This session is going to be divided into two: 09:30-11:00 (room 126 IULM) for online presenters and 11:30-13:00 (room 151 IULM) for in-person presenters.
There is a broad consensus that citizen participation is critical in processes of urban regeneration, as well as the planning and implementation of nature-based adaptation. Citizen involvement is said to increase acceptance, fairness, quality of life and sustainability. Hence, the proposed session focuses on the methodologies and practices of participation in various stages of urban regeneration with the development of tools and guidelines for citizen engagement. This session will address co-creation initiatives that put Communities of Interest into action.
Encouraging ways that go beyond everyday traditional planning, co-creation aims to open the process to permanent innovation, challenging all for disruptive and experimental approaches that leverage Communities of Practice in different urban contexts.
We welcome a variety of presentations: subjects for researchers and practitioners through oral presentation format (scientific papers/report / design-artistic practices/storytelling). The session aims to approach these topics in two perspectives:
a) Co-creation methodologies and processes that have been designed to engage a wide range of citizens and other stakeholders, focusing in particular on: innovative co-creation methodologies that frame strategies, goals, steps, and tools, with the aim of implementing projects by different actors. Further focus encompasses co-creation training models for future facilitators in living labs to co-create initiatives for the community.
b) Citizen engagements strategies related with: the efficacy of co-creation processes, namely in relation to participation and inclusion; allowing the specific needs of the diverse citizen groups to be addressed; matching citizen engagement to the participatory cultures of cities; encouraging researchers and practitioners to build a mixed knowledge base with key stakeholders; working interdisciplinary and interculturally in developing NBS; rethinking engagement in times of COVID-19; sharpening and tailoring participation for an inclusive and innovative urban regeneration with NBS. The focus here will include case studies, lessons learnt and best practices.
The University of Padua's UNICITY Laboratory arises as a hub for the study and co-design of policy interventions for the strategic development of Padua as University City. It responds to the need to understand the university-city interaction within the socio-economic system, along with the need to "know to govern" the complex processes and trends in the urban organization of Padua. Besides to developing scientific knowledge on the topic, UNICITY aims to promote dialogue between the city and university. Within this perspective, a line of research-intervention is dedicated to measure the degree of shared responsibility and social cohesion of the community – particularly that pertaining to neighborhoods inhabited by native residents and university students. The goal of this line is to promote, through the resulting initiatives - tailored ad hoc on the basis of the data collected - a shift in citizens (permanent and temporary) from a profile of stakeholder to one of communityholder: citizen who, pursuing common and shared objectives, participate as an active resource in the management of requests/criticalities emerging within the community (e.g. fairness, sustainability). In doing so, the citizen acts as "dialogic node"1 accelerator and promoter of social cohesion, and thus the governance responsibility is shared among all members of the community2.
UNICITYLab has built a tool called "Social Cohesion Thermometer", based on M.A.D.I.T.3, a specific methodology for the analysis of human interactions. M.A.D.I.T., through the study of ordinary language (the one used in everyday life), has encoded the interactive-discursive modalities used and usable by all the members of the community, assigning them a different “weight”.
Social cohesion and shared responsibility are a product of citizens’ interactions: through M.A.D.I.T. it is then possible to observe and measure rigorously which interactive-discursive modalities lead the community more towards social cohesion and shared responsibility, or conversely towards social fragmentation and deresponsibility.
In 2020, applying the tool in Portello district of Padua - inhabited by students, residents and local business - a low degree of social cohesion was found (6.4 on 1-20 scales): the citizen role was oriented towards the satisfaction of personal interests (stakeholder), that could conflict with those of other residents, since they do not consider a shared aim for the community4.
In 2021, another UNICITYLab research investigated the role of local businesses in the Portello district. In fact, within an often-conflictual interactive framework, but which can also find virtuous forms of collaboration and sharing of goals and common goods, they can promote the social cohesion of the community targeting both the native population and students. This is possible when they place themselves in terms of Territorial Social Responsibility, not merely pursuing an exclusively economic purpose, but also of care and regeneration of the territory. Research's results show that it’s useful to strengthen the role of such exercises as community nodes: that’s because, while they narrate themselves as social-hubs, they lack operational pragmatism in exercising a role as active contributors to the cohesion of the residential-student community.
1Turchi, G. P., Dalla Riva, M. S., Ciloni, C., Moro, C., Orrù, L., (2021). The Interactive Management of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus: The Social Cohesion Index, a Methodological-Operational Proposal. Front. Psychol. 12:559842.
2Turchi, G. P., Vendramini, A., (2021). Dai corpi alle interazioni: la comunità umana in prospettiva dialogica. Padova University Press, Padova.
3Turchi, G. P., Orrù, L., (2014). Metodologia per l’analisi dei dati informatizzati testuali. Edises, Napoli.
4Locatelli, M., Turchi, G. P., (2022). Comunità e Coesione Sociale: un indice di misura per gli assetti interattivi del territorio di una città universitaria: il caso di Borgo Portello. RSLD, 3(3), 253-274.
