Spaces for the co-governance of the urban commons. Urban public policies and community spaces: Italian Cities and more

The development of collaborative practices in the field of urban commons might represents an observation point for the study of democratic innovations. This issue shall be considered particularly interesting because it arises from the intersection of different fields of study: in addition to studies on democracy, the theory of the commons (Ostrom 1990) and the urban commons, studies on local co- governance, active citizenship (Morlino & Gelli 2010; Bang 2005;). Research efforts on the open government framework, of which collaboration is one of the constitutive dimensions (Lathrop & Ruma 2010; de Blasio & Sorice 2016) also shows how the creation of public-private-civic/commons partnership (Foster & Iaione 2016) as a component of this variable. Finally, the body of scientific knowledge focused on cities is extensive and rapidly expanding, stressing the role and power that cities will exercise in the 21st century, and the challenges that the urban context pose for democracy (UN Habitat 2016; Sassen 2014). The analysis of policies and projects addressing urban commons, involving different actors that aim at building forms of public-private-civic partnerships and ultimately achieving forms of urban co-governance might shed lights on the emersion of a different analytical framework for studying and practicing urban democracy. This topic is also taken into account because it implies the government's action to be directed to the development of a culture of collaboration with citizens, aimed at enhancing their contribution to the general interest, which is not uniformly spread across and within cities. The study of democratic innovations and the quality of democracy has highlighted the role of equality concerns in the institutional design (Font 2014) and the impact of institutional design itself on the dimensions of the quality of democracy, such as responsiveness and equality (Pogrebinsci 2013)

City Science for Urban Challenges

Between January 2019 and July 2020, over 35 European cities formed the City Science Initiative (CSI) to explore how the science-policy interface operates in light of the emergent urban challenges and crises. It seems that the impact of current national and EU funded research funded programs needs to be enhanced for tackling cities urban challenges. This report aims to inspire people in municipalities, universities, networks, different layers of government and the European Commission to develop a variety of science-policy interfaces for handling of urban challenges in the near future. The CSI pilot collaboration has brought together European small, medium and large sized cities, different services of the European Commission, different networks of cities and funding programmes. The gathered City Science Officers reflected on what they need and exchanged current practice and insight. To bridge the existing gap between science and policy, new methodologies need to be developed in all phases of the research process. The report argues that design as a discipline can help to build bridges, solutions and communication strategies for such science-policy interfaces. The CSI concludes that the science-policy interface needs to improve significantly and soon. Cities are not rich and need to be efficient in how they develop policy for making people’s living environment healthy and safe. Collaboration between cities, facilitated by European institutions and networks, is crucial for handling urban challenges and unanticipated crises as also the COVID 19 pandemic indicates

Città e salute. Il ruolo delle città nel promuovere innovazioni per la governance della salute a livello locale e globale

In 2017, the Italian Ministry of Health presented the “Rome Urban Health Declaration” which calls upon civil society actors and local administration as necessary to the efforts of providing a safe urban environment and increasing the inhabitants’ wellbeing. Global and EU urban policy agenda as well advocate for the involvement of civil society to achieve sustainable development. However, in the fight to COVID 19 pandemic, countries adopted a centralized approach, not integrating local actors in the definition of the recovery plans, exposing the communities to critical challenges. Starting from an overview of the role of cities in the Global Governance of Health (GHG) and examples, based on an earlier study, the paper will investigate innovative policies, governance arrangements and projects enabling multi-stakeholder sharing, co-management and collective ownership of urban health and health infrastructures. It will ultimately suggest leveraging on cities’ capabilities, their soft and hard legal power, diplomatic capacity as a possible solution to enhance global health security. However, in agreement with other scholars in the field, it’s argue that urban health co-governance could contribute to a broader definition of urban health, which is not limited to the protection against infectious diseases but includes access to a safe urban environment and different elements related to urban welfare