Communities and space – Post-Corona avenues for “new normals” in planning research

The Corona crisis questions basic understandings of the relation between people, communities and spaces. It influences how society uses space and focuses our perspective on the importance of critical infrastructures, public services, and community networks. Which “new normals” regarding the changes in use of space by communities might emerge during this crisis? Individual and collective action emerge as a coping mechanism and a sign of collective hope. The current crisis makes the digitized more visible, while we exclude others who are outside cyberspace. Trade-offs between health and economy and new ways of organizing society are discussed publicly. What are the consequences for spatial planning and how does this open up new research avenues? This commentary aims to stimulate further discussions by putting forward six facets of the “new normal” that might impact upon post-Corona communities from a spatial planning perspective.<br/

Regional design ateliers on ‘energy and space’:systemic transition arenas in energy transition processes

In light of the challenges imposed by climate change, many countries are ‘planning’ for energy transition. Interactions between different actors in transition arenas, help shift the current complex socio-technological energy system towards a new sustainable one. A critical issue is integrating the new energy system with other land-uses and spatial issues. In the Netherlands, regional design ateliers were organized to explore and address these challenges. We conceptualized the regional design ateliers on energy and space as systemic transition arenas in planning for energy transition and analysed their contribution to the regional energy transition process. The design ateliers played an important role in creating insights into regional energy transition and its spatial implications. This raised awareness and affected the perspectives of several stakeholders on energy transition. Our study also showed that some important (spatial) aspects, such as smart combinations with other land-uses and the transport and storage of energy, received little attention during the ateliers, leading to unfinished conversations. We argue that regional design ateliers should also be organized in the upcoming stages of ‘planning’ for energy transition to further fuel the transition process and fully exploit the benefits of regional design ateliers as systemic transition arenas.</p

Greening Cities Shaping Cities: Pinpointing Nature-Based Solutions in Cities between Shared Governance and Citizen Participation

The topic of pinpointing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in the urban context has been cultivating interests lately from different scholars, urban planning practitioners and policymakers. This Special Issue originates from the Greening Cities Shaping Cities Symposium held at the Politecnico di Milano (12–13 October 2020), aiming at bridging the gap between the science and practice of implementing NBS in the built environment, as well as highlighting the importance of citizen participation in shared governance and policy making. The Special Issue was also made open to other contributions from outside the symposium in order to allow for contributions from a major scientific and practical audience wherever possible. Indeed, we have gathered contributions from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Portugal, Denmark, France, Bulgaria, Sweden, Hungary, Spain, the UAE, the UK, and the USA

Citizen Engagement in Spatial Planning, Shaping Places Together

This paper explores the roles and practices of collective citizen engagement in spatial planning. Drawing on a selection of core articles in planning scholarship, it investigates how citizens (re-)shape urban places by responding to perceived flaws in how spatial planning addresses societal challenges. Formal planning interventions are often spatially and socially selective, ineffective, or even non-existent due to a lack of institutional capacities and resources. Consequently, citizens take on roles that they consider as missing, underperformed or ineffective. The paper shows that this results in a variety of practices complementary to, independent from, or opposing formal planning actors and interventions. Five dilemmas citizens face are identified, highlighting the tensions that surface on exclusion, participation, and governmental responsibilities when citizens claim their role in urban governance

Co-creation dynamics in Urban Living Labs

Citizens and urban policy makers are experimenting with collaborative ways to tackle wicked urban issues, such as today's sustainability challenges. In this article, we consider one particular way of collaboration in an experimental setting: Urban Living Labs (ULLs). ULLs are understood as spatially embedded sites for the co-creation of knowledge and solutions by conducting local experiments. As such, ULLs are supposed to offer an arena for reflexive, adaptive, and multi-actor learning environments, where new practices of self-organization and novel (infra-) structures can be tested within their real-world context. Yet, it remains understudied how the co-creation of knowledge and practices actually takes place within ULLs, and how co-creation unfolds their impacts. Hence, this paper focuses on co-creation dynamics in urban living labs, its associated learning and knowledge generation, and how these possibly contribute to urban sustainability transitions. We analyzed empirical data from a series of in-depth interviews and were actively involved with ULLs in the Rotterdam-The Hague region in the Netherlands. Our findings show five distinct types of co-creation elements that relate to specific dynamics of participation, facilitation, and organization. We conclude with a discussion on the ambivalent role of contextualized knowledge and the implications for sustainability transitions

Urban Public Services Innovation:Exploring the 3P and 4P Models

Cities are facing the challenge to maintain and upgrade urban infrastructures and establish effective, open and participative innovation processes to develop public services able to respond to citizens' needs. This research considers public services in urban environments fundamental for value creation and for the experimentation of governance models that might have considerable implications for planning research and practice, policy development and societal well-being. While public services are innovated, different governance models in service provision are experimented, aiming to answer to new challenges, demands and priorities. Starting from these premises, the major aim of this work is to analyse the interdependence between public services innovation processes and the related governance models. The main research question of this research is: how are public services innovating in relation to their governance models? Operationally, the purposes of the research are to: i. Identify a framework to analyse innovation in public services by observing the governance models related to service provision. ii. Discussing two of the governance models related to service provision, public-private partnership (3P) and public-private-people partnership (4P) model, by identifying strengths and weaknesses of both. iii. Explore governance models related to service provision by the analysis of three case studies –Milan (IT), Athens (EL) and Rotterdam (NL) - where particular environments and changes are causing governance shifts in the management of some specific urban services. In the first part this work presents the definition of services and the existing interrelations and connections elapsing between public services innovation and governance. The second chapter analyses existing listing of public service innovation through a literature analysis, aiming to compose an analytical framework of critical elements lying between innovation processes and service governance. The third chapter presents the analysis of two governance models: the Public-Private Partnership (3P model) and the Public-Private-People-Partnership (4P model) in the provision of public services. Chapter four analyses the management of green and abandoned areas in three European cities– Rotterdam (NL), Milan (IT) and Athens (EL)- using the analytical framework built in the second chapter. The fifth chapter presents the main results of the research through the analysis of the three case studies. This part explores: (i) how public services are changing and what are the dynamics of these changes; (ii) when, how and under what condition the 4P model works, presenting a critical review of the theoretical, methodological and empirical research developed. Finally, chapter five presents a session that describes the possible future research that may arise from this dissertation

Quale innovazione per i servizi urbani?

Il paper si propone di esplorare i meccanismi di innovazione dei servizi urbani. In particolare si concentra sul ruolo che possono svolgere le amministrazioni catturando un evidente potenziale intrinseco dei sistemi urbani ovvero quelle forze urbane singolari, isolate, in alcuni casi minute, eppure capaci di proporre, e addirittura implementare in forma embrionale, idee di servizi in risposta a problemi socio-urbani cui le città non riescono a dare risposta e che spesso stentano a riconoscere. La tesi sostenuta studia come le amministrazioni possono diventare drivers di creatività e rinnovamento dell’offerta dei servizi urbani. Gli attivatori di innovazione urbana sono tipicamente sistemi complessi che includono diversi attori, quali persone, relazioni, valori, processi, strumenti, strutture fisiche o finanziarie. Il paper si propone quindi di analizzare alcuni di questi attivatori e di sviluppare un’ipotesi sul ruolo delle amministrazioni nel traghettare tali embrioni verso possibili servizi per la città