Co-Creation and the City (original) (raw)

CO-CREATING CITIES. DEFINING CO-CREATION AS A MEANS OF CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT

2014

People and their cities are engaging in new ways. In some cities, anyone with a smart phone can report graffiti or a pothole directly to the right city department. Some can now vote via the internet on how a city should spend its money. Others can use their computers to volunteer to shovel snow around fire hydrants. Still others participate in change labs that elicit their engagement from problem definition right through to finding solutions. All of this activity is part of a process called co-creation. Originally conceived as a business strategy for identifying new forms of customer engagement, city governments now benefit greatly from co-creating - sharing, combining, and maximizing opportunity – at a time when cities are asked to do more with dwindling resources. This report presents a look at the world of co-creation for policy makers, local officials, citizens, businesses, and other city stakeholders. We have researched the following questions in eight participating cities (Barcelona, Boston, Dublin, Hamburg, Lisbon, Lyon, Vancouver and Zapopan)

Co-production and governance for smart city services: Learning from practice

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2017

s for potential papers were received from around the globe, from North America to South East Asia, from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, and from Western across to Eastern Europe. Glimpses into the operation of smart city initiatives were offered in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the USA. Most prospective authors offered papers based on individual urban locations but a substantial fraction involved multiple case studies comparing what has happened in cities both within and between different countries – and this was echoed in the multi-national nature of the research teams often concerned. However, as the list of countries above testifies, most of the smart city initiatives on offer were those that have occurred in Europe, the majority of these with some form of funding from the European Union. 5 The selection process Abstracts were selected on the basis of the fit of their topics with the call, th...

Co-Creation in Urban Governance: From Inclusion to Innovation

Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 2018

Co-creation is one of the mayor buzzwords lately in urban governance and participation both in theory and practice. The research question in this paper is to establish what exactly we mean by the concept and what its practical application entails for democracy in urban governance. The papaer reviews the scholarly literature on co-creation in order to establich how co-creation has been and can be conceptualized in urban governance. The rise of the concept of co-creation signifies a shift in how public participation is understood. Where participation following Arnstein in the 70s and forward was about rights and power, participation conceptualized as co-creation is rather about including relevant and sufficiently diverse knowledge in urban processes to create innovative solutions to complex problems. Consequently, democratic legitimacy to a much larger extent relies on output rather than input legitimacy. It is the ability to solve complex problems that becomes the evaluation criteria...

Co-producing Smart City Services: Does One Size Fit All?

2018

Studies have shown the potential of co-producing public services with the stakeholders for more efficient and sustainable smart city services. However, evidence-based records of the success of such initiatives are limited and there is a strong deficit of analysis of what makes co-production efficient. This study addresses these limitations by exploring the methods, tools and techniques for managing the process effectively, and the skills required to do so, drawing on both literature and empirical data. A case study method and survey is employed to uncover specific factors and challenges operating among public service project managers in European smart cities—based on experience gained from Peripheria, a multidisciplinary project focused on the co-production of Future Internet-enabled services. Six pilot cases are explored to understand how each of them set about engaging their stakeholders in service co-production in order to reach the desired services and impacts for their smart ci...

Knowledge co-creation for urban services innovation

Purpose - More and more cities are challenged by the general ineffectiveness of the public spending programme management and by the economic crisis. This affects the quality of urban services and the quality of urban lives. Coherently with this trend an international discussion started on the governance model behind urban service production: a model shift from public-private partnership (3P model) towards public- private-people partnership (4P model) is observed which is not yet analysed in depth (Majamaa et al., 2008; Zhang and Kumaraswamy, 2012). New urban initiatives are growing in number, which consider people relevant actors of the service ideation and creation aiming at developing effective environment for urban service co-creation (Sibukele et al., 2012). Within the perspective above, the main purpose of the paper is to highlight the role of co- creation in urban service provision (Jégou, 2011; Manzini et al. 2008; Manzini and Rizzo, 2011). The paper wants to demonstrate how the 4P model represents a possibility to foster and drive large-scale changes in which different stakeholders can play meaningful role (Concilio, 2010; Fischer, 2006; Kernaghan, 2009). In particular it analyses what is the role of knowledge creation in idea generation for innovating urban public services. Design/methodology/approach – Considering the main scope of the paper, the authors carry out a case-based analysis and report the results of a long process in the urban environment of the Milan municipality experience in rethinking urban green areas growth and management. The co-creation process is described considering its bottom-up nature and its interaction with the local administration when moving from deliberation to decision making. In particular it is analysed in order to envision how some small (self- organized) criticalities/opportunities (Puerari et al., 2013) emerged in the city of Milan can be captured, coordinated and amplified to play a meaningful role in defining/envisioning possible futures that can enhance larger changes. Hence, some specific co-creation sessions are described (with the use of cognitive mapping tools) and analysed in terms of knowledge contents and dynamics relevant for the shift from deliberation to decision making and the kind of governance models arising from the co- creation process. Originality/value – The originality of the paper stays, first, in focussing on the role played by co-creation in the creation of knowledge and in the generation of ideas for the innovation of urban public services. Second, the methodological aim of the paper is exploring the potentials arising when integrating co-design tools and methodology with knowledge mapping tools. Practical implications – Cities are looking for new ways to create and produce urban services that can respond to citizens needs in a more effective way. Practical implication of the proposed paper are specifically related to the lessons learnt from the described experience and analysis of the Milano case within the framework of urban green areas development and management.

What can co-creation do for the citizens? Applying co-creation for the promotion of participation in cities

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Co-creation has become a globally popular concept in different sectors of the society. Its promise lies in breaking down hierarchies between local government, business life, universities, citizens and other stakeholders. Instead of being a top-down or bottom-up process, co-creation involves a multi-directional approach to problem solving. In this article, we scrutinize the capacity of co-creation to transform the practices of public sector in the context of urban development. In this way, we discuss both the potential and limitations of applying co-creation to the enhancement of citizen participation in cities. While new ways of acting can create novel spaces for opportunity, they also bring new winners and losers to the fore. After all, citizens are not all the same: they fall in several categories and some of them have more resources to participate in co-creative processes than others. Thus, it is relevant to know who participate in and whose voices get heard through these process...

Co-Creating Value in Urban Public Policy Context: A Different Approach

Urban areas face daunting economic challenges that have increased in scope in recent years. At the same time, cities provide for opportunities for growth and value creation. The interplay of these challenges and opportunities represents the area of intervention for policymakers and researchers. However, the traditional approach to urban policy, deriving from the managerial and economic policy theories, shows difficulties mainly related to the capacity to counterbalance the interests and expectations of a multitude of stakeholders participating to the value co-creation process and to bring all different components to synergically contribute to the sustainability of the system. The Author proposes an innovative approach to urban public policy, by adopting the theoretical corpus of the Viable Systems Approach ("VSA"). Urban planning will be particularly analysed, as systemic components of urban areas, with the aim to investigate the decision-making processes for an integrated...