NEIGHBOURHOOD REGENERATION AT THE GRASSROOTS PARTICIPATION: INCUBATORS’ CO-CREATIVE PROCESS AND SYSTEM

Incubators of Public Spaces is a funded JPI Urban Europe project aiming to support the self-organisation of places, by enhancing the factors that motivate, encourage, and enable the urban actors to reach common understandings in order to coordinate their actions by reasoned argument, consensus, and cooperation rather than strategic thinking only. By catalysing citizens’ willingness to ‘do their bit’ for improving spaces, it provides the means to grow and care for places. The paper is organised into three main sections. The first section offers a theoretical underpinning on the roots of self-organisation and co-creation in urban interventions. After a brief introduction about project’s aims, the second section deals with the Incubators co-creative process and system. It describes the running of the scenario workshops, and provides an overview of the web platform and its inherent features. The third section presents the results of the application of the Incubators method in the regeneration of an Italian neighbourhood. It provides some general information about the area, and foresees a set of interventions for both built and open spaces. Conclusions offer early remarks concerning the on-going experimentation in Incubators.