That’s a win!

Check out the animation from the Freedom Centre Family Fun Day on our LinkedIn page to see the collage faces of people who represent power in the lives of the attendees!
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Policy and urban co-production are embedded through all levels of governance in Bologna and the Foundation of Urban Innovation is at the centre of this work, leading on (amongst other things) Collaboration Pacts which support how the 3rd sector and municipality work together.

They represented a pioneering example of engagement in local politics, centring on the idea of a ‘civic consortium’ & a planning policy that engaged peripheral neighbourhoods - starting a series of social & urban experiments in the municipality that continues to this day.

Meet Giuseppe Dossetti, who ran, unsuccessfully, for Mayor of Bologna in 1956. Though he lost the election (to the legendary communist mayor Giuseppe Dozza), aspects of his manifesto (Il libro bianco per Bologna), were taken up by the administration.

The intervention encourages reflection on the loss of place-identity, depopulation & urban decay happening in many Italian cities and cities across the world. As the local press report on the growth of the ‘bamboo’, they are also charting the rising number of abandoned buildings & absent landlords.

During conversations & walks with my fab hosts at the University of Bologna, I learned about different practices & geographies of civic care. E.g. the ‘Freak of Nature’ of Emilia Romagna: an anonymous artist who paints images of bamboo stalks, and numbers the windows of empty and abandoned shops.