A paradise to Brancaccio. Integrated programme of urban regeneration for the second municipality of Palermo

Abstract

Associations and movements of one of the most degraded neighbourhood of the city of Palermo (city regional capital of Sicily, Italy) asked the University to support their on‐going activities for the promotion of local resources to conntrast the trend of decline and against the mafia as a symbolic appropriation of the main landmark of the neighborhood. In support of an innovation of the local governance, a delegation responded by developing the participated planning of a Living Lab, to be both locally and territorially characterised (Territorial Living Lab Sicily). This delegation proposed interpretative recommendations, as well as an integrated program concerning projects of urban regeneration, in the field of experimental activities for ICT policies and practices for the Information Society supported by EU Projects (MED and PIC). Such a contribution highlights the didactic and critical aspects that relate to the use of participatory tools, which start within the dimension of a ‘game’ and are oriented to the urban plan, only later. The role of technologies and characterisations of ‘smartness’, emerges as a product of a social mobilisation, which traces the path of a strong innovative technological enhancement. The steps of these processes outline the transition, from a direct interactive approach between citizenship and expertise, to the multidimensional relationship, which characterizes the worldwide web. Finally, the approach that is offered by Living Labs, particularly for their territorial perspective, can represent one of the ways in which to set the transition from the stage of a ‘free game,’ about scenarios and visions, to the definition of the plan social demand, specifically within the framework of a real experience of the citizenship life. In this sense, such an approach may represent the guarantee of an effectiveness of the plan. Despite the limits, which the previous failures represent, we can remark that through the dimension of openness, roles co‐presence and competence of those stakeholders that are involved in Living Labs, the participation processes ‐ from the perspective of a planning, ‐ does not end but continuously tend to a gradual improvement, both of the quality of the projects and of those cohesion factors, which lead to the constitution of spontaneous partnerships.