Framing social innovation in EU urban policy: Insights from the urban innovative actions (UIA) community initiative

The urban debate is increasingly permeated by the idea that civil society empowerment is crucial. Thus, the socially innovative energies harboured at the very local scale are increasingly supported by institutional actors as a recipe for responding to major contemporary urban challenges and improving the quality of life in local territories. This article argues that the European Union (EU) has progressively codified social innovation as a policy discourse that travels alongside, and sometimes reshapes, local practices in cities. It focuses on the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) initiative (2014–2020), examining both its opportunities and its blind spots. Drawing on critical policy analysis and an embedded case-based reading of the ToNite project in Turin, the paper investigates how UIA frames social innovation as an urban governance tool combining place-based experimentation, multi-actor partnerships and expectations of scalability and transferability. The analysis shows that UIA enables experimental urban practices while simultaneously constraining the forms of social innovation that can emerge through selective criteria and performance logics. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of EU-led social innovation for urban governance, welfare restructuring, and the changing role of local actors in European cities.