Measuring social return: The case of the community centre Can Battló

Like other major European cities, Barcelona has a great industrial heritage that can now be re-used for a new and different development of its urban life, regenerating spaces, places and communities. The former Can Batlló factory, a post-industrial infrastructure in La Bordeta neighbourhood of the Sants district, is part of this industrial heritage. Due to […]

So Stay: Poland’s first socially responsible hotel

In the past years, tourism’s growing share in national economies and the increasing touristification of many European cities prompted social innovators to develop new forms of tourism with new, non-extractive business models and more inclusive employment policies. So Stay Hotel in Gdańsk is one of the hotels born from this need for a more responsible […]

Vienna’s Wohnpartner: Overcoming conflicts in social housing  

Good neighbourly relationships are an essential pillar of well-being and social coherence in the city. But what happens when a family with small children moves to a quiet building and conflict occurs? How do neighbours communicate when there is no common language spoken? These are among the topics Wohnpartner, a subsidiary of the city of […]

Solidarity Everyday – A space for social initiatives inside the European Solidarity Centre

Solidarity Everyday Space is a co-governed space inside the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk. The aim of the Solidarity Everyday Space builds on the mission of the European Solidarity Centre, to commemorate and to propagate the ideals of the 1980s Polish Solidarity movement: freedom, democracy and the power of civic society. Solidarity Everyday was established […]

Participatory governance mechanisms of a social-cultural centre in Dubrovnik

In 2018, the Croatian Ministry of Culture announced a project tender for the development of social-cultural centres in Croatia, based on participatory governance and public-civil partnership. The announcement, opening a new chapter in cultural funding, followed recommendations by the Europe 2020 strategy and the European Agenda for Culture (2015-2018) about developing participative governance in culture […]

Social housing with self-determination: Wiener Wohnen’s quest to involve tenants in decision-making

Vienna is the largest municipal housing owner in Europe. About half of the city’s population lives in subsidised housing, while only around 30% of the Viennese apartments are privately owned. The public ownership of such a large housing stock gives the Vienna municipality an important leverage over housing affordability and other aspects of urban development. […]

CUP4Creativity: Can culture become the protagonist of social cohesion in Újbuda?

CUP4Creativity is a project of the Budapest district of Újbuda, funded by the EU’s Urban Innovative Actions programme. The project builds on the district’s current dynamic as a new cultural centre, by generating new connections between cultural producers, artists, creatives, technology initiatives, businesses and residents. CUP4Creativity tackles a variety of challenges: on the one hand, […]

Ois In An: Social and ecological sustainability all-in-one

In the centre of Vienna, a small commercial space is trying to make a difference working with a social and sustainable oriented mission. Ois In An is a restaurant combining the inclusion of migrant women in the workplace and the promotion of sustainable food products in a warm and cosy environment. We visited Ois In […]

Augustine newspaper: The social conscience of the city

The Augustin is an independent Viennese street newspaper that aims to help less privileged people to lead a self-determined life. In addition to social work, the newspaper also takes a critical look at current political and social issues. We are on Reinprechtsdorfer Straße, in Vienna’s 5th district. Between an ice cream parlour and an outlet […]

Social Cohesion Component of Strategy 21

This MOOC has been designed to adapt to your needs: be it a training session, a consultation, a self-evaluation or a one-on-one coaching session. The course is based on 10 modules. Each module contains a specially designed video, based on the teacher’s draft, explaining the basic content, and composed of photos, collected video elements and/or animations; a detailed brochure supporting the video/module, including links to relevant publications and websites to facilitate a deeper understanding of the subject; quizzes for self-evaluation.

This document is Module 2 – Social Cohesion Component of Strategy 21 of the MOOC, composed by Levente Polyák, based on Eutropian’s work and Cooperative City’s network of good practices. The rest of the course can be explored here.  with guidelines for the self-evaluation of practices here.

