Laboratori di Quartiere has set up a stable model to link public resources with citizens, engaging them in proximity policy-making across Bologna’s districts. The objective is to shift from the paradigm of smart city to a collaborative “Augmented City”, requiring citizens to not just collaborate to the co-design of urban spaces instead to become responsible of the ongoing transformation.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
Laboratori di Quartiere aims at setting up a stable model to link public resources with citizens, engaging them in proximity policy-making across Bologna’s districts. The objective is to shift from the paradigm of smart city to a collaborative “Augmented City”, requiring citizens to not just collaborate to the co-design of urban spaces instead the initiative Laboratori di Quartiere (Neighbourhood Labs), inserted in the Urban innovation plan of the City of Bologna, is an attempt to activate and manage structured participatory and collaborative processes in every district of the city and with the support of data and new technologies.
The project is also the result of the presence of a vivid and active social fabric and a particular civic culture in the city of Bologna, that led to years of experimentation in the fields of urban commons management and community engagement. In the framework of the project Laboratori di Quartiere, Urban Center Bologna/Ufficio Immaginazione Civica (UCB/UIC) is trying to connect resources with citizens, asking them to participate in the definition, co-design and implementation of priority actions become responsible of the ongoing transformation and project impacting different territorial areas of the neighbourhoods of Bologna.
Each of the six laboratories instituted in the neighbourhoods of the city, asks people to experiment new decision-making processes in the fields of citizens basic services offer, community welfare, local development, urban and social regeneration and governance of urban commons. For example, citizens can be engaged in order to decide how to spend public moneys or how to use public spaces and buildings. Labs can be seen as a space of relation and interaction between Public Administration and formal and informal groups and citizens. They’re conceived as a tool to collect and map information about social needs, listen, consult, co-project, report and monitoring social capital. Each Lab implements strategies aimed to empower citizens and to engage competences on the territories, ensuring an open and transparent interaction with the neighbourhood population.
Operatively, the project Laboratori di Quartiere is implemented through a series of workshops organized in the neighbourhoods of Bologna in which people co-design their projects with the support of facilitator and municipal officials. Moreover, beside offline actions, citizens also have the possibility to access a digital space on Iperbole - Rete civica, the civic network of the Municipality of Bologna, through which participate to the Labs. The tool is called Comunità and it is an online community on which users can have a personal profile and a blog, can present projects, interact with other citizens and participate in participatory budgeting actions. UIC coordinates the initiative with the methodological support of the University of Bologna and the partnership of the Municipality of Bologna and its districts.
In order to foster replicability of the project year after year, Labs are structured in different phases that should be implemented in defined moments of the year. The phases are:
1)Information: every year citizens should be informed about the developments of the lab and the resources and tools they would have access to in order to co-design interventions on the territory.
2)Consultation: Labs should be a space in which citizens can bring ideas, underline critical aspects and opportunities, share opinions and visions about the future development of their own neighbourhood.
3)Participation: citizens are invited to join meetings based on participatory methodologies (i.e. Open Space Technology) to go beyond the idea of participation as simple consultation of citizens and to create a collective and shared picture of the neighbourhood and its future.
4)Collaboration: citizens will be engaged in real processes of co-design of actions and projects dedicated to their own neighbourhood working with other people living in the same territory sharing the same interests to improve and take care of the city as a whole.
Moreover, the entire process is led by five fundamental principles:
1)Inform people about the meaning of the Lab and the logics behind the public action;
2)Structure every lab on a shared system of rules and values;
3)Be accountable and transparent in order to make citizens aware and in favour of a real process of empowerment, capacity building of every participant.
In order to favour the implementation of this principle, processes are supported by open data and in particular by the use of a)vulnerability maps produced by the Department of Statistics of the Municipality; b)culture maps produced by the Department of Culture of the Municipality; c)HUB ecosystem data on online collaborative speeches in Bologna.
