Living Labs for Co-designing in urban and public space

DELIVERABLE

Project Acronym: MyNeighbourhood

Grant Agreement number: 325227

Project Title: My Neighbourhood | My City

Deliverable 2.1.

LIVING LABS MODELS FOR CO-DESIGNING IN

URBAN AND PUBLIC SPACE

Revision: Draft 01

Authors:

Grazia CONCILIO [POLIMI]

Emma PUERARI [POLIMI]

Francesca RIZZO [POLIMI]

Cases Exploration:

Emma PUERARI [POLIMI]

Seth OKYERE ASARE [POLIMI]

Internal Reviewers:

Jean BARROCA [ALFAMICRO]

Douglas THOMPSON [SPI]

Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme

Dissemination Level: P – Public

MyNeighbourhood Living labs models in urban and public spaces

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Revision History

Revision Date Author Organization Description

01 January – April 2013

E. PUERARI

S. OKYERE ASARE

POLIMI Collection of all the cases

02 May –June 2013

E. PUERARI

S. OKYERE ASARE

POLIMI Elaboration of the description cards

03 July 6, 2013 G. CONCILIO

E. PUERARI

POLIMI First draft of the deliverable

04 July 10 2013 F. RIZZO POLIMI Early review of the deliverable

05 July 11 2013 G. CONCILIO

E. PUERARI

POLIMI Completion of the deliverable

Statement of originality

This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through

appropriate citation, quotation or both.


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Table of Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 8

1.1 1.1. Task 2.1. in MyNeighbourhood .................................................................................................... 8

1.2 The work done ..................................................................................................................................... 9

2 Living Labs for Urban Innovation .............................................................................................................. 10

2.1 2.1. From co-design to co-production in public services ................................................................... 10

2.2 Towards co-design laboratories ........................................................................................................ 12

3 Existing experiences .................................................................................................................................. 15

3.1 The rational of the collection: three guiding themes ........................................................................ 15

3.1.1 Level of engagement .................................................................................................................. 15

3.1.2 Living Lab maturity ..................................................................................................................... 16

3.1.3 Bottom-up or Top down dynamics ............................................................................................ 17

3.2 The collection .................................................................................................................................... 18

3.2.1 The collection as a whole ........................................................................................................... 18

3.2.2 Inside the cases .......................................................................................................................... 37

4 Discussion.................................................................................................................................................. 60

4.1. Lessons learnt ................................................................................................................................... 60

4.2. Basic guidelines ................................................................................................................................. 60

4.2.1. Citizens ...................................................................................................................................... 60

4.2.2. Municipalities ............................................................................................................................ 61

5. References ................................................................................................................................................ 63


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List of Figures

Figure 01 – Abstract of “Table 01. The Overview of Identified Cases of existing Living Labs” ............................................ 6

Figure 02 – Abstract of “Figure 07. The Existing Living Labs Map” .................................................................................... 7

Figure 03 – Example of description cards ........................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 04 – Task 2.1 in the GANNT chart ............................................................................................................................ 8

Figure 05 – Level of participation related to the spectrum of participation (Disterheft et al., 2012). .............................. 16

Figure 06 – The process of social innovation (modified from Murray et al., 2010). ......................................................... 17

Figure 07 – Existing Living Labs Ma .................................................................................................................................. 36

Figure 08 – The description template of the chosen cases. .............................................................................................. 37


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List of Tables

Table 01- The Overview of Identified Cases of existing Living Labs .................................................................................. 18


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Executive Summary

The Deliverable 2.1 in the DoW “…will be divided into two parts: 1) the first part will describe the main

strategies for engagement, the most relevant roles that can be activated or discovered within a context as

core actors/drivers of the community engagement, the main descriptors of different level of engagement

with main pitfalls and suggestions; 2) the second one will be a critical collection of existing experiences and

will introduce the pilots to concrete and successful examples of community engagement and creation

where strategies, actors roles and levels of engagement are operationally described.”

In particular, chapter two, “Living Lab for Urban Innovation”, describes, in the first part, the reason why it is

necessary to adopt a co-design approach and new types of partnerships; in the second part, the reasons

and the process that explain how to move from co-design to co-design of services in co-design laboratories.

The third chapter of the deliverable contains the description of the development of the survey of existing

experiences of Living Labs, devoted to the engagement of communities at a sub-urban scale. The first part

outlines how the process of the collection of Living Labs existing cases was carried out and in particular

describes the three guiding themes of the selection. The second part is devoted to the description of the

whole collection of the existing cases (Figure 01) in order to map each case following the three guiding

themes of the selection (Figure 02).

Figure 01 – Abstract of “Table 01. The Overview of Identified Cases of existing Living Labs”


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Figure 02 – Abstract of “Figure 07. The Existing Living Labs Map”

Then, twenty-one selected case has been detailed and synthetized into a description card considering some

basic descriptors as in the figure below (Figure 3).

Figure 03 – Example of description cards

The last chapter of the deliverable synthetize what are the lessons learnt from the collection of cases and

the guidelines that citizens and municipality have to follow to activate.


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1 Introduction

1.1 1.1. Task 2.1. in MyNeighbourhood

Task 2.1. in the DoW. “Engagement is a very complex mechanism through which people transform their

interest towards an issue into a strong commitment. Engagement can be easily recognized and activated

when referring to individuals but is very challenging when it is considered for an entire community: here

interests can stay individual but the commitment needs to be collective and reciprocal. In Living Labs

communities arise throughout an engagement process in which different individuals play different roles

with a different level of engagement (commitment towards the common goal). Expecting that one (at least)

community is created in each pilot, this task will define the approach through which adequate the Living

Lab approach to the specific aim of community creation and engagement within the context of an urban

neighbourhood. This task will first develop a survey of existing urban experiences of Living Labs especially

devoted to the engagement and creation of communities at a sub-urban scale. This will provide a better

understanding of the open innovation mechanisms and nature of living labs for urban and public contexts.

This review will inform the identification and development of a socio-technical model that will drive the

whole pilots implementation and will be the reference document for POLIMI in driving and coordinating

pilots work in creating and engaging communities through LL activation, community management, initial

service co-design, and services testing and use.”

In particular Deliverable 2.1 is described as in the following. “…will be divided into two parts: 1) the first

part will describe the main strategies for engagement, the most relevant roles that can be activated or

discovered within a context as core actors/drivers of the community engagement, the main descriptors of

different level of engagement with main pitfalls and suggestions; 2) the second one will be a critical

collection of existing experiences and will introduce the pilots to concrete and successful examples of

community engagement and creation where strategies, actors roles and levels of engagement are

operationally described.”

In the GANTT diagram, the activities of this task are intended to start at month 1 and end up at month 6

with the completion of the deliverable.

Figure 04 – Task 2.1 in the GANNT chart


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1.2 The work done

The work done for developing this deliverable started at moth 1 with a wide exploration of existing

experiences of engagement and activation of Living labs. It started with well known experiences like

Myspace, or the MEDEA lab and surfed many other different situations considering three guiding elements:

1) the level of engagement

2) the living-lab maturity

3) the ownership: top down or bottom up approaches

In order to widen the collection the collaboration of Josè Carlos Mota, researcher of the Aveiro University,

has been precious.

Each case has been initially described in a synthetic way in order to map the whole collection through:

1) overview

2) theme

3) some remarks

4) the location

5) references

Subsequently a further selection of the collected cases has been carried out considering some of the most

significant throughout the three guiding elements.

Each of the selected case has been detailed and synthetized into a description card considering some basic

descriptors:

1) main goals and objectives of the experience

2) the way it works

3) the approach, also identifying the ownership of the initiative

4) where it is used and eventually replicated

5) level of engagement and of maturity

6) the technology being used

Finally the whole deliverable has been prepared and edited.


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2 Living Labs for Urban Innovation

2.1 2.1. From co-design to co-production in public services

Cities and urban areas today are complex ecosystems that have a strong potential for innovation and has to

be considered as true containers of flows and exchanges of knowledge among residents and other

stakeholders attending the urban system itself (Dvir, 2005). They are facing challenges to maintain and

upgrade the required infrastructures and establish efficient, effective, open and participative innovation

processes to jointly create the innovative applications and services that meet the demands of their citizens.

In this perspective, it is significant to study the possible renewal of public services within urban

environments, due to the fact that cities and urban areas represent a critical mass when it comes to

shaping the demand for advanced Internet-based services and experimentation in a large-scale open and

user driven innovation environments; in fact cities are considered as innovation drivers in areas such as

health, environment, inclusion and business (Digital Agenda of the European Commission, 2010).

Traditionally, the supply of public services is associated with two types of agents: public or private. During

the last decades there was a growth of participatory process with the possibility to establish public-private

partnerships (PPPs) for services supply so integrating the potential both the sides of traditional service

supply, imagining a situation in which the different parts are combined each time in different ways,

according to the context. It is possible to consider that “the concept of partnerships is generally described

as a ‘mechanism allowing the mobilisation and co-operation of a great number of actors in order to mould

the necessary political and operational consensus to affect directly the every day life of all members of

society’, partnerships are believed to embody many advantages which are coincident with the presently

acknowledged main criteria for sustainability – it requires consideration of multiple stakeholders’ interests,

implies a long term perspective based on common goals, and can accommodate a wide range of conflicting

perspectives” (Paskhaleva, 2001). The most recent research begins to consider instead the possibility of

potential new partnerships, stressing the need to ‘valuing people’ in the implementation of public services

(Denhardt & Denhardt, 2011, p.42) through a vision of governance that includes the three main sector

(government, the private sector and civil society) and emphasizes process between many actors with

different and sometimes conflicting priorities. People are not recognized as drivers for shortening the

distance between a problem and the way the service response is conceived and implemented; they are also

viewed as creative communities that can activate processes of radical innovation in services conception and

production (see the idea of participatory and collaborative service systems by Manzini et al., 2008 or Baek

et al., 2010). Following this vision, the literature is trying to show how PPP projects have failed to produce

certain characteristics, expressed in purchasing processes, which instead appear desirable, and how it is

possible to develop a new partnership involving the public and the private sector and people (Private,

Public, People partnerships, the 4P model). In fact, it is necessary that public purchasers and private


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providers understand the limitations of current practices in order to develop PPP in the future production

of services geared more to the needs of users (Majamaa, 2008; Majamaa et a., 2008; Kernhagan, 2009;

Zhang & Kumaraswamy, 2012). Hence, the 4P model can represent an opportunity for innovation in the

practices of public services delivering, within an urban innovation engine (Dvir, 2005). Thus, the

administrations should be able to take advantage of these intrinsic potential of complex urban systems,

which are the urban innovation engines, taking advantage from the ability of people to self-organize also

using the technologies1, capturing the needs of citizens, fostering events of collaboration between citizens

and institutions that constitutes opportunities for development and innovation and to foster sustainable

community dialogue for a long-term local change, thanks to the possibility of knowledge sharing, resources

and common goals. They, within these arenas (Denhardt & Denarhardt, 2011), which represent the places

(physical or not) where the exchange and the comparison between the different actors in the process of

supplying public services can occur, do not represent the producer or the user, but they can be, for

example, simply the facilitators of the service creation and production, or the actors involved in the service

management. The role of the different actors within these processes is flexible, fluid; it may have

temporary value, it is determined by the specific context in which these innovation engines develop.