Public procurement with social impact

Local communities and their local governments have two possible ways to cooperate. One is centred upon the use of public procurement for social purposes. The second is based on new forms of partnerships. The perspective of new types of partnerships that overcome the public-private binary and allow new forms of public-community or public-private-community collaboration is […]

Gólya: collective ownership in a self-organised social and cultural centre

Gólya is a self-organised community space in Budapest’s 8th district. Gólya has relocated to its current location due to intense property development and increasing real estate pressure around its previous venue. In order to counter gentrification and gain independence from the changes of the rental market, the community running Gólya decided to buy a building and […]

Towards a More Social Europe: Inclusion and innovation in three UIA projects

In 2021, Europe is facing a number of challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to surface many structural problems in European societies, from climate change through innovation gaps to geopolitical tensions. Inequality is of key importance among these challenges: the gradual polarisation of European societies has brought us towards political populism, social exclusion and damaged […]

Medialab Prado: a hub for social innovation

Medialab Prado is a citizen laboratory that functions as a meeting place for the production of open cultural projects. It is a cultural space and citizen lab in Madrid. It was created by the Madrid City Council in 2000, growing since then into a leading centre for citizen innovation. The Medialab’s activities are structured in […]

Busy as bees: A rooftop garden and a dynamic community hub for social integration – BeeOzanam in Turin

BeeOzanam is a community hub whose challenge is to combat cultural poverty and social exclusion, stimulating the growth of a sustainable generation through the co-production of cultural, educational and aggregative activities. Following the deindustrialisation of the city of Turin, several workers’ districts scattered across the city generated many empty spaces that were once factories, workshops […]

Collaborative housing: innovation in community engagement, social inclusion and participatory design 

Collaborative housing can be conceived as an approach to complement state- or municipality-led public housing schemes with bottom-up, self-organised housing projects. It has been the object of a great diversity of experiments throughout Europe, turning housing into a field of innovation when it comes to community engagement, social inclusion, solidarity economy, ethical finance and participatory […]

Cooperative City in Quarantine #13: INCLUSIONE SOCIALE – IT

Il lockdown ha messo in luce l’entità delle disuguaglianze nelle nostre società, ma altrettanto il ruolo fondamentale svolto dalle comunità e dall’attività cooperativa nel raggiungere gli strati più fragili della società. Quali questioni stanno emergendo e quali sono le soluzioni più adeguate? Per ottenere davvero che nessuno resti in una condizione di esclusione nella nostra […]

Revolutionary social centre in an occupied prison – Ex OPG in Naples

Ex OPG Occupato Je so’ pazzo (Neapolitan for “I am crazy”) is a former criminal asylum. The building was saved from abandonment and returned to its neighbourhood (and the city) in the form of an autonomous social centre. “Je so’ pazzo” is the name they have chosen, “because in a world where normality is made […]

Agri-urbanism with social integration in Paris – Ferme du Rail

How can a complicated, abandoned parcel of land in a dense urban tissue gain new life through gardening and housing? Ferme du Rail is an agri-urban space in the 19th district of Paris, addressing the challenges of homelessness, urban agriculture, gardening, social integration and circular economy. Selected within the framework of the project “Réinventer Paris” […]

Welcommon Hostel: sustainable tourism and social-cultural activities for the promotion of social innovation

The Welcommon Hostel is a responsible hostel using tourism revenues to invest in social activities. First converted from a hospital into a refugee shelter, the building located in Exarchia is now run by the social cooperative Anemos Ananeosis (Wind of Change in English), working for the promotion of social innovation, greenovation and circular economy in […]

Social Solidarity Economy in Barcelona: The Ecos Cooperative

Ecos is a cooperative of cooperatives which works to support the growth of single cooperatives and to promote inter-cooperatives projects in Barcelona. In this article, we share what we learned from Roger, the coordinator of Ecos, and Guernica, a member of the organisation, who explained us how does social solidarity economy work in Barcelona and […]

Kilowatt: Remodeling work through social environmental innovation

Kilowatt is a co-working space inside the Margherita Gardens in Bologna. Opened in 2012, it was developed through the Incredibol public tender and it became a hub for environmental and social innovation. Besides the co-working space, it features a community garden, a kindergarten, a restaurant and an open area where cultural and social events are […]

Spazio 13 – School revitalisation for social inclusion

Rossella Ferorelli introduces us to Spazio13: a real connector in the city of Bari, a container of innovation open to everybody, a space where everyone can become the protagonist of a change. Spazio 13 is Bari’s good practice for Com.unity.lab network.

