URBACT II Capitalisation: Cities of Tomorrow, Action Today - Supporting urban youth through social innovation

This paper examines how cities can promote social innovation to address chronic social challenges. Although our specific focus is young people, the conditions identified for promoting social innovation have wider relevance. This URBACT workstream on ‘Supporting urban youth through social innovation’ envisages a pivotal role for municipalities, as the form of democratic government closest to citizens. We see an opportunity for them to reinvent their role to become catalysts and innovation brokers. The keys to this are participative leadership and a willingness to take risks. Despite the crisis, public sector resources remain a considerable proportion of GDP. As the status quo looks increasingly untenable, there is an opportunity to optimise those resources. By mobilising all stakeholders we can improve service design and delivery and achieve better results together.