Knowledge exchange on urban systemic approach. The Bologna case

Cities around the world are currently facing complex, varied and persistent challenges: climate change, growing population and aging population (in Europe), rethinking resource management issues, innovation integration at urban levels, etc. One of the most pressing challenges for policy makers is to increase the capacity to define and follow a systemic approach, able to create value at urban level, collecting communities’ intelligence through collaborative processes and to support the innovation processes in the social, environmental and organisational domains of public realm. This paper, with a special focus on historic city contexts and their Cultu- ral Heritage, will show how these complex and cross-cutting challenges require the adoption of multi-level and multi-stakeholders’ governance models, in which the Public Administration acts as a facilitator, capable of supporting organisational, technological and social innovations. The paper describes the case of Bologna, first city in Italy having adopted a Regulation for the care of city commons and the preliminary results of an European experimental project, in which the city is involved, which represents the occasion to test on the fields (historic city) the co-city paradigm and civic collaboration tools, through a mix of bottom-up and top-down initiatives, completed by a direct involvement of different stakeholders in all the stages of the transformation processes of the city. The paper illustrates how a combination of experimentation results, policies, and governance models of the city will be assumed as a tool to improve the operational knowledge in urban contexts, describing: the method adopted, based on 4 phases (Knowledge collection, Pilot and demonstration, Evaluation and Assessment and Replication); the actors involved; the results achievable in terms of knowledge and competencies in urban systemic approaches.