Cozinha Popular da Mouraria – A Social Kitchen for neighbourhood inclusion

Adriana Freire is the founder of Cozinha Popular da Mouraria, a community kitchen started-up as a BIP/ZIP project. In this video she explains how a BIP/ZIP project starts and what is the impact of such a project on the local level.

Fragnebenan – empowering neighbourhood life with a local social network.

By working at a small scale, a digital platform helps neighbourhoods to strengthen social cohesion at many different levels: promoting local businesses, cooperation between neighbours and thus enhancing citizen participation. FragNebenan represents a smart way of using social networks to form a better social life within our cities both on- and offline. “To keep neighbourhoods […]

The Welcome Class – Language learning for social integration

The last decade has seen a significant change in the nature and pattern of migration flows within the EU. As a result one can observe a rapid change in the population structure and interactions between individuals and social groups in cities. Cities of migration are places of inclusion and exclusion. Local authorities need to deal […]

Stiftung Edith Maryon – Buildings for socially relevant uses

Stiftung Edith Maryon was created in 1990. The foundation’s mission is to secure socially responsible places of residence and work, and to promote transparent land use, mixed-use development and green building. By acquiring real estate and signing long-term building leases, it moves properties out of speculation and makes them available for self-administered and self-accountable socially relevant uses. […]

Coop57 – Financing projects in the social and solidarity economy

Coop57 is a cooperative for ethical financial services with the objective of financing projects in the social and solidarity economy. It was created in Barcelona in 1995 from a compensation fund that former employees of the publishing house Bruguera received when the company went bankrupt. In the following years, the organisation gradually increased its member […]

Coop57 – Financing projects in the social and solidarity economy

Coop57 is a cooperative with the objective of financing projects in the social and solidarity economy. It was created in Barcelona in 1995 from a compensation fund that former employees of the publishing house Bruguera received when the company went bankrupt. Coop57 acts as a financial intermediary: it collects savings from citizens and channels them into social economy initiatives that promote employment, solidarity and sustainability.

L’Alveare – Co-working as social service

L’Alveare​ is a co-working space in Rome that integrates a kindergarten, in order to allow parents, especially women, to return to their freelancing work with small children. In 2013 their project was awarded by Italia Campo and Unicredit as well as the Coopstartup​ that allowed them to transform the organisation into a working cooperative. The […]

L’Alveare – Co-working as social service

L’Alveare​ is a co-working space in Rome that integrates a kindergarten, in order to allow parents, especially women, to return to their freelancing work with small children. In 2013 their project was awarded by Italia Camp​ and Unicredit as well as the Coopstartup​ that allowed them to transform the organisation into a working cooperative. The co-working and kindergarten, operating in a municipality-owned space, also accommodates lectures, trainings and workshops.

Cooperative City Non-Profit Ltd

Cooperative City Non-Profit Ltd is a research, policy and advocacy organisation helping civic involvement in urban transformation processes. It is small non-profit enterprise specialised on collaborative urban development practices in Europe, with particular attention to local development and social inclusion of marginalised groups. It is a  partner organisation of Eutropian GmbH, that works with NGOs, community […]

New book: Open Heritage. Community-Driven Adaptive Reuse in Europe: Best Practice

Heritage is a crucial component of our individual and collective identities, communities and social infrastructure as well as our urban and rural fabrics. Heritage assets, central to the imagination of residents of an area or a broader community, enable people to create spaces of sociability, develop new businesses, create new welfare services, implement the logic […]

Inclusion as urban strategy: the innovation trajectory of Gdańsk

In the past decades, Gdańsk has followed a well-defined strategic path. Building one initiative on another, the city used European projects to strengthen the innovation capacity of the municipality and its partners, gradually creating an inclusive social ecosystem with new institutions, partnerships as well as participation methods. Some of these new processes have converged in […]

