Turin Municipality is currently promoting several European, national and local projects and initiatives fostering inclusive and social growth, to address sustainable urban development, thus pursuing a participatory approach between citizens and institutions on the creation and management of public services.
Since the first months of the project, Turin Municipality and RCQ have launched a series of activities and workshops to promote and to share both vision and the objectives of the CO3 project among its municipal departments. As far as this preliminary activity is concerned, four internal departments and three main stakeholders were actively involved in this awareness process.
Dedicated sessions focused on the CO3 technologies were presented to stimulate the first discussion about potential applications and possible use cases. As an overall result, a common request from participants started to emerge, by highlighting the need to promote subsequent follow-up sessions or events dedicated explicitly to Blockchain and Augmented Reality technologies.
The workshop on 13 June, held in Turin in one of the 8 RCQ hubs, started with an introduction phase of the two technologies identified as a core interest for Comune di Torino, the Blockchain, and the Augmented Reality. During this phase, a prototype wallet app resulted in an effective method to show the possible economic dynamics enabled by the Blockchain.
This first technology was revealed as stimulated by the stakeholders because the management of prepaid cards represents a sustainable way to enable actions with the common goods. Promoting the cooperative connotation because of the motivating actions (discounts, loyalty points, etc.). Although during the introduction phase, the stakeholders showed that specific skills are needed to maintain services based on blockchain mechanisms.
Participants found two main benefits. The improvement of citizens’ participation because there is direct feedback by its actions and the economic sustainability with the usage of the prepaid cards that enables the interchange of value and the crowdsourcing campaigns or other collaborative initiatives that the value added by each citizen has to be tracked. In the case of augmented reality, the possibility of visualizing the elements in the real world helps with the idea of “scarcity” resources and spaces. In general, it was found that the public administration has importance on these processes as a facilitator of the infrastructure and access provider.
The workshop was divided into two tablets, one dedicated to recycling and a second one to the houses as urban commons.
Recycling
The recycling table that analyzed what features of CO3 can be applied to the Celocelo project, an initiative promoted by Casa del Quartiere, in terms of the way that the donors’ goods are distributed. The CO3 technologies like geolocation networks can be useful to retrieve and publish the available goods and also being able to connect/find different actors that provide logistic services. This can improve the communication between the supply/demand for beneficiaries in the state of fragility and reduce the logistical costs.
The houses as urban commons
The second challenge identified concerns to the “Casa del Quartiere” governance model: each “Casa del Quartiere” is an urban common that allows citizens and local civil society organizations to co-create and co-manage activities and services and also, to various extents, co-manage the community hub itself.
In each one, local organizations, groups of citizens can find partners and resources to organize activities from cultural to a people in fragile condition. Also, they can participate in the governance model, taking responsibility for the management of a resource.
The coordinators gathered the canvases filled during the workshop and found the following results:
Ecosystem map:
According to this canvas, the number of actors and the type is very heterogeneous. With further analysis, it can be grouped into three categories. The individuals that are the subjects who know and frequent the Houses of the District those are private citizens (students, families…), which are the primary audience of the Houses when the other individuals that are professionals come to train, exhibit, and create productive activities. The second group is the formal/informal organized people of cooperatives, associations about cultural, sports, and other nature, which play the role of beneficiaries and providers. And finally the staff, which can be from the public administrator representatives to volunteers.
Generally speaking, the ecosystem shows a high degree of flexibility in the roles since some of them can work as facilitators or beneficiaries.
Actors portraits:
The actors who interact with the Neighborhood Houses can easily play as beneficiaries and as peer-producers, entering in the loop by offering resources in terms of skills, ideas, creativity. All people, groups, institutions that currently frequent the Houses are also aggregators or can contact and expand the current network of stakeholders. The reasons and needs that move those persons are diverse. They can range from the possibility to access welfare services otherwise not available to motivations related to social relations, integration, and personal and professional growth. All of these instances require efforts and coordination skills. These are identified as aspects that could lead to an increase in the accessibility of services, their capability to meet real needs and to involve a more extensive people base.
Exchange flow:
The Exchange Flow Canvas highlights the importance of some flows compared to others: the flow of direct exchange between beneficiaries is significant. This is a reflection of what was said before and confirms the role of Houses as facilitators of non-mediated exchanges. The sharing of material resources (such as buildings, spaces, books, time) seems to describe this exchange area better.
It emerges a third exchange area – identified as interesting to be further developed in CO3 scenarios – concerning the possibility of enabling and facilitating transactions with partners outside the Houses’ ecosystem. Actors such as commercial enterprises and companies can offer resources considered very “valuable” such as scholarships or various funding measures or alternatively, can activate cooperation contributing to maintaining the common goods (e.g., ordinary maintenance of buildings)
Value proposition:
This canvas consolidated the previous phases because it drove the participants the areas of real interest on focused actors, real needs, and opportunities. The results showed the possibility of improving the governance of the Neighborhood Houses as commons, through the definition of economic mechanisms as a key to increase the access to existing services and reinforce initiatives and transactions through motivating and sustainable drivers.
Conclusion:
CO3 technologies could augment/improve this process of co-creation and co-management and facilitate the involvement of citizens as beneficiaries/stakeholders/volunteers. Also, they can bring some contribution to the governance model of the Houses.
