RC Metro Citizens in Transition - Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development of Reggio Calabria
"RC Metro Citizens in Transition" is the project for the “Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development” (AMSvS) of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria (RC). The project was born with an agreement with italian Ministry of the Environment (ex MATTM) and the Metropolitan Council of RC (2019). The project aimed to create a positive impact on the community and facilitate social innovation processes for the co-design and participatory regeneration of places.
Local
Italy
Municipalities of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria (Italy)
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): ABITAlab (UNIRC) Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Giuseppe Last name of representative: Mangano Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: Operative responsible Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via dell'Università, 25, 89124 Reggio Calabria RC Town: Reggio Calabria Postal code: 89124 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 366 367 6187 E-mail:abitalab@unirc.it Website:https://www.darte.unirc.it/laboratori.php?lab=90
URL:https://www.facebook.com/www.abitalab.unirc.it Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #regenerativedesign #upcycling #naturabasedsolutions #socialinnovation #actionresearch #communities #additivemanufacturing
URL:https://instagram.com/abitalab_darte?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #regenerativedesign #upcycling #naturabasedsolutions #socialinnovation #actionresearch #communities #additivemanufacturing
"RC Metro Citizens in Transition" is the project for the “Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development” (AMSvS) of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria (RC). The project itself was born with an agreement with ex MATTM and the Metropolitan Council of RC (2019). Moreover, the project has in its mission the willingness to transfer, through training and knowledge courses, experiences and skills on the topics of "green jobs", referable to the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030 and to the Areas ("5Ps") – people, planet, partnership, prosperity, peace – to the Strategic Choices and Objectives of the italian National Strategy of Sustainable Development (SNSvS) and to the Vectors of Sustainable in their latest revision (05/2022, ed.). In this era of "global and local" transition, the project aims to generate a positive impact on the rate of competitiveness of the territories and of the metropolitan community of RC, acting with a view to overcoming the gaps in the minimum skills of young people, especially those who come from socio-economically disadvantaged families. Furthermore, the project aims to enhance the training of transversal and digital skills in study programs through innovative and inclusive teaching (see data on the Istat 2021 SDGs Report on Goal 4).
In fact, this approach feeds on "innovative actions and "knowledge-based" pilot experiences for education, information and collaborative approaches with communities, which can trigger radical changes in people's behavior and in their ability to act from a perspective of sustainability” (Mangano G., 2021).
Finally, the project aims, in addition to achieving the sustainable development goals (UN Agenda 2030), to create a positive impact on the community - with training courses for young people of school age - and facilitating social innovation processes for the co-design and participatory regeneration of places.
The project experience can be seen here: www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com
Sustainability
knowledge
social innovation
co-visioning
education
“RCMetroCitizens in Transition” pays particular attention to the strategic area “Vectors of Sustainability” of the Italian National and Regional Strategy for Sustainable Development (SNSvS). Furthermore, it focuses on the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Sustainability Objectives of all the actions pursued in the project. In particular, for all 6 actions of the project, results were achieved in terms of sustainability and they had and monitored outcomes: especially for actions in category C "definition of metropolitan agendas for sustainable development and monitoring of sustainability vectors of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan".
For category A, the following actions were launched: "learning metrocity in" with which an institutional control room was created; "learning metrocity out" with which local institutions were involved; "making metrocity" with which the creation of a civic ecosystem (associations, non-profit associations, committees, groups, etc.) of reference for the municipalities of the Metropolitan City was facilitated.
In terms of sustainability, knowledge and skills have been increased – with category B (“making metrocity”, “knowledge metrocity”, “codesign metrocity”) and category C (“goals metrocity”) actions – together with the facilitation of dialogue between the community and decision makers. This dialogue was useful to arrive at co-design and co-visioning days with the technicians of the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria (RC). In addition to the community involvement in governance actions, an exemplary and repeatable activity, long-term impacts were produced following the visioning and co-design days with communities and decision makers. One of the projects resulting from the co-design days is currently underway within the Metropolitan Strategic Plan for “Aspromonte” (https://www.cittametropolitana.rc.it/canali/territorio-pianificazione-e-urbanistica/progetto-metropoli- strategies) thanks to the involvement of associations and decision makers
The ‘RC Metro Citizens in Transition’ project has launched community engagement processes in order to arrive at participatory c0-design, so that among the community's tacit requests, those linked to the aesthetics of the places in the metropolitan city could also emerge.
The project includes the co-design day (at the end of a lasting engagement work) which was held on 6 May 2022 at the spaces of the Metropolitan City of RC.