Therefore, there is not an optimal model, in which public and private actors together with citizens can be

combined to activate and maintain innovation engines, rather there is an infinite set of possible solutions

established and defined by the context in which the innovation processes develop. Hence, the innovation

itself becomes the continuous interaction between the different actors who collaborate in the production

of public services. In this perspective the Living Labs movement is an area, where there was a shift from

participatory evaluation (or “user-centred design”) to actual co-design, but participatory approaches prove

successful as long as the organizational framework of the Living Lab remains committed to actual

implementation of outcomes. As the Living Lab movement broadens its scope from university and industrial

contexts to institutional and political ones, as is the case for Smart Cities, ensuring commitment becomes

far more problematic. In fact the stakeholders engagement strategy have to follow different approaches in

every cities, defined by the specific context of services production. This includes both the number of

additional stakeholders to be engaged and their specific power or ability to involve others that are strictly

related to their institutional profile and cultural context. Moreover, it is possible to consider three salient

dimensions for the defining partnership and distinguishing from other relationship types (Brinkerhoff,

2011): mutuality as encompassing the spirit of partnership principles; and organization identity as capturing

the rationale for selecting particular partners, and its maintenance is the basis of partnership’s value-

1It is interesting to note how the available, accessible and collaborative technologies web 2.0, as blogs, Wikipedia,

social-networks, can represent not only different ways for social interactions, but also a new type of citizen involvement

in urban life, in the community and in the space of the city itself (Foth et al., 2011).


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added; and openness as the ability to be able to contemplate fluid, dynamic networking in which trust and

values assume a contractual worth among participants.

2.2 Towards co-design laboratories

The interest in design laboratories, which involve future users in co-design and incubate emergent

everyday practices of design in use, is increasing due to the fact that the distinction between design and

use is getting blurred in several ways as products and services increasingly are co-created in use, and use

and users proliferate and diversify. Hence, it is important to be in close contact and dialogue with people

that will appropriate the designed services in every day practice to reach the envisioned results. This need

has led to a renewed interest in co-design user involvement in such formats as living labs, i.e. design

laboratories located, specialised and led by professional designers and with the permanent involvement of

different community of users that work together to develop and experiment innovation (new products,

new services, new system of products and services) encompassing classical design tool such as those made

available from User Centred Design. One possibility is that design laboratories could be a platform for open-

ended explorations of the co-evolution of practices in collaboration between multiple stakeholders (Binder

et al., 2011). In this perspective it is possible to think about scalability of the solutions when emerging

practices are strictly related to a context and to a network of specific participants. A design laboratory can

employ events of on-site prototyping and collaborative scenario-building convincingly demonstrates how

the enactment of a prototypical practice goes hand in hand and go beyond a simplier exchange and

negotiation of needs (Mattelmäki et al, 2007). Moreover the laboratory space could be expanded to an on-

going rehearsal of new practices through the engagement of actor-networks in collaborative inquiry,

generative prototyping and sustained participation. Therefore, the productive design laboratories must

extend the laboratory space beyond the staged event when what is envisioned drastically alters the

everyday of the participants (Sibukele et al., 2012). The long term embedding of experimental platforms in

local community life will ensure the end-user involvement in design and emerging practices. In this case the

long term engagement with local communities leads to the emergences of new everyday practices that

leads to create new opportunities for design (Hillgren et al., 2011). Considering these different possibilities

it is possible to see how the envisioning of possible futures comes about through the design of new service

systems from the designing laboratories that engage local communities in prototyping sustainable change

with a clear idea of how small, selfsteanding and local projects may connect to larger change. In other

words it is possible to think about how local projects, interrelated small-scale and short-term projects, can

be co-ordinated synergised and amplified through larger initiatives, as framework projects; hence, how

these framework projects can be considered as a constellations of local projects (Jégou 2010, 2011, Manzini

2010, 2011a, Ryan 2008).

Under this vision the new design laboratories call for a new notion of participatory design. According to


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Manzini and Rizzo (2011), when aiming at large transformation processes (on the scale of cities, regions or

complex organisations) the traditional notion of participatory design needs extending. The first step

towards this new notion has been represented from the integration of social innovation in participatory

design, under this light participatory design emerges as a complex action, a constellation of design

initiatives aiming at the construction of socio-material assemblies where social innovation can take place. In

a world of heterogeneity of use and users and entanglement of infrastructures and practices design

laboratories that span from envisioning new configurations of design in use to the incubation of emergent

patterns of appropriation provide a platform for engagement that transcends traditional models of

research and development. The objective in this case is to employ relevant service systems that may

facilitate social innovation starting from the particular conditions and resources of the local community.

The scalability comes not through the similarity between communities but through the robustness and

generic qualities of the service design concepts. Across this vision, it is possible to look at participatory

design as supporting large-scale transformations that can combine bottom-up and top-down intervention

for public services innovation (Ehn, 2008; Bjorgvinsson et al., 2009). They propose a radical shift from the

traditional view that considers the object to be designed as a well-defined product or service and where

potential participants (a part of professional designers) are equally well-defined final users that become co-

designers (Rizzo, 2010) to a new definition that means participation process as design process for the

realisation of a ‘socio-material assembly’ that takes place ‘in open public spaces rather than within an

organization’ (Bjorgvinsson et al. 2009). In fact in every social innovation process, and more clearly in large-

scale ones, different actors participate at different moments and in different ways in a sequence of diverse,

and sometimes even contrasting, events. ‘In the light of all this, we can say that service design for public

sector can be a constellation of bottom up and top down initiatives geared to making social innovation

more probable, effective, long-lasting and apt to spread’ (Manzini & Rizzo, 2011). In this perspective

participatory approach for public sector services can represent the bridge between participatory design and

social innovation (Mulgan, 2006). In fact ‘to ensure that the existing skill could be made a resource in the

design process’ means changing the participants’ profile in co-design processes, from final users with

problems and needs, to actors that bring local knowledge, specific competences and ideas for solutions. In

turn, this change requires new forms of co-design processes: new socio-material assemblies that offer to

these resources the best chance to emerge and be valued (Bauwens 2007, Leadbeater 2009, Baek et al.

2010). Thus, it is necessary to consider how the ‘carriers of knowledge’ can become a real active co-

designers and co-producers: social actors endowed with creativity, organisational capabilities and

entrepreneurship, and therefore capable of figuring out, enhancing and managing new solutions (Manzini

& Rizzo, 2011). In the presence of this conditions participatory design and design for social innovation

converge and tend to overlap. In this process, very often, designers are not design experts, but normal

people acting as designers: non expert people can be referred to as design amateurs as opposed to the


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figure of the professional designer, a person holding specific design knowledge (Leadbeater 2009, Manzini

2011b).


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3 Existing experiences

3.1 The rational of the collection: three guiding themes

The development of the survey of existing urban experiences of Living Labs, devoted to the engagement of

communities at a sub-urban scale, will provide a better understanding of the open innovation mechanism

and nature of living labs for urban and public context. In this perspective the process of the collection and

selection of Living Labs existing cases was guided by three specific themes that can be useful for the

identification and development of a reference socio technical model:

1. The level of engagement;

2. Living Lab maturity (here mapped on the social innovation process phases);

3. The mix of top-down and bottom-up engagement dynamics.

3.1.1 Level of engagement

During the 1960s, the lack of public participation and citizen involvement and empowerment to the

political debate and planning decisions emerged strongly, due to the fact that the political consensus was

largely broken and people were dissatisfied with the lack of direct access to decision making and the

distribution of benefits and power within the society (Hill, 1970). Participation is a key issue for a

sustainable development; in fact, it implies that “individuals must be provided with numerous

opportunities throughout their lives to acquire the information and skills necessary to enact the citizens

role” (Howell et al.1987). Hence, Arnstein (1969) captured the increasing need of a clarification of the

meaning of participation and of the processes that were taking place in the name of it. To explain these

issues she used the metaphor of the “ladder of the participation”: at the bottom of the ladder there is the

extreme position of non-participation, where people have no power at all; the middle position is when

people are informed and even consulted, but the public authorities retain the right to make the final

decision. At the top of the ladder there is a high degree of participation, which empowers people to

exercise control over what affects their lives. Starting from this metaphor, that, a various type of scheme

and interpretation had tried to explain the multiple dimensions and degrees of participation (see “the

Wheel of participation” developed by Davidson, 1998, which not identified any preference to any specific

one level; Hill, 1980; Holyoak, 2001; OECD, 2001; Meadowcroft, 2004). Following these visions the selected

cases were divided into the categories identified by the International Association of Public Participation

(2007). It divides public participation into five levels, in which the public impact and level of participation

increase when activities or methods are directed towards involvement and empowerment: (1) information

is a process through which one of the stakeholders (administration or citizens) inform the public about

some initiatives or issue; (2) consultation can be defined as a public survey and collection of ideas, prompts,

proposals or issues and notes; (3) involvement is the step in which stakeholders and partners starts to work


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together ensuring that every aspirations is consistently understood and considered; (4) collaboration can

be considered the level in which partners and stakeholders are involved in different phases of the process;

(5) empowerment is a multidimensional process of learning to think critically and to affect change in the

personal life and in the community, which is involved in all the decision making process (Figure 05):

Figure 05 – Level of participation related to the spectrum of participation (Disterheft et al., 2012).

3.1.2 Living Lab maturity

The living lab maturity has been mapped along the phases of social innovation without considering the

social dimension as the only one to characterize the innovation process. Such a decision is basically due to

the correspondence of the social innovation phases with the LL mechanisms of innovation going from

prompts, through prototyping and sustaining up to scaling. Typically systemic change is not considered in LL

but in MyN, considering the Human Smart City perspective and the need to achieve long lasting changes,

this phase is also considered crucial as well as it is considered relevant for social innovation.

