Mutating City: Designing Events as a Matter of Social Innovation

Contemporary European cities have become so large and complex that is extremely difficult, especially in times of economic crisis, to set up for them a top-down type of project. Cities can respond in a more efficient way to the inevitable ongoing change by continuously mutating, through a process of collective awareness about their real-time status. This condition can be achieved through a plethora of bottom-up, shared actions that are co-designed and implemented, and belong to a process that encompasses what is transient and temporary, what is ad-hoc and what relates to the digital sphere. Faced with this challenging premise, design comes into play and, by operating on services, events and analogical and digital communications, it can operate as a discipline that can mediate between continuous urban mutation and the need to govern it through an appropriate shape. In this article, the authors focus on the role of design within the processes of mutation that are occurring within several urban areas in Italy, where a culture of design is prevailing over grand projects of modern-day “urban mysticism”. This study will closely examine the type of events that form a process rather than its possible product. As such, they can adapt easily to a logic of continuous mutation that is feather-light, sustainable and engenders participation, both when design is their pretext (such as in the design weeks) and when design is the instrument to give events substance and a tangible form.