Federica BURINI, University of Bergamo, Italy
The paper investigates the importance of collaborative processes for urban governance, by assuming the extension of the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz, Leydesdorff, 1995) which focuses on university-industry-government relations, by enlarging it to civil society and the environment. The importance of involving different actors is also connected to a wider concept of inhabiting contemporary cities, where the inhabitants are considered as those who live in a place, regardless of the reasons or the length of their stay (Lévy, Lussault, 2003, pp. 440-442). In order to adopt this perspective, the research team applied the concept of interactive democracy by Jacques Lévy (2019), a mode of continuous and circular involvement of the inhabitants, seen as an active part from the beginning of the urban planning process. This vision has been the starting assumption for promoting a process of governance activated by the Municipality of Bergamo, together with the University of Bergamo, for the revision of the Urban Plan of Città Alta, that is the upper and ancient part of Bergamo located in the north of Italy. The research introduced a new method to analyse the dynamism of inhabitants, by creating dynamic webmaps to show the urban rhythm given by Big Data information detected by the public wi-fi hot-spot network of the Municipality of Bergamo. Thus the vision of a Plural Upper Town emerged, which gave the title to the project “Città Alta Plurale” and to the website used during the consultation process. The process has been organised by an interdisciplinary group of researchers of the University of Bergamo through a path articulated into multiple phases (information, awareness-raising, consultation) and the adoption of direct and indirect consultation systems, with the active participation of business, institutions and local associations. The project started in 2019 and went on until 2021, despite the Covid-19 emergency, learning in progress how to be flexible and resilient.
Mots clés : collaborative processes|local urban governance|pandemic|Bergamo Italy
A103014FB