Murray et al. (2010) describes the process of innovation, identifying different steps that were useful to

classify the level of maturity of selected existing Living Labs. They describe six stage of social innovation as

spreading outwards from prompts and ideas to scale and growth, taking ideas from inception to impact.

These stages are not always sequential and they can also be thought of as overlapping spaces, with distinct

cultures and skills. The first stage, “Prompts, inspiration and diagnoses”, includes all the factors, which

highlight the need for innovation (crisis, public spending cuts, poor performance, strategy). This stage

involves diagnosing the problem and framing the question for a particular and contextualized situation. The


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main challenge at this stage is to identify the right problem that has to be contextualised. The second stage,

“Proposals and ideas”, represents the level at which ideas are generated. The “Prototyping and pilots”

stage is where the ideas will be tested in practice. The process can be different in every context, but this

stage allows different partner or stakeholders to collaborate through iteration, and trial and error, making

stronger the link between them. The fourth stage, “sustaining”, represents the moment in which the idea

becomes every day practice. They will be sharpened to identifying and ensure the future sustainability of

the services that will carry the innovation forward. The fifth scale “scaling and diffusion” is the stage that

set a ranging of strategies for growing and spreading the innovation. The last stage is the “systemic

change”, the ultimate goal of social innovation. It involves many agents in the process: social movements

business models, laws and regulations, data and infrastructures and totally new ways of doing things. It

involves new framework in which technologies, supply chains, institutional forms, skills and regulatory and

physical frameworks totally changes than before. It involves changes in public and private sectors, grant

economy and household sector, usually over long period of time. Starting from this assumption, we decided

to add one more step before the starting point from “prompts”: “setting the stage”, because we think that

some situation and context has to be prepared before to be activated before the start of the process. This

will be the moment in which it is necessary to identify the possible stakeholders and if there is a real

possibility and will to innovate.

Figure 06 – The process of social innovation (modified from Murray et al., 2010).

3.1.3 Bottom-up or Top down dynamics

Engagement dynamics can be twofold: typically it can be activated by public institutions as a way to widen

the decision making arena and involving citizens into public urban decision making processes. This is mainly


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the perspective to which the most of the experiences can be considered to be consistent with and is also

the perspective of early experiences in participatory planning or public decision making in urban planning

and design.

When referring to Living lab environments, the opposite perspective important and significant as well:

citizen-driven initiatives are also relevant when aimed at engaging public institutions into them.

Citizen-driven initiatives can be affecting the public sphere at different levels: at the decision making level,

by creating opinion-based environment (even virtual) where citizens voices are collected to enter specific

decision making processes; spatially, by intervening on public spaces typically managed by public

institutions so invading the public sphere; or developing direct interaction with the institutions creating

opportunities for public discussion. The collection presented in this deliverable mainly worked on the first

two kinds of citizen-driven engagement.

Engagement can also be a mix of the two approaches when mediated by associations or third parties. In

this case the dynamics of engagement is more complex: the third party is able to create an interaction

environment (virtual or real) where citizens and institutions can meet or interact and it generally plays the

role of facilitator of or driver for the interaction. This third possibility has not been mapped in the following

as not easy to be clearly identified in the explored cases.

3.2 The collection

3.2.1 The collection as a whole

In the following table the whole experiences collection is described.

Table 01- The Overview of Identified Cases of existing Living Labs

Cases Overview Theme Remarks Country References

RENEWHEMPSTE

AD

This is a platform, financed by the

agreement “Renaissance

Doowntowns-UrbanAmerica”

(RDUA) and the Village Community.

This platform allows Village

resident to provide input into what

should be built in the downtown.

Therefore, the platform is useful

for citizens to create different

communities by interests and to

organize different events.

Participatory

processes.

Community

interaction.

People

engagement.

Urban

renovation.

The web-based platform starts

from the idea to enable

citizens to provide new ideas

for what can be built in the

neighbourhood, but it allows

citizens to create a network to

organize events and to create

communities based on

common interest.

Hempstead,

NY, USA

http://www.renewhempstead

.com/

Southampton’s

communities

It is a governmental organization

that promotes civic engagement to

make stronger the community of

Southampton. The organization is a

communities team that work

within Southampton City Council. It

is working with Southampton

resident to do more locally and

helps make their local community a

better place to live.

Participatory

processes for civic

engagement

Inhabitants are involved

directly in the process through

environmental work and co-

designing events.

Southampton,

UK

https://www.facebook.com/s

outhamptonscommunities;

http://www.southampton.gov

.uk/s-

environment/future/estatereg

eneration/townhillpark/;

http://vimeo.com/49107391;

http://www.southampton.gov

.uk/living/comliving/

https://www.facebook.com/southamptonscommunities


http://www.southampton.gov.uk/s-environment/future/estateregeneration/townhillpark/




http://vimeo.com/49107391


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Transportation

alternatives (TA)

“Transportation alternatives” is a

non-profit advocacy organization

leading transportation. It is

involved in every aspect of

traveling, it aims to make safer,

smarter transportation and a

healthier city

Make better and

safer NYC’S

streets engaging

citizens and

neighbourhood

community in the

definition of

projects and

campaign.

The platform is a tool to

create a link between the

association and people. It

contains a blog and a

promotion of different

campaigns useful to engage

citizens and to create a local

activist committee to find out

about local campaigns that are

already underway, or to

suggest another for a specific

neighbourhood. It starts from

the idea that it could be a

resource for rallying a specific

neighbour community and

zooming in on the best fixes

for dangerous local streets.

New York City,

USA

http://transalt.org/ourwork/bi

ke/adopt

Salem Public

Space Project

The Salem Public Space is a virtual

space to get to know real spaces in

Salem.

This project is a

collective

collaboration in

which citizens can

collaborate by

email and blog to

enrich the virtual

space.

This virtual space aims to get

known better the public

spaces of Salem through

citizens’ thoughts, photos,

maps, clarifications, criticism,

contributions and ideas. The

platform collects

neighbourhood narratives, the

descriptions of real actions in

public spaces and a map in

which it is possible to indicate

favourite public spaces.

Salem, MA,

USA

http://salempublicspaceprojec

t.com


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Jackson height

GREEN alliance.

78th street PLAY

STREET (78th

PLAY STREET)

Jackson Heights Green Alliance, Inc.

(JH Green) is a community group

dedicated to increasing and

improving open spaces in this

neighbourhood.

Community

association that

aims to engage

more citizens of

the same

neighbourhood.

Urban

renovation.

“JH Green” works with elected

officials and neighbourhood

groups to try and find creative

ways to improve Jackson

Heights. It initially focused on

exploring ways to initiate an

expansion of Travers Park into

a space adjacent to the park

currently used by a Toyota car

dealership. Now it also had

started to help citizens to

reclaim the 78th street and

bring it as a play street to

Jackson Heights. Along with

other community groups it

initiated a project to close

down 78th Street alongside

Travers Park on Sundays all

Summer in order to increase

the space available to the

community.

Jackson

Heights,

Queens, NY,

USA

http://www.jhgreen.org/abou

tus.html

UVA Food

Collaborative

(UVA)

The “Food Collaborative” is a

project of the University of Virginia

that includes faculty, staff, students

and community members.

The “University of

Virginia Food

Collaborative“

works to promote

research,

teaching and

community

engagement

The Food Collaborative

sponsors talks, panels, and

film screenings, and provides a

focal point for University and

community efforts to study

and improve regional and local

food systems.

Charolottesvill

e, Virginia,

USA.

http://www.virginia.edu/food

collaborative/

http://www.virginia.edu/foodcollaborative/

http://www.virginia.edu/foodcollaborative/


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around issues of

food, agriculture

and sustainability.

Sarasota County

Community

Platform

The platform is a way for the

community of Sarasota County to

share what they know about this

place.

Community

engagement for

sharing

knowledge and

discovering of

what matters.

The aim of the platform is

discover many things through

community engagement to

increase the sense of

community and to pay

attention of what matters and

respond in ways that make a

meaningful difference for each

neighbourhoods and for

broader shared community.

Sarasota, USA http://nccsweb.urban.org/co

mmunityplatform/sarasota/in

dex

Bk farmyards BK Farmyards is a collective of

experienced urban farmers

dedicated to expanding food justice

through agricultural production &

education in Brooklyn.

Engage citizens

for the

development of

an educational

program.

In addition to agricultural

production, the educational

agenda of the program

includes something for all

ages: training programs,

apprenticeships, free

workshops, farm visits, and

volunteer days!

Brooklyn, NY,

USA

http://bkfarmyards.com/

http://bkfarmyards.com/


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Thefuntheory.co

m

This site is dedicated to the

thought that something as simple

as fun is the easiest way to change

people’s behaviour for the better.

Engage citizens

through a

completion that

aims to recognize

those thoughts,

ideas and

inventions that

help prove the

fun theory.

The fun theory argues that fun

is the easiest way to change

people’s behaviour for the

better.

Sweden http://www.thefuntheory.co

m/

No 10 petitions

(10 petitions)

The service allows any UK citizen to

create a petition and collect

signatures via the website. The e-

Petitions service has been designed

to offer a modern parallel, which is

more convenient for the petitioner.

Crowd-sourcing Unlike paper-based petitions,

this service also provides an

opportunity for Number 10 to

respond to every petitioner

via email.

UK

(Worldwide)

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk

/

Pledge Bank PledgeBank is a system that allows

people to make pledges that

require other people’s support to

be accomplished. Pledgebank is a

service that makes an idea come

true with web technologies.

Engaging and

enabling citizens.

Pledgebank is a service that

makes an idea come true with

web technologies. The

software behind the service is

open source so one can

participate in developing the

service or makes his or her

own service based on it.

Worldwide http://www.PledgeBank.com/

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/


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MeetUP.com The project aims to facilitate offline

group meetings in various localities

around the world. Activity Creating

and joining groups based on

interest and location. Meetup.com

is the world’s largest network of

local groups. It allows users to

organize local based groups or join

existing ones in which members

interact not only in the virtually

space but also face-to-face on a

regular basis.

Social networking

service.

Community

collaboration and

empowerment.

Meetup’s mission is to

revitalize local communities

and help people around the

world self-organize. Meetup

allows members to find and

join groups unified by a

common interest, such as

politics, books, games, movies,

health, pets, careers or

hobbies.

