Ferdinando Trapani

Co-creating Urban Development: A Living Lab for Community Regeneration in the Second District of Palermo

The characterisation of urban ‘smartness’ emerges as a product of social mobilisation, which marks the pathway towards collective technology adoption and policy innovation. This paper highlights the didactic and critical aspects that relate to the use of participatory solutions – namely the electronic Town Meeting and others, such as weblogs and the “Planning for Real” scheme – which start within the dimension of social animation and serious gaming and are only later oriented to urban planning. The Palermo pilot of the PARTERRE ICT-PSP project, based on the Territorial Living Lab approach, documents one possible transition from the stage of a free relationship with scenarios and visions, to the definition of a social demand for planning, specifically within the framework of a real experience of the citizenship life. From a policy making perspective, Participation in planning does not come to an end but continuously tends to a gradual improvement, both in the quality of the projects and in those cohesion factors, which lead to the constitution of spontaneous partnerships.

For a “Living (Lab)” Approach to Smart Cities

Thanks to the diffusion of information and communication technologies, and despite the huge margins of improvement of the operating conditions of the Web, sharing an idea can be today the starting point for the birth of either a start-up or a community of interests, able to achieve a variety of goals without the intervention of any public institution. In relation to such a ferment of successful micro-level initiatives, Territorial Living Labs are here interpreted as place-based ecosystems of co-creation of goods, services as well as new organizational and social models of smart urban life. From this interpretation, the necessity strongly emerges of a coherent and viable reference framework for a Living Lab approach to the Smart City in the field of spatial planning research. Such a framework is characterized by the recognition of a common (not unique) mode of cognition and communication of both environmental and socio-technical spheres, and by the consequent abandonment of the claim of transcendent control of traditional planning, in favour of an action immanent to a kind of pluralistic as well as inclusive contexts—that we can define frameworks in turn—of innovative self-adaptation between Man and its environment.

Palermo: Living Labs for Urban Regeneration

The case of Palermo is described in this chapter as an example of Human Smart City (HSC) approach transferred to an extremely weak urban context in Southern Italy. The case focuses on the processes boosted through the Territorial Living Lab established in the city to tackle the topic of citizen participation in the solution of the main city challenges. It was based on a model of incremental and adaptive process of interaction, within a co-creative ecosystem, with the aim of improving housing quality. The model was shared by the players involved in the social innovation process. It would not have been possible without the Living Lab approach and the innovative momentum of design thinking translated into public practice.

Policies of Resilience in the New Institutional Process. The Case-Studies of Palermo and Siracusa in the South of Italy.

At the end of 2012, the PON METRO National Scheme was set up in Italy, inspired by the EU Urban Agenda. It also allows towns like Palermo to test and reach targets of urban resilience, focusing on mobility and sustainable energy in order to improve life in the cities together with innovative policies of social inclusion. Other medium-sized cities also tried to face the problem of urban resilience without using national funds. The city of Siracusa, for example, made use of EU direct co-financing schemes. This paper aims to analyse the planning projects and measures adopted in Sicily over the past few years in order to examine government approaches focusing on resilience or those that are somehow linked to it. The comparison shows that, despite the wide range of opportunities (European, National and Regional policies, etc.) a number of differences may be listed in the adoption of schemes for urban planning and for the implementation of transition measures from a linear, rational, sequential, normative and regulative approach to the circular, active, flexible and versatile approach needed to tackle the problems linked to urban resilience. This proposal suggests that new policies are needed. The new policies should focus not only on funds but also on the creation of an innovative laboratory of projects involving all the cities in equal ways and on the building of a platform to exchange data and compare the different practices adopted in relation to urban and local resilience.