Learning from Collaborative Processes to Design the Urban Green Transition

Collaborative city-making and planning have been at the forefront of urban praxis and research for decades now. More recently, the pandemic crisis has emphasized how cities could benefit from proximity-driven policies for regenerating neighborhoods and triggering social innovation initiatives. The historically layered cities, collectivist culture and grassroots political vitality of the Mediterranean context are fruitful grounds for the development and experimentation of such practices. The major European political strategies and programs, such as the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus and the “100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030” mission, identify citizens’ engagement as a crucial factor to foster an effective green transition. Innovative approaches, practices and policies are needed for such a process to be consistent with the vision of energy as a social need and a democratic requirement: inclusive and affordable measures can build on already tested participatory and transversal experiences of collaboration in urban governance. This paper addresses the topic of innovative co-planning and co-design processes by analyzing practices and tools from three case studies/initiatives implemented in Bologna (Italy), both to more consolidated application realms – urban greening, cultural heritage, public spaces, and to emerging energy/green transition domains. Such an inquiry will benefit from the research experiences of the interactive platform “Urban Innovation Lab – Bologna another way”, and two H2020 projects, ROCK – Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities (GA730280), including co-designed and co-constructed actions, and the ongoing GRETA-GReen Energy Transition Actions (GA101022317), involving energy citizenship pathways. The aim is to recognize and analyze implemented tools and replicable strategies, to question and open up to the potential transferability of the lessons learned on collaborative processes to effectively address climate challenges in the Mediterranean context.