooperation and the details of implementation (. . .), the state at the higher city level provided support, monitoring, and sanctioning for defection” as well as “information sharing across the several local sites” (pg. 56).
If readers grasp a hold of this and indeed get a bird’s eye view of the new City, they have re-thought and re-imagined, then the second chapter will expose them to the theories of urban co-governance.
Benedicta Quarcoo
Bibliography
Carol Rose, 1986 (Comedy of the commons)
Mansbridge 2014, (The role of the State in governing the commons)
Lee Anne Fennell, 2011 (Ostrom’s Law: Property Rights in the Commons)
On Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, a seminar coordinated by Prof. Christian Iaione was held at the Luiss Campus on Viale Pola:
“Neighborhood, Common Good: Democracy and Urban and Climate Justice in Reggio Emilia. An integrated public policy to achieve urban co-governance as a function of sustainable urban development”, to address the feasibility of introducing a Title V dedicated to collaborative democracy tools in the “Regulations on Democracy and Urban and Climate Justice in Reggio Emilia.”
The seminar represents the latest episode in a 10-year journey of administrative and legal innovation and experimentation conducted by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia that began in 2015 with the public policy “Neighborhood, Common Good” and the subsequent 2015 “Regulation of Laboratories and Citizenship Agreements.” In the past two years, thanks to the collaboration with the Luiss Guido Carli Law Department, the Municipality of Reggio Emilia has continued on the path of innovation through the establishment of the City Science Office – made up of industrial doctoral students with scholarships funded by the Municipality – and with the approval of the Regulations on Democracy and Urban and Climate Justice in Reggio Emilia in September 2022.
In addition to contemplating institutes of local direct democracy, the new Regulations also provided for in an innovative way: the establishment of the Area Councils, deliberative democracy bodies with mixed composition (elective/non-elective) conceived within the Horizon 2020 EUArenas.EU project. These are representative institutions of citizens and local stakeholders pertaining to the nine Areas into which the municipal territory has been divided by grouping the 55 neighborhoods of the urban plan. The councils are mainly concerned with stimulating public debate and co-programming of public policies relevant to urban and climate justice to be conducted together with the relevant departments of the municipal administration, the outcome of which is the signing of an “Ambit Pact.”
The seminar discussed about the introduction of a Title V dedicated to collaborative democracy tools already partly covered by the 2015 Regulation on Citizenship Workshops and Agreements. This title would provide for a phase of co-design, at the outcome of which public policies co-programmed through the Area Pact would be implemented through multi-actor partnerships that would be named “Partnerships for Sustainable Development and Innovation,” a formula that would summarize innovative forms of partnership introduced into the legal system through various regulatory provisions at the European Union, national, regional, and local levels.
The seminar began with an explanation of the virtuous case of the city of Reggio Emilia, led by Councillor Lanfranco De Franco and Headmistress Nicoletta Levi, followed by a talk by Council of State Section President Giancarlo Montedoro on “The new forms of partnership in the light of the public contracts code and the third sector code.”
Also participating in the seminar focus group were professors from Luiss Guido Carli University, La Sapienza University of Rome and Milan Polytechnic University, with specializations in administrative law and public law; representatives from Save the Children Italia; ANCI; INVITALIA S.p.A., National Governmental Agency for the Territorial Cohesion; and the Luiss LabGov ETS research team.