4)Create inclusive processes in which every citizen, independently from their own expertise or personal characteristics can participate and make a contribution to be taken into account and emphasizing the different competences;
5)Consider both organized and non-organized citizens as social change actors not only beneficiaries of some resources or projects, in order to promote a shared sense of belonging to a bigger process and its results (ownership).
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
Many cities are currently implementing innovative participatory actions, usually mixing online and offline tools to allow citizens participation in public life and the project Laboratori di Quartiere were inspired by the work of other realities as Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. As in these experiences, in the initiative Laboratori di Quartiere participation is no longer understood as “citizen consultation” but it becomes “citizen involvement” and it aims at the co-creation of a new concept of welfare, based on human capital, social relations and individuals empowerment. The added value of the project implemented by UIC lies in the attempt to build and offer a stable and new model for the governance of territories and proximity policies. The model is characterized by:
-the opening-up of the decisional process to citizen participation and collaboration in a permanent way;
-the constant support of socioeconomical open data in the definition and implementation of urban actions and policies;
-the creation and use of technologies integrating the offline processes (technology as a mean and not as a scope).
Laboratori di Quartiere can offer an operative model for:
-citizens consultation and empowerment in different engagement stages (in Bologna’s case: participatory budgeting, co-design of public space’s regeneration, definition of the intended use of public buildings, definition of municipal tenders guidelines)
-the activation and the involvement of functionaries in learning processes concerning participation and the spread of new administrative and policy-making practices in local administration.
Moreover, the model could be used in different thematic areas and applied to the management of different kind of resources available for urban development (e.g. European or national funds, buildings). In this sense, the initiative can be seen as an effort to go beyond the logic of the multiplication of dedicated participative initiatives and to move toward the normalisation and systemisation of the proactive engagement of citizens in public choices.
What is the current status of your innovation?
Many cities are currently implementing innovative participatory actions, usually mixing online and offline tools to allow citizens participation in public life and the project Laboratori di Quartiere were inspired by the work of other realities as Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. As in these experiences, in the initiative Laboratori di Quartiere participation is no longer understood as “citizen consultation” but it becomes “citizen involvement” and it aims at the co-creation of a new concept of welfare, based on human capital, social relations and individuals empowerment.
The added value of the project implemented by UIC lies in the attempt to build and offer a stable and new model for the governance of territories and proximity policies. The model is characterized by:
-the opening-up of the decisional process to citizen participation and collaboration in a permanent way;
-the constant support of socioeconomical open data in the definition and implementation of urban actions and policies;
-the creation and use of technologies integrating the offline processes (technology as a mean and not as a scope).
Laboratori di Quartiere can offer an operative model for:
-citizens consultation and empowerment in different engagement stages (in Bologna’s case: participatory budgeting, co-design of public space’s regeneration, definition of the intended use of public buildings, definition of municipal tenders guidelines)
-the activation and the involvement of functionaries in learning processes concerning participation and the spread of new administrative and policy-making practices in local administration.
Moreover, the model could be used in different thematic areas and applied to the management of different kind of resources available for urban development (e.g. European or national funds, buildings). In this sense, the initiative can be seen as an effort to go beyond the logic of the multiplication of dedicated participative initiatives and to move toward the normalisation and systemisation of the proactive engagement of citizens in public choices.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The Municipality of Bologna and its districts, the research center Ces.co.com (UniBo) and the ICT company Engineering are the main partners of the project. Municipality of Bologna and districts:
- offer the economical and technological resources necessary to implement and to assure the sustainability of the activities of the project (both in terms of procedures and outputs)
- offer in-depth knowledge about Bologna’s districts and their social fabric
- offer the support of technicians and municipal officials in the co-design activities.
Ces.co.com:
- guarantees the methodological support to the initiative and its impartiality.
- define and manage engagement and co-design activities, applying participative methodologies and techniques
- is responsible for the report activity of participative workshops and for results evaluation.
