The Transformative Power of Social Innovation in Urban Planning and Local Development

Abstract

This issue discusses the concept of social innovation (SI) as a potentially transformative factor in urban planning and local development. SI represents an alternative to economic and technology-oriented approaches to urban development, such as that of ‘smart cities’, ‘creative cities’, etc. This is thanks to the emphasis SI puts on human agency and the empowerment of local communities and citizens to be actively involved in transforming their urban environments. Urban planning could benefit greatly from devoting more attention to SI when addressing the diverse urban problems of today, such as social exclusion, urban segregation, citizen participation and integration, or environmental protection, many of them addressed in the articles gathered in this volume.

Exploring the Emergence of Innovative Multi-Actor Collaborations toward a Progressive Urban Regime in Madrid (2015–2019)

“…In our research, we embraced the latter approach to SI, which stresses institutional and power transformations, to investigate MAC as SI that manages to "open windows for more democratic dialogue, collective cross-learning, and shared visions with citizens and civic associations" [13]. From this approach, we undertook the socio-institutional analysis of socially innovative processes [47], which requires paying attention to both the actors that are involved and t the institutional tools and mechanisms that allow the creation of what Healey [48] describes as "shared spaces", paying attention to their specific temporal, socio-economic, institutional, political, and cultural context [37,49].…”

“…Such was the case in Madrid, where the independent political platform Ahora Madrid (Now Madrid) has opened the door for translating at the institutional level social innovations that had been experimented in the previous years in the civil sphere or within the cracks of the institutional local framework [11]. Following the principles of New Municipalism [12], this approach challenged the post-political governance system [13,14] and unlocked new possibilities for multi-actor collaboration (MAC). A keen interest was set in boosting civil-public collaboration (CPC), the establishment of new alliances to gain power to act [15] around progressive agenda issues, and investigating new ways to share resources and empower urban actors that had been losing political capacity of influence in the production of the city.…”

The social innovation–(re)politicisation nexus: Unlocking the political in actually existing smart city campaigns? The case of SmartCity Cologne, Germany

“…We would not dispute such arguments. Yet, we argue the benefit of social innovation lies rather in its ability to keep ‘windows of democratic dialogue’ open (Nyseth and Hamdouch, 2019: 4). This includes using pluralism and heterodox thinking to break from path dependency when necessary; and reflexivity for when plans fail and need to be adjusted (cf.…”

“…Critics have argued that since institutional discourse on social innovations in governance have been confined within narrowly market-economic terms, the concept is doomed to fall into the post-political trap and further exclude marginalised groups (Swyngedouw, 2005). Yet, social innovation remains useful (again with the qualifier of re-politicisation) for framing transformative social change and generating context-specific alternatives to dominant urban development models and approaches (Blanco and León, 2017; Nyseth and Hamdouch, 2019), such as those assumed inevitable in The Smart City . We follow here Ulug and Horlings (2019: 14), who clearly define social innovations as being comprised of, on the one hand, a process (i.e.…”

“…As with re-politicisation, however, we emphasise that social innovation cannot be understood as a ‘normative recipe for solving all human and social problems in any context’ (Nyseth and Hamdouch, 2019: 2, emphasis added). Many may argue that past attempts to reclaim the commons with public ownership have been ‘disappointing, if not disastrous’ (Cumbers, 2012: 62); or that breaking away from fixed policy paths contains too much risk and uncertainty (Nyseth and Hamdouch, 2019). We would not dispute such arguments.…”