use case

Managing Urban Commons: Bologna, Italy

Bologna serves as a model for cities interested in using participatory processes to engage citizens in managing parts of their city as a commons. The various programs operate through partnerships between the city government, non-profit organizations, universities, businesses, and citizens, demonstrating how the job of city governments can be less about “commanding or providing” but rather about facilitating cross-sector collaborations to “promote a sustainable commons-oriented development paradigm.” [2]

source of visual

W Europe, Bologna, Italy, Offline+Online
- Where did this use case occur?
2014-ongoing
- When did this use case occur?
LabGov [1], District Labs (a coordinated effort between the Civic Imagination Office, the Governance Unit of the City of Bologna, and the sociology department at the University of Bologna), Foundation Del Monte of Bologna and Ravenna
- Who were some of the key collaborators
Hundreds of thousands of citizens, to represent Bologna (388k pop)
- How many people participated?
Municipality, Urban
- What are some keywords?

What was the problem?

Lots of factors contribute to declining citizen engagement in cities including: fiscal crises, gentrification, and declining public financing. There are also often high bureaucratic hurdles and regulations limiting citizen’s abilities to improve or maintain public spaces, parks, abandoned buildings, and other urban commons in order to keep cities as fair, just, flourishing, diverse, and creative environments.

How does the community approach the problem?

In Bologna, Italy in 2014, the city council passed the Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons which established a formal legal and bureaucratic system for coordinating citizen collaboration with the city government. The Regulation gave rise to hundreds of “collaboration pacts” through which self-organized citizen groups were given the authority – and city assistance – to rehabilitate abandoned buildings, manage kindergartens and eldercare centers, take care of urban green spaces, and much else. This public/private network consists of multiple programs through which it can support different types of project proposals. For example, one proposal might be well-suited to be included in a Participatory Budgeting process for the city; another might be executed by a Collaboration Pact; or another might be best suited to join the Incredibol! Competition which supports start-ups and business projects. The District Labs are another program that emerged as a way to help bring more people into the process to advise on which direction to take the various projects.

Process

Managing Urban Commons

Technique

Bologna launched participatory budgeting in 2017, where district lab managers invited the public to formal meetings to hear what citizens feel is most urgently needed. "Experts from relevant city departments — parks, transportation, public works, etc. — analyze each proposal and determine if it is eligible to move to the voting phase. The panel doesn’t have veto power — it just examines whether the proposal meets the city’s criteria on things like budget and the proposed public space. If so, it is submitted for a vote. Crucially, Bologna opened up the voting process for participatory budgeting beyond just citizens — the city allows anyone over 16 who lives, works or goes to school in Bologna to vote — a much larger group than is allowed to vote in municipal elections... The Civic Imagination Office also brought on nine people between the ages of 18 and 25 to serve as youth ambassadors for the participatory budgeting process." [3]

Tool

Partecipa

What were the results?

• Bologna is a winner of the 2018 Engaged Cities Award
• Since the regulation was passed in Bologna in 2014, more than 100 other Italian cities have followed Bologna’s lead and adopted similar regulations.
• With constant dialogue and moments of citizen action in all neighborhoods, about 7,000 citizens participated in the District Labs in 2017 and 2018, leading to 60 projects for participatory budgeting. Neighborhood by neighborhood, 30,932 citizens voted and selected 12 projects that are being realized today. [4]
• In one example, the citizens were able to transform an abandoned market into "Mercato Sonato", a community hub with music lessons, tango nights, dining, and more. 400 collaborative projects, 14,000 citizens have participated in re-designing their city.

In Our Opinions

How participatory was it?

Collaborate

The use of the term "collaboration pact" implies that the nature of the participation is a collaborative one - bringing diverse stakeholders to the table to work together on urban common pool resource projects.

What makes this Use Case unique?