Worldwide http://www.meetup.com/

Zerorelativo The project aims to promote

economic activities based on

exchange and not money, thereby

reducing the environmental impact

caused by artificial consumption.

“Zerorelativo” is basically an e-

commerce system without

monetary transaction.

Online bartering

community.

Activity Exchange

and sharing of

used products,

networking.

“Zerorelativo”s warns the

consequences of the

consumption-led lifestyle and

promotes an alternative way

of consuming, barter.

Italy http://www.zerorelativo.it

Green Map

Service (Green

Map)

The project aims to create an

activity and collaborative

mapmaking, selling mapmaking

tools, information sharing and

socializing.

A collaborative

mapmaking

community

Mapmaking is used as a

medium, Green Map System

encourages involvement in

cultivating more sustainable

communities around the

world. By highlighting a

community’s special places as

well as its natural, cultural and

Worldwide http://www.greenmap.org


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sustainability resources, Green

Map expects to help local

citizens understand their

community’s interdependent

environmental, social and

economic systems.

Good This is a new platform — a

gathering place and a growing

toolkit for pragmatic idealists to

creatively and collaboratively

engage with each other ad the

communities.

Connect with

awesome people

and

organizations,

and engage with

them around

topics and issues

them care about.

GOOD aims to learning, doing

and improving together. It is a

toolkit for pragmatic idealists

to creatively and

collaboratively engage with

each other, the community

and issues that care about.

Worldwide. http://www.good.is/explore

Ceosforcities The mission of the project is to

make cities more sustainable and

economically competitive with a

focus on investing in the distinctive

assets of cities.

Collaborative

platform and

infrastructure to

create and

sharing ideas.

Cutting edge approach to

identify first look trend and

opportunities. Asset-based

approach. Cross-sector:

engage urban leaders at all

sectors and levels.Cross

generational.Multi-

dimensional: the project aims

that each city must find its

own unique combination of

approaches to achieving

success. Research-driven.

Action-oriented: urban

activists it necessary to

USA http://www.ceosforcities.org/


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execute real change in cities.

PopUpCity The Pop-Up City is a blog that

explores the largest designs, trends

and ideas that shape the city of the

future.

Survey of creative

solutions

regarding flexible

urbanism and

architecture.

Answer to the actual problems

of cities that are related to

rapidly increasing

international societal, cultural,

technologic and economic

transformation processes.

Worldwide

(Amsterdam)

http://popupcity.net

Project for Public

Spaces (PPS)

PPS is a non-profit planning, design

and educational organization

dedicated to helping people to

create and sustain public spaces

that built stronger communities.

Place-making

approach that

helps citizens to

transform their

public spaces into

vital places.

Partnering with public and

private organizations, federal

state and municipal agencies,

business improvement

districts, neighbourhoods

associations and other civic

groups.

US http://www.pps.org/

Collectifetc The Collectifetc wants to answer to

the need of a common dynamic for

the renovation of public spaces.

Engagement of

different actors in

the renovation

and design of the

city rather than a

top-down

approach.

Spontaneous interventions

oriented. Integration of the

local population in the design

of public space.

FRANCE http://www.collectifetc.com

ICE-POPS ICE-POPS is an open collective of

researchers, artists, writers,

planners and urban explores

operating across different cities.

Information

sharing and

creation of a

people network

through the

organization of

The platform collects and

catalogs privately-owned

public spaces (POPS) and

other public-private

developments. It aims at

organize walking tours of

USA http://ice-pops.org/


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tour of these

sites.

these sites and offer online

tools for people to upload

their own information about

land ownership and use.

MyBlockNYC My block is a platform that allows

people to share proposals and

videos account of the life and

culture od a specific place.

Information

sharing, creation

and sharing of

knowledge.

The information are geo-

localized and divided by

categories.

NY, USA http://myblocknyc.com/

Popularise It is a platform where citizens can

share their ideas and proposals

about existing and future project,

promoted by different actors.

Civic information

and engagement.

Creation of local

community and

network.

The platform allows to:

review existing projects,

submit personal ideas, show

personal support, join

together and built cities.

USA http://popularise.com/

Service Design

Jam (SDJ)

The Global Service Design Jam is a

group that make possible to work

together for 48 hours to conceive,

prototype and communicate a

service concept to the ground up.

Collaboration,

experimentation

and prototyping.

It is an opportunity to learn

about service design, but also

to meet people.

Worldwide,

Auckland, NZ

http://www.smallfire.co.nz/20

13/02/22/service-design-jam/

http://planet.globalservicejam

.org/

User Centred

Health Care

Design (UHCD)

UCHD is the name of a team of

researchers, designers and

healthcare professionals who use

the technique of co-design. They

work alongside service users and

providers to understand their

experiences and stories and,

together, find ways to improve

things.

Collaboration.

User-centred

design methods.

They want to improve existing

services, designing service

innovations, designing

strategic change. They work

within the NHA.

South

Yorkshire, UK

http://www.uchd.org.uk/

http://www.smallfire.co.nz/2013/02/22/service-design-jam/

http://www.smallfire.co.nz/2013/02/22/service-design-jam/


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The better block The Better Block project started

from an event organized in Oak

Cliff, the intervention aimed to

introduce bicycle lanes on the main

street of the town, proving in this

way that the streets could also

have alternative uses.

Civic

engagement.

Social

aggregation.

The Better Block bottom up

movement became a an

example of how an area could

be revitalized through

collaborative participation,

and moved forward to

become a toolkit both online

through the services offered in

the web site and in real life by

organizing local training

sessions with the interested

communities.

Oak Cliff,

Dallas, TX, USA

http://betterblock.org/

Parklets The parklets are small urban areas

formed by a platform installed near

the sidewalk that occupies public

parking and extends for a

maximum of three parking and

they don’t require a

reconfiguration of the streets.

These places are occupied by

benches, tables, bicycle parking or,

for example, art exhibitions. The

used objects are built with recycled

materials that after can be reused

in other ways.

Social

aggregation,

collaboration.

The idea rises from the will to

transform parking places in

new spaces that can be an

occasion for social aggregation

for local communities and for

tourist and, at the same time,

to redevelop public space.

These interventions create

new street-fronts that can

stimulate the pedestrian flux

in the interventions areas. In

this perspective the vision of

the project is to involve

citizens in the design of small

transformation of the public

space of to awareness citizens

in the transformation of the

San Francisco,

USA

http://www.spontaneousinter

ventions.org/project/parklets

http://sfgreatstreets.org/parkl

ets/

http://betterblock.org/

http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/project/parklets

http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/project/parklets

http://sfgreatstreets.org/parklets/



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neighborhood and

consequently in different

urban problems.

Depave Depave is a project provided by a

non-profit organization, born in

Portland, which organizes different

events of de-paving, where a group

of volunteers transforms empty

and unused places into green

collective spaces.

Civic

engagement,

redevelopment of

the city,

sustainable

practice,

socialization.

This manifestation has given

rise to the idea that how this

small action could be applied

to a much larger scale. Hence,

after some years the

transformation of a parking

area was completed and from

that experience other took

place, engaging every times

more and more volunteers.

Portland, OR,

USA

http://www.treehugger.com/

urban-design/urban-depavers-

return-parking-lot-land-

nature.html

http://www.cec.org/Page.asp

?PageID=751&SiteNodeID=10

73

https://www.facebook.com/d

epave

Improvesf A platform for civic engagement in

promoting ideas from people and

sharing thoughts on improving

their communities, neighborhood

and county. Through this avenue,

members online interact, talk

about problems and share ideas.

Civic

engagement:

inhabitants

centered

Inhabitants are connected

through an online registration

system and enable to discuss

and interact on community

issues.

San Francisco,

USA

www.improvesf.com

Seeclickfix Global It is a collaborative online platform

between the citizens, media and

government agencies. Within the

system, registered citizen’s report

on community problems and

emergencies and the responsible

and concerned authority fixes it as

appropriate. Citizens also build

Civic engagement

and public

accountability.

Community

interaction

Functions through an app for

government partners or open

source for community

members.

Operational in

some states in

the US and

Canada.

http://it.seeclickfix.com/

http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/urban-depavers-return-parking-lot-land-nature.html




http://www.cec.org/Page.asp?PageID=751&SiteNodeID=1073



https://www.facebook.com/depave

https://www.facebook.com/depave


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conversation around community

issues and concerns are

harmonized in a report form for

participating public authorities.

Urban

Prototyping

Developing projects in the public

realm that emanates from the

public discourse. Temporary

interventions in public space to

drive longer-term conversations

and changes in a city.

Creative

engagement.

Project

replication

Public realm projects with a

digital dimension to bring

more inhabitants into public

spaces of the neighborhood.

USA http://urbanprototyping.org/

MyPlace It is an online platform for fostering

interaction among individuals,

community groups, local business

and Council. It encourages open

interaction and conversation and

aims at improving delivery of

services and empowering citizens.

Council-Citizen

interactions.

Community

engagement

It is an open source but has

restrictions with respect to

age and ‘eligibility’. Non-

citizens should have agt least

visited the city in the past 12

months.

Ryde, Australia http://myplace.com/

Beneighbors This is an initiative of e-democracy

and operates as an online platform

aimed at promoting interaction

among community members,

building a social community,

encouraging local voices and

community outreach support

within the neighborhoods

Inclusion and

engagement.

Lesson sharing.

Innovation and

technology

The web-based neigbour-to

neighbor forums connect

community members and

promote mutual support for

each. It also connects with

google maps and facebook

mobile app for usability across

different spheres

Minneapolis,

St. Paul in the

USA

http://pages.e-

democracy.org/BeNeighbors


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Harrigay online Online forum to promote

interaction among community

residents, encourage conversations

and serve as information point on

issues and public services for

residents. The platform also

includes a business forum aimed at

promoting network and support

among local business in the

community.

Social interaction

and civic

engagement

The forum is web-based and

basically powered through

resident registration,

conversation and interest in

community affairs

Northern

London, UK

http://www.harringayonline.c

om/

Miniostas Community based group that is

primarily driven by voluntary

efforts organized online to mobilize

support for addressing community

problems.

Community

activism,

voluntary spirit.

A combination of web and

physical organization of

support for community

change

Herakloin,

Greece

http://minoistas.blogspot.it/

Pireactive A grassroots social group of

community members who interact

and together address common

problems without relying on

government support. It enhances

its interaction activities through an

online community network where

issues are identified and volunteers

acted on the ground.