Gender and Diversity Equality Policy

Public document – Gender and Diversity Equality Policy The purpose of this policy is to provide diversity and equality to all in employment, irrespective of their gender, race, ethnic origin, disability, age, nationality, national origin, sexuality, religion or belief, marital status and social class. We oppose all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination. All employees, […]

No single recipe to revive markets

Over the past decade, market halls and open air food markets have become an important arena for urban regeneration. Although many of today’s European cities are essentially built around markets and fairs, these markets have now disappeared, relocated or, like other community infrastructures such as cinemas, public baths, psychiatric hospitals or prisons, lost some of […]

Spores Home – A self-sustaining co-living space that is a second home

Spores Home is a self-sustaining co-living space in Spain. Founded by an innovative entrepreneur, it offers affordable housing to people from various ways of life. With no on-site management, residents rely on common sense and self-initiative to co-manage their dwellings and common spaces. The community thrives through trust and collaboration, contributing to a unique ecosystem […]

Rome’s interconnected, holistic and circular food policy

Rome’s transformative journey towards developing a comprehensive food policy reflects the profound influence of food on the city and its inhabitants. Inspired by international research and experiences the Rome municipality embraced a city-region food system approach, recognising the interconnectedness of urban and rural areas. Through a bottom-up process which began in 2018, diverse stakeholders united […]

Szeszgyár: An ecofeminist, queer community garden in the centre of Budapest

Right in the heart of an inner district in Budapest lies a 7700 square metre wild, at first sight untamed green space, sandwiched between unassuming residential buildings. Walking in the area, one is surprised to find Szeszgyár, this vast ecofeminist and queer community garden behind the graffiti-filled walls, away from sight. Szeszgyár is different to […]

Overcoming isolation: Multigenerational and multicultural co-housing in Sweden

 “A new way to live” states the website of the revolutionary SällBo co-housing project where young people between the ages of 18 and 25, including refugees, and over 70s live together. The aim of mixing these different groups is to support social interactions of people who can easily feel like outsiders, isolated and lonely. The […]

Climate adaptation through participation: urban approaches from Vienna

We are flooded by the effects and consequnces of the global climate crisis, whether in the news, on social media, in education, or in discussions with friends and family. The conversations are filled with frustration and hopelessness of climate activists as well as scientists, leading to a sense of climate anxiety in society, effecing especially […]

neoom: app-based support for energy communities in Austria

Establishing an energy community requires different legal, technical and organisational considerations and skills. For those without a background in energy production, getting started with this process can seem difficult and daunting. How can those interested in producing and using renewable energy be supported? neoom is a Freistadt-based company that offers innovative, clean and integrated decentralised […]

Free Riga: A platform for temporary use

Free Riga is an organisation promoting the temporary use of vacant and underused buildings across the city of Riga. Founded in 2013, Free Riga gained exposure through a highly successful campaign to make visible the hundreds of empty buildings that suffered from decades of neglect. Since then, the organisation operates as a platform to help […]

Reclaiming public space through tactical urbanism: Milan’s Piazze Aperte programme

In the past years, Milan has become a model city in public space regeneration. The Piazze Aperte (“Open Squares”) programme, launched in 2018 has become a key reference for municipalities and activists aiming at transforming their cities with safer streets, more attractive and more accessible public spaces, more climate-resilient infrastructure and stronger, more compact and […]

Inclusion Potentials of Co-Housing – A look at OASE.inklusiv 

wohnbund:consult is an independent office working in the field of social and sustainable urban developments with a focus on housing. Its interdisciplinary team focuses on urban and social housing issues as well as research projects, development and planning. In accordance with Vienna’s subsidised housing schemes, wohnbund:consult supported the development of the project OASE.inklusiv as part […]

Vibrant streets make cities better: nine stories from Thriving Street

Eutropian collaborated with the URBACT III network focusing on sustainable mobility as engine for social and economic cohesion of local communities. An overview on the integrated plans and pilot actions developed by nine cities involved in the network. Streets and squares of our cities play a key role in making our urban experience more enjoyable, […]

The Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava: The Slovak capital’s urban think-and-do-tank

The Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava (MIB) is a new urban centre that aims to bring fresh, dynamic, participatory and data driven urban developments to the city. It can be described as a “think-and-do-tank” that is concurrently responsible for strategic urban planning, as well as for the development and implementation of architectural and spatial urban interventions […]

Thriving Streets: a journey through the cities innovating mobility and public spaces for all

Eutropian collaborated with the URBACT III network focusing on sustainable mobility as engine for social and economic cohesion of local communities. This article is an overview of the knowledge produced by the network, shared through reports and factsheets produced in collaboration with experts and city practitioners.   Making streets and public spaces better for people is […]

Planning a new cultural venue: Connecting to Újbuda’s existing institutional tissue

How to conceive a new cultural institution in an area already known for its strong cultural scene? How can a new venue integrate into an existing institutional network, complementing and strengthening the work of already running cultural spaces and community centres, instead of draining their resources? Adaptér will be an Art & Technology Centre in […]

Learning from each other: the possibilities of transferability

In the last decade, cities across Europe have seen an increasing number of innovative actions taking place on different scales: from the district, to the municipal level and from here to regional and national one. However, in most of the cases, experimentation and innovations run the risk of being limited to local impact. How to […]

Turin’s Tavolo Tecnico: Inter-departmental cooperation for the commons

A Pact of collaboration is a negotiation between the city administration and civil subjects through which the regeneration, care and co–management of urban commons is defined and carried out. Since 2016, the Turin Municipality has signed over 60 Pacts of collaboration, supported by the municipality’s “Tavolo Tecnico” (Technical Board) that acts as a forum to […]

Asset of Community Value legislation on paper vs. reality: A community perspective from Brighton & Hove 

The right to bid for Assets of Community Value was defined in the Localism Act, introduced as an act of UK Parliament in 2011 by the Coalition Government of the time. The Localism Act contains a wide range of measures to devolve more powers to councils and neighbourhoods and give local communities greater control over […]

Hallo: Going beyond real estate speculation to create community spaces in Hamburg

The HALLO: collective aims to reactivate publicly inaccessible spaces in the city of Hamburg. The collective organises a yearly festival, HALLO: Festspiele, and it is working on a strategy to develop long-term concepts for unused spaces and to raise funding to support its activities. Among their projects, Schaltzentrale, an experimental neighbourhood office, is specifically dedicated […]

Planning a new cultural venue: Exploring the needs of the local cultural ecosystem

How to plan a new cultural venue in a district already rich in cultural life? How can a new cultural institution help to connect existing spaces and organisations, instead of competing with them? Adaptér will be an Art & Technology Centre in the Újbuda district of Budapest, co-financed by the Urban Innovative Actions-funded project CUP4Creativity. […]

FABER Timisoara: A refurbished industrial site to boost the socio-creative scene

FABER is an independent cultural centre in a rehabilitated factory building located on the banks of the river Bega in Timisoara, Romania. Its mission is to “create sustainable projects that have the power to change the cultural, social and creative scene” of the city. The name FABER (“smith” in Latin) has a double meaning: it […]

Precariousness, double standards and racism in housing refugees

The blog presents an initial reflection on emerging challenges that the influx of refugees from Ukraine – about 7 million people since 24 February 2022 – poses to cities and their housing infrastructures. Based on a recent exchange convened within the framework of the JPI-funded research project HOUSE-IN, it focuses on the project’s case studies […]

The Ute Bock Association: Building on a legacy of inclusion

Considered by many as a secular saint, Mrs. Ute Bock (Linz 1942 – Vienna 2018) began helping refugees, especially those who were not included in the classic asylum system or who could not receive institutional support, as early as the 1990s. At that time, refugees were sent to Mrs. Bock as her pragmatic approach was […]

Chikù: A Romani-Italian restaurant in Naples run by women

In Scampia, one of the most challenged suburbs of Naples, a popular initiative uses women’s emancipation, art and culture, pedagogy, good food and social capital as main ingredients for a recipe for cultural development and social recovery.The fusion of experiences between two closely related entities, the gastronomic social enterprise La Kumpanìa and the association for […]