Engineering:
- responsible for the implementation and the participative design of digital services and solutions supporting offline activities.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
UIC engagement campaign focused on the transfer of power and concrete resources toward citizens. It followed a 3 steps pyramid scheme to reach citizens and to create sustainable community building actions
1.Districts officials are consulted in order to collect more data about the demographical and socio-economical configuration of the neighborhood and to identify the most active communities and stakeholders on the territories and how to reach them.
2.Stakeholders and formal groups are engaged in participative workshops and focus groups to produce a first picture of the future of neighborhoods. They are also in charge for the engagement of citizens, communities and informal groups not reached yet.
3.Citizens are engaged through territorial animation actions as crowdmapping, itinerant info points. Besides these activities UIC has started an intense activity of promotion supported by leaflets, paper materials and on social media, using GIF, pictures, digital storytelling.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
The implementation phase started in March 2017. Results and impacts observed so far are:
- citizens engagement: 1.471 citizens attended the activities of Laboratori di Quartiere; 174 project proposals have been collected (90 online); 384 citizens stated their availability to co-design projects with an impact on their territories (88 online);
- engagement of 50 public officials, functionaries and technicians in learning processes for innovative administrative practices;
-citizens empowerment in the definition of municipal public budget and priorities for action.
Expected results and impacts, that will be measured and assessed also by the creation of new index by the University of Bologna, are:
- strengthen of social dialogue and construction of stable ties between public administration and citizens;
- improve the knowledge and the collection of territorial data in order to implement more effective public policies and services thanks to citizens engagement and consultation;
-empower citizens’ proposals and needs and foster more integrated decision-making processes;
- improve the accountability of public choices; - co-design and implement 11 community hub and collaborative spaces in order to foster regeneration processes;
- creation of an integrated digital environment to support and scale face-to-face participation and collaboration.
Challenges and Failures
-Incomplete engagement of the stakeholders in becoming activators/spread process aims and goals within their proximity area
-Public officials are not always willing and understand the new governance logics
-It was hard to create an integrated digital environment that could support and work in synergy with the offline interactions and process as well as replicate the complexity and the structure of the face to face process.
-The main challenge for building policies with a strong social impact needs the engagement of those population groups structurally excluded in the participatory dynamics (immigrant, less educated groups, outskirts inhabitants, youngsters).
-Administrative decisional tools and time frame are still inappropriate to guarantee the response to the citizen’s questions and requests. As a consequence, it is important to project actions able to keep mobilized communities engaged and trustful while waiting
-Managing conflict in a generative and propositive way
Conditions for Success
-Political support is crucial for projects with medium-term perspective
-Innovative administrative tools need to be designed and made available for the implementation of the participatory and open policies and for the real empowerment and capacitation of citizens
-Motivated human resources according to the scale of the project
-High presence of relational and communication skills in the staff
-An integrated approach to the management of the City: in this sense, a major interaction between the Departments of the Municipality
Replication
In contemporary democracies citizens are ever more sceptic and harbour a strong sense of mistrust about politics, politicians and public institutions and the distance between what is driven by the administration and what is driven by communities is a common element in many other cities. At the same time administrations have concrete possibilities to no longer govern on the behalf of citizens, but also with citizens, which provide a great source of energy, talents, resources, capabilities and ideas.
Laboratori di Quartiere, by providing a model of governance led by collaborative principles, can guide local government in the management of their public policies, initiatives and tools. Moreover, it can offer a tool for the integration and the systematic development of the numerous participative initiatives that many cities are implementing.
Lessons Learned
-The key for a lasting engagement strategy, able to build a sense of community and foster citizen’s commitment and trust in public institution, is to slowly build fiduciary bonds between (and among) citizens and members of the Laboratori di Quartiere through constant, stable and transparent communication relations.
-The ability of communities and the capacity to open spaces for auto-organization also in a top-down process are fundamental in the creation of sustainable and impacting participatory process
-Without forgetting the bigger picture, you need to work on proximity areas (smaller than district level) to effectively build strong bonds, commitment and impacts
Status:
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
Innovation provided by:
Date Published:
19 February 2017