Community-

driven initiatives

Social interaction

Interaction fostered through a

mobile app that allows

members to share ideas and

prompt volunteer action

Pireaus,

Greece

http://pireactive.wordpress.co

m/


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InfoAlamedaCou

nty V.20

It is a date warehouse service and

interactive mapping base that

allows users to obtain relevant

information for research, policy

and advocacy. The system has

been developed to assist neighbor

to obtain relevant information for

developing their areas.

Data organization

and mapping .

The information for change

principles provides where

different kinds of information

can be obtain, shared and

mapped.

USA http://www.infoalamedacoun

ty.org/index.php/News.html

Openlylocal This is community-local

government system with the

objective of making local

government more transparent by

improving and developing an open

and unified access to local

government information. Data is

accessible through xml or Jason.

Civic-public

authority

engagement

Local government

transparency

It runs through both web and

app platforms where

information is made open to

subscribers on wide issues

about public authority

activities and services

UK http://openlylocal.com/

Talkaboutlocal This is an advocacy platform where

citizens are given the platform to

voice out their problems and issues

within the neighborhood in which

they live.

Civic engagement

Advocacy

Operates an a community web

based forum to give voice and

listenership to residents

UK http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/

Front porch

forum

Neighborhood connects system

where members who live within

the same area are free to connect

and share with each other.

Community

building, CS

The connection system is

organized to foster

community spirit and building.

USA http://frontporchforum.com/

Ma-residence It is a networking system where

neigbours help each other and

Mutual support It is not only a connection

platform but a means where

France http://www.ma-


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enjoy ‘localife’ within their

neighbourhood. Individuals gain

accesss to their neighbourhood,

buildings, groups and services.

and assistance. members interact and support

each physically when needed

e.g babysitting

residence.fr/accueil

Neigboursforneig

hbours

NfN is a web community forum

based on volunteerism and

community connections. It

provides information and news

about the community to its

registered residents. The system

also provides informs users of

common problems and volunteers

intervene to help their neighbors.

Community

mutual

assistance. Social

interaction

The online forum is based on

volunteerism and

neighborhood support for

each other to foster reciprocal

relationship

USA http://neighborsforneighbors.

org/

Nexthamburg This is a platform that allows city

inhabitants to provide visions of

their ‘city of tomorrow’ but also to

shape it through self initiated

proposals and suggestions based

on forums. The system connects

users with experts who direct

opinions, wishes and contributions

and help shape user proposals on

the online forum.

Civic

engagement.

Social interaction.

Community-

driven

development

The system is able to foster

community-expert interaction

towards self initiated

proposals for the future.

Hamburg,

Germany

http://www.nexthamburg.de/


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LXAMANH This is an adaptation of

‘nexthamburg’ in Lisbon. It follows

the same principle. Also it provides

an avenue where the views of

citizens could be heard by those

responsible and also enable

everyone to be involved in the city

building process.

Community

interaction. Civic

engagement.

Community-

authority

connection

The web forum empowers

citizens to purpose solutions

to shape their city’s future and

also connect their issues with

local authority.

Lisbon,

Portugal

http://www.lxamanha.pt/

Geodevolutas A devolved and very local

mechanism where community

members aid redevelopment

through identifying abandoned or

empty buildings and located them

through an online mapping system.

The initiative is supported by

institution to aid conservation,

restoration and redevelopment of

abandoned areas.

Interactive

mapping.

Devolution of

activities

The initiative is very local,

simpler and relatively better

approach to promote

institutional processes and

community/local interactions.

Lisbon,

Portugal

http://geodevolutas.org/

Meu Rio This is a democratic forum with the

goal of increasing citizens

involvement in public policy within

their areas if jurisdiction. The

underlying philosophy is that

citizens themselves can build a

stronger and safer society for

everyone and this is achieve

through technology that mobilizes

civic for change.

Participatory

democracy

As an online laboratory it

connects the civic with

technology and uses that to

mobilize efforts for responsive

public policy.

Rio, Brazil http://meurio.org.br/


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Cidadedemocrati

ca

Functions as a collaborative

platform to enhance interaction

between different social actors

within specific geographical areas.

It offers the opportunity for

conversation, information

dissemination, proposal support

and public sharing.

Social interaction

and collaboration.

Participatory

democracy

It adopts collaboration among

different actors as an

instrument of action that can

create changes at the

community level

Sao Paolo,

Brazil

http://www.cidadedemocratic

a.org.br/

Nossasaopaolo This is another democratic

platform intended to strengthening

articulation of a broad social field

for common goals and at the same

time preserving the continuing

differences on specific issues at

different levels of society and

governance.

Democratic

governance. Civic

engagement.

As an online forum, it

operates as online movement

to gather ideas and proposals

for citizens for an equitable

and sustainable development

of the city.

Sao Paolo http://www.nossasaopaulo.or

g.br/portal/

Figure 07 – Existing Living Labs Ma

3.2.2 Inside the cases

Twenty-one cases of the list above were chosen and described in particular with the Template below:

Figure 08 – The description template of the chosen cases.


of 64

The service networking is composed by the platform:

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bambuser, Blogger Delicious, Digg,

Flickr, Google +, Isuu, Librarything, Pinterest, Reddit, Rss,

StumbleUpon, Tumbir, Vimeo, Youtube.

The platform allows people to share the moments that they see on the wild streets of New York City. It is possible to upload videos that people already have on their cell phone or computer, or explore the city and capture what people can instantly see. Each video should be shot outdoors and take place on a single block. Users upload videos and geo-refer them, building the first fully interactive video map of New York City. The information is geo-localized and divi-ded by categories.

“MyBlockNYC” is a video library service produced by people. It is a collaborative initiative aiming at creating an interacti-ve mapping website that captures and presents personal video accounts of the life and culture of New York City in order to create an intimate, evolving, and complete portrait of this great city. Sharing contents and creating collective knowledge is its main goal. Anyone, who can share content about New York, can use it.

INFORMATION

Descriprion

How does it work? Where it is used?

Technological skills

Implementation strategies: top-down or bottom up?

What is the level of engagement?

Service networking

http://myblocknyc.com/

My Block NYC

The platform is already used in different areas of New York City to signal some street art events or exhibitions, parties or some surprising initiatives.

Through collaborative efforts ranging from individual volunteers to content and equipment partnerships “My Block NYC” aims to create a platform for the public that allows for a greater understanding of each other, while empowering individuals to define themselves. Their goals can only be accomplished with help from both citi-zens and companies.

The objective of the project is to engage citizens and part-ners in creating content to help the creation of the most extensive New York City video library today to inform peo-ple about New York.

What is the level of maturity?

Web 2.0

2 Prompts

3 Proposals1 Setting the stage

4 Prototypes

5 Sustaining6 Scaling

7 Systemic change

This web environment is aimed at involving citizens within specific neighbourhoods to aid the identification and rede-velopment of abandoned and empty buildings across Por-tugal. All inhabitants in Portugal have the possibility to use it in conjunction with the local council who utilise the col-lected information for initiatives and programs concerning urban renewal. The public authority however organises the mapped data as an input into the initiatives for city or urban renewal in Portugal. The people serve as co-partners in the process providing local input data for the mapping activity.

This is a consultation environment using a online mapping tool and platform initiated as part of a broad program launched to enhance rehabilitation and urban renewal throughout Portugal. It has been introduced and connected to programs such as JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable investment in the city) and REHABITA (Regime Recovery Support for Housing in Urban Areas). This represents a space where community members aid urban redevelopment and renewal by identifying abandoned or empty buildings within their neighbourhoods and mapping it on an online platform.

CONSULTATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://geodevolutas.org/

Geodevolutas

The platform has already been used in Lisbona, Barrio, Porto, Sao José, Mafra, Viseu, Braga, Palmeira, Faro, Fun-chal.

Public institutions promoted the project, devolving the task to the local level to enhance citizens’ involvement. Inhabitants within specific areas identify empty or abandoned buildings within their neighbourhoods and locate them on a map.

At its basic level, this consultation environment allows for information dissemination through the mapping system. At its higher level the public authority utilises the mapping platform as a way of ‘virtually’ consulting the public at the different local levels to collect inputs on the ‘where’ and ‘what’ part citizens prefer for urban renewal and redeve-lopment processes. The consultation assigns value to in-habitants or residents experiencing urban problems. It re-lies on local responsibility toward city revitalisation.


Web 2.0

2 Prompts


4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

“GOOD” uses web technologies to put people in touch and basically allows people to organize surveys about what they think it is “GOOD” and they want to do and to learn. Everyone can access this service by using the platform: it is possible to join the community to share ideas and pro-mote already done projects, but also to connect with peo-ple and organization that have our similar interests.

“GOOD” is an initiative aiming at creating collaborative environments. It is supported by a platform, a gathering place and a growing toolkit for an emerging movement of ambitious people to creatively and collaboratively engage with each other and with the communities. “GOOD” aims to learning, doing and improving good ideas and project together.

CONSULTATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.good.is/explore

Good

The platform has been already used all over the world and it is used to solicit the daily use of bicycle, or to promote projects that aim to rehabilitate public spaces (http://www.good.is/posts/urban-wander-curating-a-city-s-hidden-pu-blic-spaces), to signal the presence of a particular thing or artistic experiment (http://www.good.is/posts/watch-this-massive-mural-turn-into-a-flip-book-style-animation).

“GOOD” corps is a team of social entrepreneurs who work with NGOs corporations and foundations to drive progress in collaboration with the “GOOD” community and beyond.

“GOOD” provides different level and strategies of enga-gement: it allows people (1) to “Post”, spark new ideas, conversation and actions; (2) to “Do”, find good things to do, add them to their to-dos, and mark them as done when they have done them; (3) to “Promote”, clicking “it’s GOOD” to share good stuff with their network; (4) to “Con-nect”, following people and organizations.


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What is the level of maturity?2 Prompts


4 Prototypes


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Web 2.0

The platform “POPULARISE” uses survey to decide what is the better project to build in a certain place. It can be used by “builders (developer, property owners, small bu-siness operators, architects, restaurateurs, administrators) or even by citizens.

“POPULARISE” is a poject using a online crowdsourcing platform and is focused on local urban development that allows citizens and local developers to share ideas and proposals about existing and future urban projects promoted by dif-ferent actors. Firstly, local developers, businesses or citizens can start a drawing board by posting a proposal, framing a question and asking for inputs. The second possible step supported by the platform helps the local developers with their projects: campaigns for ideas can be launched and everybody can submit ideas. If a particular idea is satisfying for citizens they can vote and support it.

