Social Innovation: What´s behind the City Scene?

This article comes from the URBACT workstream “Social innovation in cities” and investigates the way social innovation has been catalysed in some cities together with a governance structural change, based on integrated, participatory and co-production approaches.

A challenging context

Cities face more and more complex and deep-rooted social, economic and environmental issues. Demographic decline, threats to economic development and competitiveness, growing social polarisation, climate change and the depletion of natural resources are amongst the most striking. At the same time, their finances have also been affected by the crisis, often cited as a Perfect Storm of rising needs and declining resources.

Some cities have found that, more and more, they cannot address these issues by doing what they have done in the past through traditional models of governance. The focus around single organisational or agency remits, relying on the deployment of resources over which leaders and managers have direct authority, and the rigidity of this top-down governance models have had their limits exposed.  Consequently, there is a growing acknowledgment in many cities that new governance models are required.

As such, social innovation, intended here as new value creation models mainly based on human talents and resources is a means to problem-solving and solutions identification, aligned to the implementation of new governance processes in cities. Its characteristics are collaboration and empowerment of all involved stakeholders, and the use of new tools such as IT and online resources. The previous URBACT workstream on Social innovation and Youth identified that cities need to evolve new services alongside their citizens by becoming catalysts and innovation brokers. That workstream underlined the need for new leadership models and the implementation of appropriate ecosystems supporting social innovation.

Public lab

Social innovation has indeed been used in some cities worldwide, and includes cases which are now internationally recognised as being effective in trying out new approaches to solving problems. The city of Medellin in Colombia is one of these examples: long known for high inequalities and crime rates, the city became an award-winner for its innovation and urban design. It has transformed its urban and social landscape, the first step of which was the construction of a Metrocable integrating isolated neighbourhoods into the remainder of the city. It has also regenerated some urban areas, recovered public spaces and built cultural and education infrastructures: these are believed to be key to the city’s transformation and the enabler of citizens’ increased participation in urban life. As a result, the city has become safer, less polluted, with less traffic, and greater social inclusion.

However, these examples should not hide the fact that many city authorities are still ‘feeling their way’ and trying to adapt their approach to problem solving. Not all cities are confident and comfortable about a governance change and the URBACT programme is playing a key role in relation to this: it fosters exchange of practices for improved sustainable management of cities and provides the baseline for collaboration and the sharing of fresh thinking on common problems. At a time when there are increasing EU resources to support social innovation activity, this URBACT role is particularly valuable. This workstream is part of this approach.

What lies behind the practices of cities using social innovation? What does that imply in terms of local governance? How do municipal governments adjust their functioning, organization and culture? What new roles should municipalities assume and which spaces should they create? These are some of the questions we seek to address in this article.

Engaging administration staff and stakeholders

One way of using social innovation in city governance has been in increasing ‘participation’. Participation in city governance, indeed, has been promoted for many years to different extents: through consultations or the development of ad hoc activities where administration staff, citizens or stakeholders could feel that they were not only informed but also heard. Some cities have innovated in going beyond simple participatory processes towards more elaborated approaches to engage stakeholders.

This should first start with the city administration itself. Moving away from a hierarchical decision-making and problem-solving system, some municipalities have opened up the policy process to their staff, outside the strictly political level. They have developed holistic approaches and methodology in order to ensure that for a given problem, staff can learn from experiences of other sectors, enhance their knowledge, and move from problems to solutions.

This has been the experience of Malmö, in Sweden, in the healthcare and elderly care sectors. Discussions and exchanges brought together civil servants and politicians: the variety of perspectives coming from the different fields of work of participants enriched the dialogue, design and implementation of local policies for elderly. As a result, the working approach has been adopted by other levels of government and the administration of Malmo South is currently running more innovative projects for elderly compared to other city areas.

Integrated and systemic approaches have also led to learning across sectors. The municipality of Gdansk, in Poland, has been successful in creating a working group defining the agenda for education. When dealing with education and social issues, the municipality acknowledged the need for transversal policy-making: “deprived areas, preparation of pupils and students for adulthood and the job market, the adaptation of schools not only to the highly changing needs of the schoolchildren, but to the whole local community, where inhabitants can find their place and become more active”, as mentioned by Piotr Kowalczuk from the city of Gdansk. As such, an informal think tank was created 5 years ago: 15 civil servants worked over 2 years on the definition of common values, on converting the social aid into a social development policy and working on a cultural change process to integrate citizens and stakeholders’ perspectives into governance.

This process led to a shift in the integration of citizens in problem solving. Also, in policy terms, education became a top priority for the city from 2012 onwards and some of the members of the think-tank were integrated into the city administration staff.

There are many cities like Gdansk that have involved citizens and stakeholders in the design and implementation of new services. This requires creating new synergies between administration and stakeholders, sharing and benefiting from each others’ experiences, as well as cooperating on concrete projects, sharing tasks and responsibilities.

Through cooperation and co-creation, and up to co-responsibility, a whole new system has come to life in some cities, making a 'micro-society' in itself, a working and more sustainable system within the wider society.  Furthermore, beyond connecting stakeholders from different and separate arenas, some public authorities have tried to settle relationships between them, at the same time embedding social and environmental values. This has been the aim of the URBACT TOGETHER network which has addressed cities’ challenges from the identification of needs from citizens themselves at the same time empowering them in the implementation of solutions (see box).