Bridging by Design. A Designerly Approach for Cities to Support Innovation Processes in the Urban Context

Transformation of the urban context is a continuous process of change, in which different interests and forms of rationality are converging. It is often the ground for agonistic forces that negotiate their values, projects and future views. (Concilio & Tosoni, 2018; Mouffe, 2000). However, in relevant innovation processes, such as urban or large scale projects, a design approach is crucial, as it helps to stay on course towards the ultimate purpose of the whole innovation process. In many urban innovation processes however, this approach is often overshadowed by considerations related to administrative or operative issues. This paper is based on the experience in an ongoing EU project, Climaborough, which is promoting a number of innovative initiatives in 12 European pilot cities in a Net Zero perspective. The first learning from this project highlights the designer’s role in foregrounding the value of design in an innovative project. It does so by defining a design-based innovation process to promote initiatives for urban innovation. The paper will describe the three phases of the process: challenge definition, innovative procurement process and experimental sandbox and propose reflections on how the knowledge coming from those phases can be distilled, replicated and reused.