LabGov Co-Governance Project

Description

"The co-governance project run by LabGov

The Co-Cities project, whose conceptual framework has been developed by LabGov, investigates pioneering forms of collaborative city-making in urban areas. These innovative experiences of participatory governance of urban commons are crafted by community organizations, in order to shape a sustainable, thriving social life, economy, and collective space.

LabGov promotes a shared, collaborative, polycentric urban co-governance. The LABoratory for the GOVernace of the city as a commons was created as an urban clinic leading urban experimentations and nurturing local innovations.

• What’s the meaning of co-governance?

Co-governance is a multi-stakeholder approach to the management of urban commons, based on resource pooling and cooperation among social innovators, public authorities, businesses, civil society organizations, and knowledge institutions. Compared to the traditional public and public/private governance, it implies a new, more active, and inclusive role of local communities, that engage in a shared decision-making process by partnering with other relevant actors.

• Shifting from the co-governance of urban commons to the City as a Commons

The co-governance of common urban assets, such as environmental, cultural, and digital goods, is shared, collaborative and polycentric when managed through contractual or institutionalized public-private-community partnerships. Thus, we identify the Co-City as an infrastructure on which participants, constantly guided by principles of distributive justice, can share resources, engage in collective decision-making and co-production of shared urban resources and services, supported by open data and technology.

• The Co-City Approach

Based on a set of co-governance experiments performed in Bologna and other Italian cities, LabGov has defined a protocol for the Co-City, highlighting the necessary conditions to be met in order to move from single, isolated urban commons to an extensive approach: the whole city as commons, a shared resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants and has to be co-managed and co-nurtured. The city as we know it turns into an urban laboratory, whose achievements and developments are supported by a proper legal and political ecosystem." (http://commoning.city/co-city-approach/)

More information

• The Co-City Protocol