Today, Living Labs are increasingly promoted as innovative tools to deal with urban regeneration in Europe. In this contribution, we look at their potential in the context of the regeneration of large-scale social housing estates. Starting from the results of the research project SoHoLab (2017–2020) and building on the contributions of this book, we identify Living Labs as practices that are at the margin of key regeneration processes and actors but that nonetheless play an important, enabling role in triggering a more broadly supported approach to regeneration. We use the metaphor of the ‘interstice’ to identify Living Labs’ role of mediating across different social, institutional, disciplinary, departmental, and policy realms. Nevertheless, caution is warranted. Living Labs should not be considered the approach towards the urban regeneration of marginalized areas; their potential lies precisely in their hybrid and constantly transforming character. In order to steer regeneration practices and policies that are actually more inclusive, they should be accompanied by a critical and self-reflexive research attitude.
In recent years, Urban Living Labs (ULLs) have acquired an ever greater resonance in the field of spatial and urban regeneration. Indeed, the promotion of a collaborative approach turns out to be decisive if one wishes to include a multiplicity of social actors in these processes, an indispensable aspect today of promoting effective physical and social transformations of the urban environment. However, which specific adjustments must a ULL make in order to be configured as a truly inclusive tool within marginalized urban areas, such as public-housing neighbourhoods, where access to decision-making processes is structurally limited? Departing from a European perspective, reinterpreted through the specific Milanese context of the San Siro district, the paper reflects on the approach of ULLs in marginalized areas: material and immaterial work platforms where different languages, knowledge, values, and visions meet through an active—even conflictual—encounter which is crucial for the promotion of local regeneration processes.
In the current framework of welfare shrinking, it is highly necessary to transform citizens and local organizations from targets into co-producers of urban policies. Moreover, even though large-scale social housing estates are often characterized by social exclusion and high levels of socio-economic vulnerabilities, they at the same time represent ‘local tanks’ of competencies and social resources. In these regards, the ‘empowering planning’ approach—referring to the valourization of local competences and expertise within urban regeneration processes—has positive impacts, both in terms of socio-economic inclusion and the ‘expansion’ of active citizenship among local actors and in terms of designing more effective policies, enriched by local perspectives and know-how. Based on the analysis of a pilot action developed within the SoHoLab project in the San Siro neighbourhood that fostered the empowerment of a local grassroots network, the chapter examines processes of recognition and reinforcement and the promotion of local competencies, outlining their different phases and the characteristics of the groups involved. It will highlight the transition from a community of practice to a community of planning that is able to develop visions and actions aimed at a shared regeneration of a certain area.
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