"Co-design Metro City for the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development - Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria" is an event of the SvS Metropolitan Forum, held on 6 May 2022 and aimed at the realisation of a participation and co-design initiative on the strategic areas of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development, on the themes and knowledge transferred with the pilot actions of the 'RC Metro Citizens in Transition' project and on the trajectories, visions and project ideas contained in the draft Metropolitan Strategic Plan, with the involvement of the Ecosystem 2030 of the pilot project. The day's work was carried out according to the methodology of co-design workshops, in groups divided into "focus" tables, whose activities were led by one or more identified facilitators (experts jr. Green Jobs, experts from the Scientific Committee, ABITAlab student interns). In this sense, co-design, by opening up to user collaboration in the creative phases of idea generation and application, enables people not to be mere users, but active and, above all, competent participants (Sander, Stopper, 2008). Co-design is a collaborative creative act, aimed at the generation of ideas, processes and open innovation activities: it is an 'envisioning' tool that aims at transparent forms of collaboration led by 'designers', aimed at the realisation of projects and scenarios that have quality of life and collective well-being at their centre (human-centred design).
"RCMetroCitizens in Transition" is a project with a vision for the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria (RC) and its community, which has identified 6 actions in the five areas indicated by the National Strategy for Sustainable Development: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, Partnership. For each action, the activation of thematic projects was envisaged for 3 categories: 1) category A, i.e. the construction of the governance of metropolitan agendas for sustainable development; 2) category B, i.e. the involvement of civil society; 3) category C; i.e. the definition of the metropolitan agendas for sustainable development and the monitoring of the sustainability vectors of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan. All the activities in category B are based on inclusion and social innovation.
One of the actions is “Learning metrocity out”. This action has transferred knowledge on the National, Regional and Local path of the 2030 Agenda to all institutional levels. The second action for category B is "Knowledge MetroCity", for training and information as well as for the identification of green jobs and trajectories of interest for the construction of the sustainable development metropolitan agenda (SMSvS). A third action of category B is "CoDesign MetroCity". This last action represents the ultimate goal of the involvement and inclusion of the parts of society in the co-design phases for the metropolitan city they live in. Knowledge transfer actions have been completed with the facilitation of the co-design process, i.e. with the help of experts in focus groups. In particular for "CoDesign MetroCity" the following points have been reached: design of scenarios and multidimensional models; a Hackaton with CoDesign challenges on the 2030 agenda for the metropolitan city of RC; an implementation of the civic platform which brought together multiple local associations; 11 participatory activities in the area in 29 months (starting from 2019).
The benefits that the civil society has had from the implementation of the "RCMetroCitizens in Transition" project are of two types and have involved different segments of the community.
The first typology of benefits for the community involves the network of local associations and the different parts of the community over 18, including also stakeholders, decision makers and parts of the community that are usually unable to participate in governance processes. This series of benefits have been made real thanks to the project's category A actions (https://www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com/le-azioni-pilota) which have been integrated within a community building process – according to the sustainable goals of Agenda 2030 (UN) at the metropolitan level.
The second series of benefits sees the engagement of the under 18 youth community group. Over 200 students, from upper secondary schools, in the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria, have benefited from a Path for Transversal Skills and Orientation (PCTO) called "the challenge of the 2030 Agenda". This path, for the transfer of skills and knowledge on the 2030 agenda, was additional to the school training offer and provided useful contents about various green jobs. The short-term impact of the PCTO has been the production of student outputs, who have demonstrated that they have developed the skills needed to enter the world of sustainable work.
Some of the co-design experiences and part of the work of the PCTOs have also been narrated, due to the repeatability and declination of the actions in other contexts, within the book "Co-design and enabling technologies. 15 design experiences for frontier research and communities in transition” (Leuzzo & Mangano, 2022).
The accompanying activities of the National SvS Table of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, in which the Metropolitan City Council has been participating since June 2020 in the framework of the pilot project "RC Metro Citizens in Transition" represented by the members of the technical-scientific team of ABITAlab, have contributed to the process of territorialisation and implementation at local level of the 2030 Agenda through the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSDS). These activities, which involved moments of confrontation and exchange between the Cabina di Regia, the Regions, the Provinces and the Metropolitan Cities, made this path more informed and effective, allowing to transfer to the territory also the information on the co-design activities related to the study of national documents, to the proposal and revision of indicators for the construction of the "national set", to the revision process of the NSDS and the Vectors of Sustainability and, finally, to the contribution to the chapter "Territories" of the VNR Italy. The knowledge paths set up at several levels and the exchange between the participants also make it possible to transfer the ministerial accompaniment activity to both the organisation and civil society, increasing the level of awareness of the common challenge and the strategies and the i tools put in place.