Since 2018, the CLEVER Cities project has put in place an inclusive co-creation pathway that aims at engaging stakeholders (in particular citizens, civil society, public and private stakeholders) in decision-making processes for Nature-based Solutions (NBS) within large-scale urban regeneration projects.
The scope of this research is to highlight the importance of conducting an evaluation for co-creation as an added value from the actual implementation of NBS in the collaborative environment of “CLEVER Action Labs” (CALs). Hence, a systematic approach to gather information on each city’s pathway along the co-creation process was developed in order to evaluate: 1) commitment to the process and defining/refining the set of indicators, 2) realistic and relative impacts from the project implementation, and 3) added value to the project in terms of the validation of the co-creation process itself.
Within the context of Urban Innovation Partnerships (UIP)[i], different workshops and surveys were used to gather opinions and feedback from cities’ leaders and co-creation facilitators’ teams on the possible criteria of assessment from March 2020 onwards utilizing a reflexive method. Three sets of indicators mainly prioritizing 1) stakeholders’ engagement, 2) shared governance and 3) co-design activities were selected. A learning by doing approach was adopted to structure the results from the framework implementation based on two categories of qualitative and quantitative indicators: procedural indicators (looking at the quality of the process itself in achieving its goals) and impact indicators (that address the expected impacts/results from the co-creation activities).
From the workshops with cities in concurrent timeline with the project co-creation processes, two sessions were held to validate the results from the surveys and the previous analysis based on cities exchanges. Two main categories are transversally embedded for measurement: Stakeholders engagement and Shared governance process within the two first project phases of partnership establishment and co-design. The measurements in these two categories are meant to be reflecting the overall co-creation process in the FR Cities and are not entailed to a specific phase (it could happen on a UIP scale or a CAL scale – any scale more detailed than that should be aggregated). The first column (categories) refers to Macro areas of interest such as 1) Stakeholder engagement, 2) Shared governance model and 3) Co-creation pathway (co-design phase so far).
Each city evaluation impact is translated into a score board to assess its own co-creation pathway performance; there is no pre-defined success or failure threshold. The general idea is to set a baseline for possible co-creation set of Key performance indicators towards a possible future verification and validation of the methodological framework.
The concept behind this methodological approach is not to compare between what “happened” throughout co-creation experiences in the Front Runners of CLEVER Cities, but rather to understand what added value co-creation can have in advancing shared governance models. The analysis will highlight evidence-base from a possible co-creation assessment methodology that takes benefits from the Front Runners’ cities experiences.
[i] The UIP is the local public private partnership cluster of actors and stakeholders that carry out the implementation of the project in the local context of each city.
The project for the creation of a "Widespread and Resilient Cross-border Park" was initiated in the framework of the Master in Urban Regeneration and Social Innovation at the IUAV University of Venice.
Its assumptions are also inspired by the experiences of the URBiNAT project in Nova Gorica and Gorizia, in particular to the approach designed for an innovative use of public space through nature-based solutions, and tested during the participatory event "OLTRE OGNI LIMITE: rethinking borders in the new Europe", which took place in February 2022 at the Gorizia campus of the Department of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Trieste, also thanks to the support of the initiative "University 4 EU - Your future, our Europe".
On this occasion, citizens were invited to rethink a specific border area, with a focus on the San Gabriele/Erjavčeva Ulica crossing and constitutes the main axis of connection between the two cities, Nova Gorica and the old Gorizia, jointly nominated as European Capital of Culture in 2025, by investigating various themes: environment, urban planning, landscape, and infrastructure.
Forty-six people took part in the 'world café' - the chosen methodology for the interactive involvement of participants. In particular, the panel discussion about the cross-border environmental issue brought out concrete comparisons and needs. As an example, one proposal included the installation of bilingual (Italian and Slovenian) signs and panels to promote and improve accessibility in natural areas. The debate highlighted also the importance of building processes to identify and recognise these areas as places for educational excursions. These processes should become part of educational projects and sustainable tourism.
The results of this public event, together with what emerged during the week-long training seminar that preceded it, are the basis for possible further participatory planning activities that will continue to involve the citizens of the cross-border area, aiming at achieving a common vision of the territory that might lead to rethinking and a re-appropriation of these places.
As a follow-up, another initiative took place at the beginning of May 2022, when a group of about 30 people were involved in a “walkthrough” for participatory planning guided by the use of nature-based solutions along Via della Cappella and Via del Poligono (which lead into Slovenia to the Kostanjevica hill). Under the umbrella of the URBiNAT project, citizens were invited (most of them residents of the streets) to express their experiences, expectations and wishes for the area they live in. The public discussion was useful to put a stress on several issues including: street lighting, parking spaces, historical cobbled paving maintenance (characteristic of the area), and the use of unused public buildings.
The process for a participatory design of the cross-border area has been started, thanks to several bottom-up initiatives and endorsed by the URBiNAT project and the GoBorderless2025 Culture Capital. The aims is both to co-design the public space and to improve the collaboration of the 2 citizenships across the border.