INVOLVEMENT

Description

How does it works? Where it is used?




Service networking

https://popularise.com/

Popularise

The “POPULARISE” approach has already been used in different cities and states of the USA and in Perth (Austra-lia). It was used for example to save and preserve a histo-ric structure in Seattle or to promote the redevelopment of a urban street in Boston (etc.).

The platform is the result of a bottom-up process. It was developed, for the first time, by a group of native Washingtonians that reacted to the failure of the current model of the city growth. They argued that the local communities must have the power to shape how their cities grow, because they know what they really want in their neighbourhoods; they created “POPULARISE” as an answer to the need for a positive and constructive way to contribute to urban development.

The platform allows citizens to vote for the best projects: hence, it wants to inform and consult the community; it also allows them to propose projects and involve them in the related decision making and implementation.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

The platform can be explored by clicking any Icon on the map, each can display several icons symbolizing its green features, the site, a photo or video, rating stars, etc. There are different roles inside the mapmaking team. “Mapma-kers” can create new maps and manage multiple projects, invite coordinator(s) or team members to help create and manage each OGM map. The coordinator of the site can add/edit sites on the map, review and approve public sug-gestions. Team members can add/edit new sites. Registe-red contributors can suggest sites easily making login and add new contents. Here tools for mapmaking can be sold.

The “Open Green Map” (OGM) project aims to create and sustain activities of collaborative mapmaking, information sha-ring and space based socializing. Mapmaking is used as a medium to encourage more sustainable communities around the world. By highlighting a community’s special places as well as its natural, cultural and environmental resources, “Green Map” expects to develop local citizens awareness of their community’s interdependent environmental, social and economic systems.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://www.greenmap.org

Open Green Map

It has already been used all over the world; for example in North and South America, in Europe, in Israel, South Afri-ca, India, China, Taiwan, japan, Singapore to promote, for example, unknown park suitable for sports and families, or specific element of interest, as ancient trees.

The “Open Green Map” initiative has been launched by a team that formed an association and developed the platform that helps people to promote their community’s sustainability sites, routes and resources worldwide.

The objective of the project is consulting and involving pe-ople in mapping significant ecological, cultural and civic resources, sharing knowledge between communities and socializing.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

The “Jammers” use challenges to inspire participants: they give to all the “jam” a specific theme on the Friday night, it is important not to bring an idea to jam, instead it is prefe-rable to let ideas happen when people meet there. Anyo-ne can take part to the Design Jam, the only requirement is the interest in the given theme and in related services. Anybody can be part of the “jam”: a service designer, an academic, a customer, a student, unemployed, a kid, etc.

The Global Service Design Jam is a non-profit volunteer environment organized by an informal network of service desi-gners all sharing a common passion for the field of service design and customer experience. This group organizes and carries out 48 hours workshops with local communities to conceive, prototype and communicate a service concept to the ground up. These workshops are conceived as opportunities for citizens to learn about service design, but also to meet people. The platform supporting the Service Design Jam informs about the different activities and allows people to join the group as a host or organizer.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://planet.globalservicejam.org/

Service Design Jam (SDJ)

The “Service Design Jam” has already been used all over the world. The design sessions are organized simulta-neously during a single weekend all over the world. The third “Design Jam” took place last March, 2-3, 2013.

The Jam has a staff of none and a budget of nearly nothing. The designers take a collaborative and participato-ry approach to the implementation of new processes, strategy, services and products for specific communities. The platform has been developed by the initial network of designers and is now used by many others.

The project aims to involve people in a specific activity to prototype and design something that may become a real business and to create an occasion for local communities to meet.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

The strategy used by the project is informing people about the initiatives and the capital of existing public spaces in Salem and allowing them to comment and assess the ini-tiatives. The platform can be used by all people who are interested in know better Salem. It is possible to leave a comment on the platform, as well as adding any contri-bution, map, clarification, idea by writing to the site admi-nistrator. The administrator of the platform has a key role, due to the fact that he is a mediator in the implementation of the initiative.

The Salem Public Space is a initiative, supported by a virtual space, to get to know real spaces in Salem (MA, USA) throu-gh citizens’ thoughts, photos, maps, clarifications, criticism, contributions and ideas. The platform collects neighbourho-od narratives, the descriptions of real actions in public spaces and a map in which it is possible to signal favourite public spaces in Salem.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://salempublicspaceproject.com

Salem Public Space Project (Salem PSP)

This project has been conceived for the Salem community: its platform is dedicated the public spaces of Salem (MA, USA). It has already been used to organize an event in Lafayette Park aimed to “reframe” it through a tempora-ry installation so to create a touristic attraction and path. The platform was has also been used to carry out in the neighbourhood the “share a chair” aiming at engaging citi-zens in experimenting flexible seating.

This initiative has been launched by a single person, living in Salem (MA), who cares about Salem public spa-ces. He also developed the platform that is used by the administrator to inform citizens about these spaces and to collect their suggestions and comments.

The promoter of the project is prototyping different solu-tions for renovate and rehabilitate public spaces, involving citizens in many projects and events.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

“Nexthamburg” is supported by a crowdsourcing platform for ideas about mobility, urban development, etc. The users of the system include community citizens, experts, editorial team, public authority and other private actors as spon-sors. The coordinators of the platform utilise a competitive/challenge-based strategy where a competitive process is opened for citizens to propose ideas and opinions for the future development of the city. There is a selection process where best ideas are selected and documented into a re-port, or even implemented as a project. Feasibility studies are carried out on the developed projects and prototypes.

This project involves citizens to be part of the future transformation of Hamburg. It uses a platform that operates as an internet based hamburg-citizen platform for the city of tomorrow. It empowers citizens to propose ideas and initiatives and also helps them to be heard in the city. Introduced in 2009, it was aimed at actively involving citizens in shaping the future of Hamburg and for two years was funded by the German federal ministry of transport, building and urban development as pilot project. The platform offers a connective link and interaction between citizens, local authority, and experts to share ideas and to offer opportunity for shaping the future of the city through a web-based productive platform.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://www.nexthamburg.de/

Nexthamburg

It is already been used in different cities, as Hamburg, Co-penhagen, Savamala and in other cities for different objec-tives. For example in Hamburg it aims to create a future vision for the future cities, as urban projects or ideas for new businesses. In other cities the project focuses on a specific thing as mobility.

The platform is provided and maintained by an editorial team that also creates the opportunities for public-civic engagement. The initiative and interactions are initiated at the local level where citizens are empowered and encouraged to actively participate in discussions and sessions on or offline and given also the opportunity to present their ideas.

The main focus of this engagement initiative is to streng-then consultation and public involvement and also promo-te public-civic collaboration in city development. The level of engagement is stronger at the involvement and coope-ration levels. Some of the projects introduced by citizens through the competitions are in the process of being deve-loped. There is an interaction among these users both on and offline through workshops, camps, sessions and tours



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

The platform provides a source of information for commu-nities, media and government authorities. It also offer a consultation space where interaction between the citizens and public authorities are enhanced through a feedback mechanism of problem-solution interrelationships. The entire process is led by a team of entrepreneurs and vo-lunteers who coordinate the platform and its development. Government and media act as partners in the utilisation of the platform, and also direct and lead the process. Since it operates as a tool and not particular limited to a geo-graphical location, it allows for universal usage.

“SEECLICKFIX” allows community members or citizens to identify problems within their neighbourhood and see them fix by responsible authorities in a interaction platform. It is a platform to enable citizens report non-emergency issues and for governments to tract, manage and reply through transparency, collaboration and cooperation; it also empowers citizens and allows community groups, media organisations to improve their neighbourhoods. It functions on three key principles: empowerment, efficiency and engagement. The service also adopts Smartphone apps that offer alerts and also report problems and solutions.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://it.seeclickfix.com/

Seeclickfix

“SEECLICKFIX” is already used in many American cities. For example in Chicago it has been used to report busy traffic problem or the need of graffiti removal or potholes, etc.

The whole initiative is driven by public administrations of Chicago, Albany, Washington, etc. that also provided the platforms. It aims to create new ways to improve service delivery, increase government accountability and improve the quality of life for citizens. The project also includes media partners for the implementation of the communication tools (websites, apps, etc.).

Posts and conversation on non-emergency issues rely on specific individuals or groups experience with the problem that is being reported. Local people see the problem, pre-sent it on the online forum and see the concerned authority response to fix the problem. To some extent, it also relies on citizen responsibility by empowering them to report lo-cal issues and problems in their area as a means of dis-seminating information and exercising their responsibility toward the improvement of their neighbourhoods.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Web 2.0

The main goals are to inform and create online interaction among communities for ‘in-person engagements in real life.’ Basically the platform informs and fosters interaction among local community members through several forums online. Users are mainly members of specific communities or neighborhoods where the platforms have been crea-ted. Users join the different online forums created on the platform to share information, discuss and interact among each other. Also business owners and local interest groups can all participate in the forums and share information and discussions as well recommendations.

Beneighbors is an initiative of e-democracy.org aimed at creating an online public space that strengthens community and better participatory discourses. Its mission is to harness the power of online tools to support participation in public life, strengthen communities, and build democracy. It is based on local community online forums that run across 17 communities in three countries, namely US, New Zealand and United Kingdom. Beneigbours is supported by a platform where information is shared, ideas are communicated and recommendations are made toward greater community social interaction and engagement

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://pages.e-democracy.org/BeNeighbors

Beneighbours

The Beneighbors approach has already been used all over the world for organize meeting and discussion about spe-cific urban problem, as the water management, and to im-plement urban regeneration projects.

The platform is provided by “e-democracy” that is driven by volunteers and supporters.

In supporting the online forums an initiative known as the inclusive community engagement has been created as a strategy to bring more citizens on board. The strategy is the creation of several forums along different topical areas that community members subscribe based on their inte-rests. There is also a sort of competition strategy adopted where community of ‘good standing’ (their participants are contributing) to benefit from certain services. The challen-ge strategy compels communities to intensity their invol-vement in the forums to benefit from the local information.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Collectifetc’s characteristic is to act in the public space by integrating the actions of local population in their creative process. These actions and researches are not limited to the artistic discipline but also affect social, political and ur-ban issues. The designers organize events and co-design workshops in specific open public space, where they want to build or to design something.