Moreover, about the involvment of organization and civil coommunity, two calls for joining Ecosystem 2030 were activated. One call concerned "an expression of interest" launched by the Authority, addressed to associations, foundations and organisations in the metropolitan area, in order to join the project and participate in the planned pilot actions 3, 4, 6; an invitation with a presentation of the project and the pathway to secondary schools, with a technical-scientific profile, to share a PCTO programme oriented on the themes of the 2030 Agenda and its territorialisation in the metropolitan area.
The "RCMetroCitizens in Transition" project was born with the intention of transferring knowledge and skills in certain fields of knowledge, always in a functional way to increase community engagement - especially the parts of the community that are more difficult to interact with internal governance processes, thus ensuring their inclusion – and the initiation of participatory co-design processes facilitated by expert knowledge. In detail, knowledge and skills were transferred on: 1) green jobs and the 2030 Agenda, in the case of project actions aimed at reaching the under 18 community and with the intention of promoting the dissemination of good practices (including entrepreneurship sustainable); 2) territorial and urban planning policies, sustainable mobility and funding opportunities for actions with a regenerative impact on the territory, in actions that have seen the engagement of the over 18 community.
A further field of knowledge that is reflected in the implementation of the project is that related to social innovation. All the actions of the project interact with each other with the aim to bring social innovation to the governance processes of the metropolitan city - an objective achieved through the creation of networks and open platforms for replicability of the actions, laying the foundations for a long life of the open platforms created and the collaborative links between civil society and decision makers established during the process – as well as innovation with knowledge relating to green jobs and sustainable good practices to be replicated in the metropolitan area in a participatory way.
The innovative nature of the project, compared to similar projects or initiatives, is its structuring designed to enhance the engagement of decision makers and the rest of the community from the beginning, according to the 5Ps (people, planet, partnership, prosperity, peace) in the context of Metropolitan city of RC. Furthermore, the project was recognized as a best practice and its report reached the United Nations headquarters in the form of a "Voluntary Local Review" (as part of the Italian "Voluntary National Review").
The VLR report presented stems from the experience of the activities carried out during the implementation of the project, for the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development (AMSvS) of the Metropolitan City of RC (Agreement ex MATTM DG-SVI today MiTe and Metropolitan City of RC). It recounts the impacts in terms of the transfer of the National Strategy, the achievement of the project's objectives and the future trends that have emerged with the advancement of the initiatives that have involved levels of institutional governance, the involvement of citizenship, with different generational and social profiles, in innovative experiences of training and co-design, experimentation on assessment models and the launch of practices for the "policy coherence" on the territorial investments planned through the planning tools, such as the PSM - Metropolitan Strategic Plan.
With over 80 activities, it has implemented the actions of its programme with in-presence and distance initiatives, shared in networks with other sectors of the Metropolitan City, with other local authorities, with the University, with secondary schools, with associations, with active citizenship and interested professionals. The technical-scientific group took part in all the activities promoted by the National SNSvS Table and in the assistance meetings, sharing the strategy paths of other Metropolitan Cities and the VLR preparation path. (see www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com)
The innovative nature of the project, compared to similar projects or initiatives, is its structuring designed to enhance the engagement of decision makers and the rest of the community from the beginning, according to the 5Ps (people, planet, partnership, prosperity, peace) in the context of Metropolitan city of RC. Furthermore, the project was recognized as a best practice and its report reached the United Nations headquarters in the form of a "Voluntary Local Review" (as part of the Italian "Voluntary National Review").
The VLR report presented stems from the experience of the activities carried out during the implementation of the project, for the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development (AMSvS) of the Metropolitan City of RC (Agreement ex MATTM DG-SVI today MiTe and Metropolitan City of RC). It recounts the impacts in terms of the transfer of the National Strategy, the achievement of the project's objectives and the future trends that have emerged with the advancement of the initiatives that have involved levels of institutional governance, the involvement of citizenship, with different generational and social profiles, in innovative experiences of training and co-design, experimentation on assessment models and the launch of practices for the "policy coherence" on the territorial investments planned through the planning tools, such as the PSM - Metropolitan Strategic Plan.
With over 80 activities, it has implemented the actions of its programme with in-presence and distance initiatives, shared in networks with other sectors of the Metropolitan City, with other local authorities, with the University, with secondary schools, with associations, with active citizenship and interested professionals. The technical-scientific group took part in all the activities promoted by the National SNSvS Table and in the assistance meetings, sharing the strategy paths of other Metropolitan Cities and the VLR preparation path. (see www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com)
The methodologies on which the entire "RCMetroCitizens in Transition" project is based can be traced within the methodologies useful for Participatory Action Research (PAR). These methodologies, in particular the "World Cafè" and the use of focus groups in the visioning and co-design phases, were preceded by actions strongly focused on maximizing the engagement of the community in all its parts. The networks established as a result of the engagement actions are also accountable as the impact of the project. Network of local associations, non-profit and representing the most disadvantaged community segments, have become part of the visioning and co-design process together with the remaining stakeholders. Furthermore, all the actions of the project were useful for listening to the (sometimes tacit) requests of the community: thanks to the declinations of the "World Cafè" method and the focus groups.
