AN OPEN CITY OF PRACTICES: COSMOPOLITAN INTERACTIONS IN BOLOGNA

As the discourse on social innovation gained momentum, there has been a wide debate whether it is able to provide real alternatives for current urban issues. Evidences show that local communities finding alone progressive solutions for deep-rooted urban problems, is unrealistic. On the other hand, when institutions are engaged, the risk of interpretation of social innovation as a signal for a mere reduction of the public intervention, is highlighted. A drastically changed urban context, seems to call for a re-definition of this dichotomy, towards the reduction of the distance among practices of social innovation, and planning, making room for practices, but framing them into a planning discourse. Planning should be able to enable social innovation, without decreasing the role of the public, or selectively constraint the innovation dynamics. Social innovations should in turn expand (but not substitute) the operative capacity of planning while overcoming the risks of privatization of parts of the cities. Through the case of Bologna and its new urban plan (PUG), the contribution explores the space that holds together planning and practices, going beyond the new-communitarian and new-institutional approaches, but overcoming the tensions between these dimensions. Bologna epitomizes a florid and peculiar context, a long-term incremental process guided by the Municipality where co-production is the common features accompanying all the urban development initiatives. In this scenario, planning calls for approaches that are flexible, adaptable and open enough to allow to translate social innovations into alternative trajectories, rather than detailed structural planning, chances for the multiplication of planning visions.