Suchergebnisse

The article is aimed at discussing social innovation and co-production under a common analytical framework in order to contribute, without attempts of comprehensiveness, to the debate on how to indicate new opportunities to foster innovation in strategic planning. In the Paper co-production and social innovation are considered as mutual supporting elements in the creation of 'trading zones': spaces of strong interaction for mobilizing varied (and also conflicting) collective intelligence; middle ground spaces of confrontation able to institutionalize co-production and scale-up social innovation, in a long-term process that might transform how local institutions and strategic planning operate. Within this framework, the case study of Bologna in Italy is discussed, highlighting criticalities and opportunities in a city that has invested in specific planning mechanisms aimed at linking coproduction and social innovation within a common policy effort.

The visibility and invisibility of vulnerable individuals or groups in public space have been extensively used as a conceptual tool to assess the "public" character of space. This article analyses the case study of the Parkdale neighborhood in Toronto demonstrating how public space is constructed in a path-dependent territorial process where different layers play a dynamic constitutive role: a material, a discursive, and a policy dimension. It argues that urban visibilization and invisibilization in public spaces extensively affect the dynamics of urban inclusion and exclusion, particularly when they are used in specific territorial stigmatization and destigmatization processes. The investigation enables to better understand the socio-spatial conditions comprising the "denial" and "recognition" of certain groups and individuals at the neighborhood level by understanding how local policies and community-based practices influence the complex dynamic of "seeing and being seen" in an urban environment.

In a growing number of small and large cities across Europe, citizens are engaging and mobilizing to demonstrate their ability in creating innovative solutions for important social and spatial challenges. We are witnessing a different set of micro-practices that are transforming cities 'from below', thus questioning not only the relation between active citizenship and the State (Uitermark, 2015) but also forms of urban activation themselves. In this paper we examine the politics of urban self organization with a particular focus on the implications for local governments and the transformative potential of these practices for local communities.

In this brief Introduction we would discuss powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization in cities today, particularly as concern the relation with local governments as well as their transformative potential in local communities.