The participatory approach, to bring social innovation, has led to obtaining the engagement of the community with a view to obtaining long-lasting impacts. The long-lasting impacts represent the validity of the project, which is based on methodology - those of the PAR - which can be declined and replicated in different contexts and on different scales.
Proof of the long-term impact of the project are: 1) the growth of knowledge and awareness of under 18 students with respect to the challenges of the UN 2030 Agenda and green jobs; 2) the co-design processes launched with the community, which led to the implementation of one of the proposal within the Aspromonte Metropolitan Strategic Project (PSM) (https://www.cittametropolitana.rc.it/canali/ territory-planning-and-urbanism/project-strategic-metropolises)
The educational and experiential path undertaken as planned for the pilot project «RCmetrocitizens in transition», has in fact achieved that process of territorialisation and narration of sustainability that in the last 20 years has attempted every form of promotion and transfer to the global communities of the planet, through local actions.
Undertaking processes of "open knowledge", with direct actions on a generation of citizens, students, professionals, means contributing to that thought "on future generations" capable of taking an interest in the quality and conservation, regeneration of the natural and man-made systems of our territories. Moreover, it means promoting a shared and collective protagonism, in which the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda, identified by the UN in 2015, rely on the change taking place, in the years that are now very close to 2030 and even beyond, 2050, 2085.
Quality training, in its skills and transfer paths, proposed in the years 2019-2022 by ABITAlab of the Department of Architecture and Territory of the Mediterranean University of RC, with activities planned and shared with secondary school students, design ateliers of the School of Architecture, through informative and technical seminars for citizens, associations and employees of institutions, has directly restored the value of knowledge and level of awareness on environmental issues. Th
entire project looks at environmental issues not only as an emergency but also as a contemporary phenomenon and a new state of living, through a direct dialogue with all those who have participated in this process of growth and narration towards sustainability and the ecological and digital transition. The project proposed a continuous co-design of governance between pro-active stakeholders and communities. Finally, it certainly needs a continuous referral to the contribution that each and every community can provide globally in the contemporary scenario further characterized by the phenomena of i
By the end of the activities (11 May 2022), 83 activities had been carried out to implement the pilot actions (see "Activity Agenda" at www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com/agenda). Of these, as many as 38 were implemented under Action 4 Knowledge Metrocity, highlighting the centrality of the theme "quality education and training towards green jobs" in the implementation of the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria.
The further activities for the remaining 5 actions: 7 activities for action 1 "Learning MetroCity IN; 10 for action 2 "Learning MetroCity OUT"; 6 within action 3 "Making Metrocity"; 7 within action 5 "Goals Metrocity"; 12 within action 6 "Co-Design Metrocity".
Within seminar activities, within inclusive processes and community engagement, the following results were achieved: 28 hours of seminars; 490 participants reached and involved; 5 seminars and a national conference; 23 local associations involved; 47 university students involved; more than 80 between citizens and public bodies. The seminars were an important success in terms of participation, also in the "blended" formula that made it possible to operate with great effectiveness (even in the period of covid 19 restrictions), and to broaden the direct involvement of civil society, with the knowledge paths undertaken aimed at different targets of age and interest: secondary school students, university students, active citizens, professionals, interested technicians.
Moreover, the Open School (PCTO) 'Agenda2030' led the students to work on: experimental projects on the topics of digital manufacturing (modeling and 3D printing); circular design (projects with the use of environmentally friendly materials and from recycling supply chains). Some numbers about PCTO: 4 schools, 182 students, 28 outputs or experiments produced by students. Finally, all the student’s outputs were presented in an open public event.
The "RC Metro Citizens in Transition" proposal is characterised by having aimed to construct and conduct activities responding to category B of the MATTM Agreement for metropolitan cities, "engagement of civil society". In this sense, the project has highlighted how pilot actions 3, 4 and 6 are all co-managed with the participation of "an ecosystem" of reference, called "Ecosystem 2030", which sees the users of dedicated paths as protagonists, orienting both the civic and educational ecosystems on the "territorialisation" of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (more info on Ecosystem 2030 at the link https://www.rcmetrocitizensintransition.com/ecosistema2030).