KAŅIERIS: Riga’s Youth Centre for realising ideas

Riga’s Youth Centre KAŅIERIS is a non-formal learning and inclusive collaboration space for young people and their organisations to gain knowledge and skills, as well as to develop mutual cooperation. The main goal of the centre is to provide support to non-governmental youth organisations in their work of non-formal education and capacity building. Its main […]

Rewarding green actions: a digital platform for citizen engagement in Prato

Prato Urban Jungle (PUJ), a project launched by the city of Prato, funded by the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) programme, will regenerate selected districts of Prato by developing high density green areas – so-called urban jungles. PUJ also aims to increase social inclusion and promote the sustainable development of the urban environment. Towards these objectives, […]

VinziRast: Volunteer-based support hub

The social initiative VinziRast is an ambitious volunteer-based organisation that aims to give a second chance at life for refugees and formerly homeless people through various channels. VinziRast-mittendrin, a housing project where homeless people, students and refugees share the space, and their latest project VinziRast am Land, a sustainable permaculture project with the homeless in the […]

Solidarity City Policy Observations

Policies for a City of Solidarity: Observations Solidarity City is a media project by Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project mapped initiatives that focus on social inclusion, participation, citizen-led urban regeneration, ecological transition, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and […]

Solidarity City Videos

What is Solidarity City Solidarity City is a media project of Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project aims at mapping initiatives that focus on social inclusion, fair employment, participation, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and responsible tourism. Watch our […]

Brunnenpassage: Activism and art strengthen each other

Brunnenpassage is an art and social space located in a former market hall in Ottakring, Vienna’s 16th district. Brunnenpassage mirrors the area and its mixed demography – a melting pot of different cultures, such as Turkish, Serbian and Croatian – as it prides itself to be a “laboratory for transcultural art”. It is located next […]

Bikes and Rails: Co-housing with solidarity and an environmental mission

Self-managed and affordable, ecological and inclusive – the pioneering project Bikes and Rails in Vienna’s Sonnwendviertel stands as an alternative to real estate speculation in the increasingly pressured housing market. The concept provides for buying houses collectively through private financing, freeing them from the market in the long term and thus securing affordable housing. The […]

The Wiener Tafel: Building bridges between abundance and need

About one-third of the food produced worldwide gets thrown away[1]. Since its foundation in 1999, the Wiener Tafel has been providing social institutions such as women’s shelters, homeless care facilities and refugee homes with food and other goods that would otherwise have ended up in the waste bin. It is Austria’s oldest food bank and […]

Superar: Overcoming barriers through music education

In a city often regarded as the capital of classical music, a city rich in culture with renowned museums and an important contemporary arts scene, one must feel excited when approaching such a cultural heritage as a newcomer. Nevertheless, in conversation with Superar’s director Andy, an orchestra director working at Superar, we can understand how […]

Zukunftshof: An agricultural city laboratory at the edge of Vienna

On the site of the old Haschahof, a former farm at the southern edge of Vienna’s Favoriten district, stands today’s Zukunftshof (meaning Future Farm), which has been a place of forward thinking since the 1980s. Rothneusiedl, the former village where Zukunfthof is located, will become a new settlement for approximately 20,000 inhabitants in the next […]

magdas HOTEL: Changing the world while sleeping

Founded in 2015, magdas HOTEL is not only a cosy, retro-style hotel next to the famous Prater park in Vienna’s 2nd district. “Change the world while you sleep” is one of the mottos of magdas HOTEL , the first hotel in Austria that is run as a social business. It is dedicated to the integration […]

Nut & Feder: Joining forces through carpentry

Nut & Feder is a Viennese carpentry shop, a social business, that supports the integration of asylum seekers through work with local carpenters. This peer-to peer cooperation helps to overcome the challenges faced by asylum seekers getting into the job market due to legal, social and cultural barriers.  At the border of the City of […]