The aim of the project is to create built structures, street furniture, sculptures, installations, and to organize meetings and conferences, training workshops, or more artistic interventions. It pays the attention on the process that these urban ex-periments generate, as new environments and behaviours.

INVOLVEMENT

Description





Service networking

http://www.collectifetc.com

Collectif etc

Collectifetc operates in France and one of their main projects was the “Place au Changement” organized during the “Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Ètienne”, thanks to the invite of the local administration. In this occasion they operated with the collaboration of Pauline Escote (graphic artist) and Maion Mangin (designer) for the realization of a collaborative project for the realization of new street furni-ture in an urban vacant and empty space.

The process is top-down, implemented by Collectif etc, an association composed of architecture students or architects that is oriented to a spontaneous design of public urban spaces. The group involve citizens in the design and implementation of different solution for public open spaces.

They involve and engage citizens in the design and im-plementation process, putting the attention on the social feedback and behavioural results they activate with these actions.

“TEMPO RIUSO” aims to launch competitions for ideas on temporary re-use, to start-up and manage temporary use of land and buildings, to create a database where supply and demand of temporary re-use can be matched, as well as to implement a management model of temporary re-use through an Information Point. Key roles in TEMPO RIUSO are played by the cultural associations “Cantieri Isola” and “Precare.it”, which today are joined in the association “tem-poriuso.net”; they are aligners and drivers of the project. All interested citizens and communities can sign the mani-festo of the association.

“TEMPO RIUSO” aims to target empty, abandoned or under-utilized existing building stock and land, owned by public or private entities, and re-activate them through designs such as cultural and associative projects, small business and handicraft start-ups, temporary dwelling for students and low cost tourism. All of this is regulated by temporary use price-controlled contracts. The economic, social and urban goal that “TEMPO RIUSO” enucleated is urban regeneration in terms of requalification of the building stock, its protection from vandalism and decay, cooperation with the third sector, control of land consumption, support of local communities in the self-organization of land and self-promotion of services.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.temporiuso.org/

Tempo Riuso

One of the “TEMPO RIUSO” completed projects, “Work in progress”, aims to meet the needs of businesses in an ex-industrial and abandoned area in Sesto San Giovanni (MI). Here, the project provides the recovery of an empty buil-ding through its temporary use (3 years); there will be a la-boratory, a greenhouse nursery for plants and vegetables, and a platform for discussion among landscape architects, agronomists, associations from this area on issues related to urban green areas. The project is already active in Milan (ITALY) and it wants to spread abroad. It refers to other similar experiences in the world.

The project is promoted by the association “temporiuso.net” that fosters temporary reuse projects in abando-ned spaces and also a network of local and international partnerships with associations, activists and resear-chers. In recent years they have also started local workshops, international seminars, lectures, guided tours, events, public meetings, calls for applications with Universities, Art Academies, Research Institutes, Architec-ture offices, cultural associations, stylists, designers and artists.

The project aims to support local communities in the self-organization of land and self-promotion of services; in this perspective it requires a strong involvement of local actors, public operators included. It asks for the cooperation of all people who believe in this aggregation. Everybody can be user and also supplier of the service.


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The City Council organizes many events to involve citizens with different interests and co-design workshops to im-plement urban projects (http://vimeo.com/49107391) and other activities in the neighbourhoods, as cycling events, youth club, community garden, etc. The platform can be used all over the word, but the information and the projects are currently just related to Southampton (UK). The City Council has a specific and important role in this story, it is the aligner and facilitator of the organization and imple-mentation of the projects.

This is a urban collaborative environment supported by the Southampton community platform, a tool provided by the City Council to involve citizens and make the local community stronger. Here the community is involved in environmental works, urban projects, and in the life of community centres with the Council. The whole initiative is also aimed at building a strong community spirit: the official webpage of the City Council shows how the platform supports and improves com-munities creating groups and projects starting from common interests.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking


Southhampton’s communities

It is used in Southampton by the City Council whenever it is necessary to involve citizens in the life of the communi-ty through environmental work and in the design of urban development projects. For example, they organized a wor-kshop with the citizens for the recovery of Townhill park to find what small changes citizens would like to see to impro-ve their walking, cycling and public transport experiences.

The Southampton’s communities is an initiative initiated by the “Communities and Improvement team” of the City Council of Southampton that also provides the information platform. This office also uses other platforms and social networks (Vimeo or Facebook) to inform and involve citizens in a wide range of activities and projects.

The City Council uses the platform to inform citizens about the activities organized in Southampton, but it also organi-zes co-design workshops with citizens to implement diffe-rent projects together.


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This initiative allows citizens and neighbours to meet and getting together to learn something, do something and sha-re something. Therefore, platform helps to strengthen the communities. The network can be used by all citizens who want to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting-up face-to-face. It works like a blog.

The MeetUp project aims to facilitate offline group meetings in various localities around the world; activity creating and joining groups based on interest and location. Meetup.com is the world’s largest network of local groups. It allows users to organize local based groups or join existing ones in which members interact not only in the virtually space but also face-to-face on a regular basis. Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local communities and help people around the world to self-organize. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.meetup.com/find/

MeetUp

Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. It has 14.00 million members, 130 groups and it has already been used in 196 Countries. It was already used to allow filmmakers to meet, or to organize bike rides, etc.

The Meetup’s platform started from the desires of local communities to improve themselves and allows people with similar interest to meet and know each other. It is the environment where communities of practices can find their own way to appropriate physical spaces.

Neighbours collaborate together in the organization and realization of meetings.


Web 2.0

2 Prompts


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The idea of the project is that 78th Street will be closed to traffic on Sundays to allow for games, free play, perfor-mances, markets, and other activities to take place in the car-free street.

“78th PLAY STREET” is a project that aims to transform a street in a pedestrian area, where families with young children and other people of the community can socialize with their neighbours, read a newspaper, participate in a class, attend an event. This project starts from the lack of open public space in Jackson Height (Queens, NY) and the will to increase and improve them, starting from the expansion of Travers Park, the small neighbourhood park.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.jhgreen.org/playstreet.html

78TH PLAY STREET

This project is strongly contextualized in 78th Street that is right next to Travers Park. With thousands of residents around it, Travers Park is very crowded on weekends, and often there is not enough space for everyone to enjoy the park. The Play Street will make it possible for the park to spill into the street, allowing people to stroll, play, attend events and relax in the space, while reducing crowding in the park.

The project is implemented by Jackson Height Green Alliance, Inc (JH Green), which is a community group dedicated to increasing and improving open spaces in the neighbourhood.

The projects started directly from the needs of citizens that occupy the street, involving citizens in many organi-zed events and stimulating the engagement of institutions trying to capture and put their attention to the problems of this neighbourhood.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

To design new public services solution, MindLab and Mini-stries organize the work with the stakeholders on a process model that consists of seven phases: (1) project focus, (2) learning about the users, (3) analysis, (4) idea and concept development, (5) concept testing, (6) the communication of results and (7) impact measurement. In some project MindLab only contributes to the implementation of a parti-cular stages, while in others they are involved throughout.

MindLab is a LivingLab that implements collaborative public services in collaboration with three Ministries; it represents a fulcrum of intra-governmental cooperation, which focuses on innovation processes that are based on the reality experien-ces by citizens and businesses. The MindLab’s mission is to involve citizens and business organizations in developing new and proven public solutions that give individuals and businesses a better experience of public services, producing the desired outcomes through a better collaboration between public, private sector and citizens and through a better use of public resources.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.mind-lab.dk/en/

Mind Lab

MindLab operates in Copenhagen and it has already been used for strengthen an interdisciplinary high school subject with student involvement, or create a digital mentor systems that can help the unemployment closer to a job, etc.

MindLab is driven by a cross-ministerial innovation unit, which involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society. It works with the Ministry of Business and Growth, the Ministry of Children and Education, the ministry of Employment and it collaborates also with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Interior.

The MindLab methodologies are related to design-centred thinking, qualitative research and policy development, with the aim of including the reality experienced by both the public and businesses into the development of new public-sector solutions.


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The platform allows different stakeholders to discuss spe-cific topics under five main themes or “tables”. The CITY table is open to everyone and deals with topics of common interest, while the ACCESSIBILITY, ENERGY, PEOPLE and ENVIRONMENT tables are reserved for the scientific com-munity. The results of these 4 discussion groups are made public in the CITY table when they have practical implica-tions on the surrounding neighbourhood and the city. In the TABLES areas, thorough FORUM it is possible to follow the discussion topics proposed by moderators and participate by leaving comments or suggest new topics.

“Città Studi Campus Sostenibile” aims to transform the university district into a model part of the city in terms of quality of life and environmental sustainability. It expects the active participation of researchers, students and local residents who can provide their ideas and contribute to discussion groups, which are divided in five categories: people, energy, envi-ronment, sustainability, city. It uses a dedicated platform and has been part of the Periphèria project.

COOPERATION

Descriprion





Service networking

http://www.campus-sostenibile.polimi.it

Sustainable Campus

It has already been used in Milano Città Studi to test new forms of collaboration between institutions and citizens in the transformation of public space. For example, it has already produced the pedestrianization of Piazza Leonar-do da Vinci, the main square in front of the Politecnico. This project transformed the car parks into real laboratories for testing new functions and uses of public spaces.

“Città Studi Campus Sostenibile” is promoted by Politecnico di Milano and University of Milan. Although this top-down intentionality, the activities carried out within the whole initiatives are mainly bottom up under the alignment and coordination strategy of the driving group.

The project aims to involve people, researchers, students and citizens, in the ideas generation of different projects, in their implementation and sustaining.


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2 Prompts


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Web 2.0

2 Prompts


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The “UHCD” uses four kinds of workshops: (1) a user-cen-tred focus to identify improvement and innovation opportu-nities; (2) innovative thinking by developing patient’s stori-es and building up needs’ map in order to understand the context; (3) prototypes creation, through shared descrip-tions, discussions, post-it sessions (etc.) and refinement towards an agreed solution; (4) interdisciplinary dialogues, to define better the context and specify solutions. The access to the services is reserved to the South Yorkshire community but it does not exclude the implemented servi-ces be shared and used in the rest of UK.

“User-centred Healthcare Design” (UCHD) is a co-design group, composed of a team of researchers, designers and he-althcare professionals also involving citizens in the design of healthcare services. They work alongside service users and providers to understand their experiences and stories searching for ways to improve things. They work for the National Healthcare Service and with NHS partners to find design methods that NHS can use as part of its on-going practice. The group explores how design can help in: improving existing services, designing service innovations, designing strategic changes. They share the findings in the perspective of improving healthcare provision for local people.