Reprogramming Barcelona: Towards a new paradigm of public space

Xavier Matilla, Barcelona’s chief architect and Silvia Casorran Martos, deputy chief architect, visited Budapest at the invitation of Eutropian, the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre – KÉK and the Instituto Cervantes de Budapest to share Barcelona’s recent innovative urban development plans. Xavier Matilla and Silvia Casorran Martos, together with the city’s Urban Ecology department, had a […]

A residence for emergency housing and impact tourism in Turin: Luoghi Comuni

Right in the heart of Turin, just next to the remains of the Roman city walls and the Porta Palatina, one of the four ancient city gates, lies Piazza della Repubblica, the largest square of the city, which is home to one of the biggest open markets in Europe, locally known as mercato di Porta […]

Gradual space: Room for Diversity in the Future of Urban Public Spaces

Article by Levente Polyak for publicspace.org, a project by the CCCB. In 1748, the Italian architect Giambattista Nolli published an ichnographic plan of Rome, documenting every building in the city and their adjacent spaces. The Pianta Grande di Roma, besides outlining all the buildings, and separating them from the surrounding public spaces, also depicted publicly […]

PlaceCity participatory interventions with students for better school spaces

As part of the European project called PlaceCity, placemaking for sustainable, thriving cities Nabolagshager established a collaboration with H20 High School in Grønland, Oslo to empower and facilitate the students to create inclusive meeting places in Grønland, Oslo’s most diverse district. The area has significant social challenges such as high child poverty rate, high unemployment […]

About Solidarity City

Solidarity City is a media project of Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project aims at mapping initiatives that focus on social inclusion, fair employment, participation, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and responsible tourism.  Despite the increasing interest in the […]

Gender equal cities: How to improve women’s experiences in public spaces?

Sally Kneeshaw, Gender Equal Cities lead for URBACT, found through her work that whilst  most people are generally aware of societal gender inequality, not many people realise just how differently women and men experience the city and public spaces. These differences can affect accessibility, a sense of safety and general well-being. Cities can and should […]

Neighbourhood Mothers – from the target group to actor

Neighbourhood Mothers (Naapuriäiti in Finnish) is a social inclusion programme that is reaching out to women who moved to Finland and encouraging them to become active in society. Project is empowering women through strengthening otherwise often unrecognised skills, enabling women to get peer support, providing them with tools to organise activities in their own neighbourhoods, […]

The promotion of the commons in Naples: from self-organisation to co-governance

The city of Naples (Italy)[1] is an exemplary case study of how a city can co-design legal and sustainable urban commons governance mechanisms and enable city inhabitants and local communities to act collectively in the general interest. In 2011, the City of Naples enabled the activity of a network of local communities in Naples that […]

Mobilising local resources: The Val di Noto Community Foundation

Community foundations are a means to mobilise resources within a territory in order to help the creation of local initiatives. In an area with limited public resources but a great density of active charities, civic organisations and private companies, a community foundation can act as an actor to raise funds, connect initiatives and trigger cooperation […]

The story of the Lazareti Heritage Complex

In the year 2000, the Art Workshop Lazareti, one of the most significant Croatian organisations in the field of contemporary arts and culture, signed a long-term contract with the City of Dubrovnik. This contract, with a duration of 25 years, allowed the organisation to use three of the ten buildings of the Lazareti heritage complex […]

Confiscated spaces as a common resource

Confiscation is an asset security measure consisting in the expropriation, in favour of the State, of something which has been used to commit an offence or which constitutes its profit; or even of something dangerous, objectively or subjectively. This measure is a legislative tool for the Italian State to fight the power of the Mafia, […]

Strengthening local cultural scenes: The Local Operators’ Platform

Local Operators’ Platform (LOCOP) is an independent initiative and research lab specialised in cultural research. LOCOP’s aim is to critically assess cultural policies and transnational funding programmes according to their real-life effects for local cultural operators and sustainability. It offers in-depth experience in practical cultural management both in independent and institutional frameworks, as well as […]

Kultura Nova: Supporting networks in the field of culture

Kultura Nova is a public foundation promoting civil society organisations in the field of contemporary arts and culture. The foundation was established in 2011, when the Croatian parliament adopted the Law on Kultura Nova Foundation. The idea of this new institution was born among non-governmental associations that work in the fields of arts and culture […]

Festival as exploration: Super Festival in Milan

“Super, the festival of peripheries” was started in Milan in 2015 by an interdisciplinary group of professionals. The event was initially conceived to create a more accurate, diverse and complex overview of the city’s outer neighbourhoods by reporting experiences of active citizens and entities, as well as stories about the daily life of those territories. […]

Citizen Innovation Maps – Visualising relevant communities as a tool to link us with our natural allies

When we undertake any type of project, of whatever nature, it is more necessary than ever to be able to count on natural allies for its development, so that their contribution allows us to give relevance and pertinence to our practice. By Miguel Jaenicke co-creator of [VIC] Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas | www.vicvivero.net | www.civics.cc […]

Mapping the Darsena: In search of visions, lost and found

Many urban regeneration schemes focus on architectural interventions or masterplans that aim to transform the social fabric of an area through shaping its built environment. However, If physical sustainability lies in the reuse of existing buildings, social sustainability builds on the ideas, visions and narratives that are already in place. Therefore, it is crucial to […]

New Book: The Power of Civic Ecosystems

The Power of Civic Ecosystems: How community spaces and their networks make our cities more cooperative, fair and resilient Public-civic cooperation has never been as important for European cities as today. Fading trust between public administrations and the civic society, rising authoritarianism and deteriorating services all make urban life more burdensome, especially for the most […]

The Power of Civic Ecosystems

The Power of Civic Ecosystems: How community spaces and their networks make our cities more cooperative, fair and resilient Edited by Levente Polyák, Sophie Bod and Luca Sára Bródy (Eutropian – Cooperating for Urban Justice) Design by Jorge Mosquera Suárez Publisher: Cooperative City Books, Vienna, June 2021 Format: Paper size B5, 320 pages ISBN 978-3-9504409-2-8 […]

Gamification and new scenarios for digital participation: tools and methods

Living and working in times of physical distancing and – sometimes forced – digitalisation cannot always be about video meetings via Zoom, Skype or other similar platforms. Or at least, we should not limit ourselves to these kinds of interactions. The Eutropian team, as many other researchers and practitioners in the field of urban studies, […]

ExRotaprint: From industrial production to collective urban development

ExRotaprint was founded in 2007 by tenants of the former Rotaprint industrial complex located in Wedding, a traditional working-class district in central Berlin. ExRotaprint set up a legal configuration comprising a heritable building right and non-profit status in order to buy the complex put up for sale by the Berlin Municipality’s Real Estate Fund. Established by the tenants ExRotaprint became owner of the 10,000 m2 complex and started a non-profit real estate development project setting a precedent in Berlin that inspired many experiments in cooperative ownership and a campaign to change the city’s privatisation policy. ExRotaprint offers affordable rents to small businesses, artists and social projects.

Building community and culture in Warsaw’s urban village – Exploring Open Jazdow

Right in the centre of Warsaw, where there once was the summer residence of royals, now lies a one-of-a-kind symbol of resistance, rebirth and civil consciousness, a settlement of Finnish wooden houses that resist the modern processes of urban development. Open Jazdów is a bottom-up community on its way to become a new, atypical neighbourhood. […]

Co-Housing students and homeless people – VinziRast in Vienna

A four-storey historical building in the heart of Vienna that houses bicycle, woodworking and sewing workshops, a restaurant serving international cuisine and a café hosting events sounds like a hipster tourist trap. In reality, though, it is a social initiative by VinziRast, an ambitious volunteer-based organisation, that aims to give a second chance at life […]

Peter Weiss Haus: a literary centre in Rostock

The Peter Weiss Haus is as a free educational and cultural centre located in an historical building in downtown Rostock.  Through the creation of an original and spontaneous governance structure, supported and bounded by different entities in the city, the Peter Weiss Haus Association has launched a community finance scheme to buy its building and […]