EMPOWERMENT

Description





Service networking

http://www.uchd.org.uk/

User centred health care design (UHCD)

This Living Lab approach has already been used to deve-lop digital tools and services that support diabetic young people living to self-manage their health conditions and to improve outpatient services used by elders at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.

The “UCHD” project belongs to the Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for South Yorkshire (CLAHRC-SY, a five-year project for healthcare in South Yorkshire). It conducts high-quality applied research into how services are designed.

The project principal objective is the collaboration betwe-en the different stakeholders to refine user-centred design methods and create a model for NHS as a whole.



4 Prototypes


7 Systemic change

Citizens or small businesses directly choose the space to use, the street furniture that will be placed there and the size of the platform. Then the public administration eva-luates the proposals and, if it meets the dimensional and functional requirements, allows the intervention. There are fees for construction and maintenance of the parklets, which is temporary. The private use of the parklets is not allowed, but private businesses as the obligation to take care of the platform. In some cases there are forms of part-nership, between the public administrations and the inha-bitants for the evaluation and vonstruction of the parklets.

“Parklets” are small urban areas formed by a platform installed in a public parking and extends for a maximum of three parking places. They don’t require a reconfiguration of the streets and create new street-fronts. These places are occu-pied by benches, bicycle parking, art exhibitions (etc.). The used objects are built with recycled materials that after can be reused in other ways. “Parklets” rises from the idea to transform parking in places that can be an occasion for social aggregation for local communities and for tourist and to redevelop public space. The vision of the project is to involve citizens in the design of small transformations of public spaces.

EMPOWERMENT

Description





Service networking


Parklets

Parklets are already used in SanFrancisco and New York. On the platforms different combination of benches, or bike parking, tables and chairs, planters landscaping are com-bined together to provide a new and better public space.For example in New York, the government will also issue the licenses for small businesses, as bars or pubs that can use directly in the parklets.

The process of activating a parklet starts by citizens and then the public administration evaluates the proposals to give the permissions.

The main actors of the all project are citizens and small businesses owner that move through a reappropriation of public spaces, but the all process is a strength collabora-tion between citizens, businesses and institutions.


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The depave association organizes some activities to en-gage and inspiring communities to reconnect urban lan-dscapes to nature through the reduction of pavement that include the recruitment and training of volunteers, the cre-ation of a local committee to explain what is the project, to ensure the involvement of different stakeholders, to identify suitable sites and to obtain the required permissions. The association also tries to engage people through the use of social-network and through promote events, during which occur the de-paving and the regeneration of sites with the planting of trees.

Depave is a project that includes different events, during which a group of volunteers transforms empty and unused pla-ces into green collective spaces. It was born by a demolition of a parking garage in a private property and the transfor-mation of this area in a grove of fruit trees. This manifestation has given rise to the idea that how this small action could be applied to a much larger scale. Hence, after some years the transformation of a parking area was completed and from that experience other took place.

EMPOWERMENT

Description





Service networking

http://depave.org/

Depave

Depave has already been used in Portland, San Franci-sco and Toronto. This initiative often takes place in areas of high population density, where pubic spaces are built for the most part, leaving little open spaces to the natural en-vironment. Moreover, it mainly focuses on the periphery of the city, where the de-paving intervention improves living conditions. In fact, thanks to the restoration of degraded areas and the creation of urban gardens that, in addition to providing food at low-incomes families, constitutes an opportunity for young people to socialize, crime episodes show to be reduced in these areas.

Depave was born by a spontaneous intervention, the demolition of a parking garage in a private property and the transformation of this area in a grove of fruit trees. Starting from this experience the project continues to engage more and more volunteers every times and now is provided by a non-profit organization, born in Port-land (OR, USA).

The initiative is based on voluntary action that involve ci-tizens directly in the physical action of depaving and re-appropriating the public space.


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“The neighbourhood” is a Lab that works within the activi-ty of Medea. Researchers of Malmö University work with people that come form outside the university, as compa-nies, organizations, institutions and individuals in a studio, where they can do experiments, workshops, events and creative work in general. During these collaboration events and workshops they create, implement test, prototype of many new services solutions and also think about their fu-ture sustainability.

“The Neighbourhood” is a Living Lab that aims at creating a co-production and innovation environment for collaborative services and social innovation anchored in a specific geographic environment in Malmö. The Lab is searching for innova-tion resources and building up a network of stakeholders and potential innovators in Rosengard and Fosie, two of Malmö’s multi-cultural districts and connecting them to business and university partners.

EMPOWERMENT

Description





Service networking

http://medea.mah.se/2010/01/living-lab-the-neighbourhood/

Living Lab the Neighbourhood

“The neighbourhood” has already implemented several collaborative projects, involving a variety of stakeholders. For example, during a long term collaboration with a wo-men’s association, mainly consisting of women from Af-ghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Bosnia, the Living Lab explores how new media services in combination with social innova-tion can enhance their everyday activities (food catering, small-scale clothing, etc.), making them into a resource for the public sphere and surrounding community (and in the long run possibility establishing and increasing business opportunities for them as a commercial cooperative).

Medea is a design led research centre for collaborative media at Malmö University. It sets up labs where peo-ple from companies, organizations, public institutions and universities team up with citizens in order to experi-ment and create new products, services and new knowledge in real-life environments.

University researchers and external partners collaborate side by side to create new solution for public services.


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4 Discussion

4.1. Lessons learnt

Considering the described cases and the specificity of each of the described experiences, it is possible to

identify some specific guidelines for the three main actors that usually can be responsible of engagement:

1) citizens

2) municipalities

Both have crucial roles in the “engagement” dynamics and both have to be carful observers of city life.

Many opportunities are daily created in a city but they can be soft and produce weak signals that need to

be captured by both citizens and municipalities. The most successful cases are represented by those

experiences in which mutual commitment has been strong and long-lasting. Collaboration between citizens

and their municipalities can be carried out in many modes and both citizens and the municipality needs to

be aware of the wide number of opportunities offered in this direction in order to select the one or the

ones that is more consistent with their context.

From the selected experiences it is also clear that modes of engagement are also functional to the level of

collaborative environment one wants to achieve. This means that in order to develop a long-lasting living

lab a mix of these in necessary that thought the LL life and dynamics are integrated and differentiated

depending on the local citizens availability, state of public-citizens interaction, kind of project to be locally

developed. In a sense a patchwork of engagement modes and collaboration methodologies has to be

developed in order to achieve a mature condition of the living lab. Moreover many of them should also be

contemporarily available in order to widen the engagement of different citizens with different interests.

In the following some basic guidelines are given for citizens and municipalities seen as main protagonists of

bottom-up or top-down approaches.

4.2. Basic guidelines

4.2.1. Citizens

Act for an active citizenship. Often citizens do not pay attentions to opportunities offered by

municipalities or others for an active citizenship. Keep you informed and often check the web, a

new opportunity can have been created there for you to be engaged. Others can have prepared

environments for supporting you in the interaction with your municipality.

Stimulate mutual learning, promoting the exchange of views and knowledge within your

community. The best innovation occurs within a group of people with different skills and visions on

the problem that characterize a specific context. Moreover, be connected with other communities


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that face the same challenges can be an added value for the creativity and impact of the proposals

developed.

Be the attendant of the actions and the policies taken by the private and public sector regarding the

investment on urban services. Your aim is to improve the transparency about the actions

undertaken by the public sector and to increase the participation of citizens using the available

data, but also to check and increase the openness of private sector standards, ensuring a respectful

and equitable use of data.

Be in challenge with the technologies. You have to be an active user of technologies rather than a

passive user and consumer, if you want to be a good co-designer. You can be effective only if you

know what you can do with them and what they can do for you. If you are not able to do by

yourself, ask your neighbours, or your friends and develop the basic abilities.

Be active in urban spaces. Look at public spaces, value their conditions and ask yourself what you

can do to support the municipalities to keep them better. Be the controller of the public space

quality, do not leave others destroy them. In case you discover critical issues, look for ways to keep

the municipality informed. Also verify opportunity for self-made interventions and eventually start

doing small things that can improve the situation or attract the attention of the municipality in

funny and always reversible ways.

Do not leave your neighbours alone. Many of your neighbours are surely trying to do something in

order to have a better quality of life and increasing their effectiveness in public decision. Keep

yourself informed, do not leave them alone. The creation of a neighbourhood community can be

your resource in the future. Do not keep yourself distant from others’ initiative. Be part of the

neighbourhood life.

4.2.2. Municipalities

Be in-depth observer of urban life. Many initiatives are being spread in urban environments that,

deriving from the citizens attempt to respond daily life needs, can be considered innovation

epiphanies. These are incredible resources for urban lives and can represent the opportunities to

develop new innovative public services. In order to capture these epiphanies you have to be carful

observer of your city form the inside and be sensitive to weak signals given by citizens’ self-

organization.

Be aware that the city can be a laboratory for social innovation. Increasing the chance of

participation in city management can give a new push to change the current social challenges

require. The city becomes a laboratory for social innovation and policy, which requires new

approaches. The public sector can no longer be only supplier or buyer of public services, but it can

become the manager of the new partnerships aimed at innovation. Hence, the challenge for the

public sector is to manage these possible innovations.

Create opportunities for wide and differentiate citizens’ engagement. Citizens are much more than

city users. They are active resources for their cities and many opportunities and environments can

be created in order to make them protagonist of the city life. Do not limit citizens participation to a

the level of consultation: their creativity can be better enhanced when they are deeply engaged

and their commitment can be much higher when they have been active actors of decision making

process. Consider that many methodological and technological opportunities are available to

empower citizens in the urban public life.


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Use the whole range of innovative tools to direct available resources in the direction of innovation.

In a period of resource scarcity it is crucial to direct available resources towards initiatives having

high possibilities to produce innovative results. Many different tools are available to crowdsource

ideas and initiatives in order to guarantee many options to be available and effective selection be

possible.

Be available to be engaged by your citizens. Citizens are often creating initiatives in order to be

active actors in the cities: be available to be part of those initiatives so demonstrating that the

municipality can respond to citizens’ call and not only viceversa. In this way citizens will be aware

that being proactive is not useless and it is possible that more citizens start being active in the city

life.


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Living Labs for Co-designing in urban and public space

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