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Multipartner Table of Co-design to Manage City Actions: Italian Experiences in Urban Time Policies
Marco Mareggi
Department of Architecture and Planning, Politecnico di Milano
mareggi@libero.it
Via Golgi 39 – Ed. 34, 20133 Milano, Italy
Telephone 0039 02 23995452
Fax 0039 02 23995454
Mobile telephone: 0039 0368 517207
Email:Paper presented at the Danish Building and Urban Research/EURA 2001 conference in Copenhagen 17–19 May 2001
Urban time policies were launched in Italy at the and of the 1980s. Within the span of ten-fifteen years a hundred and seventy municipalities were involved in time oriented projects or timetable plans, sometimes just studies on urban social time.
Urban time policies began in 1996 and spread throughout different countries of the European Union, especially in Germany and France. Now the diffusion is starting in the Netherlands.
Urban time policies are public policies that intervene in time schedules and time organisations that regulate human relationships at urban level. Promotion, creation, project, implementation and management of city action1 are all elements of this policies, that work coming from organisation and time schedules of services. Indeed, as a recent report of Italian Ministry of Environment said, "it soon came out clearly that working on time schedules of public services means to influence on individual relationship, on mobility of people, on real possibility to enjoy the city as a collective property and common goods" (Ministero dell’Ambiente, 1999, p. 50).
1) Marco Cremaschi defines local actions as a programs of intervention related to a specific area. These interventions are particular for three qualifications: non deterministic approach to the problem, integrated and cross-cutting character of interventions, "qualification to create actors of planning more than action of planning" (Cremaschi, 1998, p. 63). These qualifications, said the author, are the real innovative component of "a great variety of tools at local level that have been introduced in recent years: urban projects, European program, announcement of competition, city action and so on " (Cremaschi, 1998, p. 62).
At start in Italy, cities launched urban time policies in relation to one article of the main law of reform of local public administration (the 1990 act n. 142) by which the mayor has the power to co-ordinate opening and closing time schedules of public services. From 8th March 2000, urban time policies have been governed by a national law upon family care and parental leave (l. 53/2000). This act makes definition and implementation of "Territorial Timetable Plan" compulsory for the municipalities with more than 30.000 inhabitants.2
2) Disposizioni per il sostegno della maternità e della paternità, per il diritto alla cura e alla formazione e per il coordinamento dei tempi della città, act 53/2000. The law sets up a "Territorial Timetable Plan" as "unitary instrument for objects and guidelines, made by projects, also experimental, related to the organisation of different systems of urban services and to their harmonisation and co-ordination". This plan, "binding for the municipality" (point n. 24), considers the effects on traffic, pollution and quality of life produced by existing time-schedules and time organisation of the city and its services (working hours and opening hours).
These public policies arose great interest and had a tumultuous growth. In Italy, fifteen years of experiences and a new national law brought the urban planners, the sociologists and the policy makers involved to think over the role of these city actions and over the nature of innovation in these policies. Such innovation characterises the theme the way to design and act these urban practices of public actions. This second aspects is common to others public policies. It is interesting to know the differences. As a matter of fact today - above all in Italy as a consequence of the master plan crisis - territorial government forms are increasing by means of complex projects, sectorial plans and public policies that more and more often apply to partnerarial and participate practices of local government. In Italy urban time policies are included in this discipline open-mindedness that finds out new themes, instruments and means for urban government.
After an overview of urban time policies, in this paper I would like to introduce recent urban time policies developed in various Italian towns. Here, public and private actors are involved in managing city actions. Various actors of the productive area in the southern part of Bolzano are involved in an "Agreement on mobility"; in Pesaro social actors and the municipality designed the social revitalisation and the architectonic and urban new design of a square.
The focus will be on these cases as significant experiences of multipartner table of co-design, useful for urban planning and for a social building of decision making processes in a urban public policy. Does these cases introduce an innovative and interactive way to involve stakeholders, citizens and the public administration? Is this an action of governance? Is this an interesting way to manage city actions?
Origins of Urban Time Policies in Italy
The Italian panorama of time schedules related to different activities is extremely various. As far as the regional differences are concerned, the variability is influenced both by the geographical context (Northern, Central or Southern Italy), and by the extension of cities and towns (two metropolies, Milan and Rome, and a great number of medium towns). Within the same urban culture we can distinguish different time schedule traditions.
In Italy, as in European tradition, women – described as "women of double presence" (Balbo, 1978) in the labour market and in the care work – are burdened by time devoted to family and by the attempt to conciliate this aspect with working hours and urban organisation3. Women are, as a matter of fact, the true protagonists of the introduction, promotion, and spreading of time policies in Italy. The link between individual time, working hours and urban times was suggested to the Italian political agenda by the women themselves, who presented a grassroots legislative draft known as "Women change Times" introduced to the Italian Parliament in 1986 and, after various circumstances, modified and passed in 2000 (act 53/2000).
3) According to Esping-Anderson (1996), J.Y. Boulin and U. Mückenberger underline that "Western societies organise personal services in three different modes: the Anglo-Saxon world … creates markets satisfying the citizens' service needs"; in the Scandinavian world, "personal services are also becoming externalised from the household and transformed into a welfare-state activity"; in the continental European world "the welfare-state activities support the households financially … Obviously this solution systematically goes at the expense of the time budget of the household (particularly of the women)" (Mückenberger, Boulin, 1999, p. 1). Increasing the participation of women in the labour-market, the continental system stresses on women’ everyday-life time budget (Balbo, ed., 1987; 1991).
At the same time, from 1985 onwards, in Italy other interests and activities were taking place in areas that before had remained separate (academic field, politics, public administration). All these spheres stressed time as important issue.
In academic fields, sociologists think over social representation of time (Tabboni, 1984), over changes in working hours and social synchronisation that they determine in the organisation of urban life (Chiesi, 1989), and over daily life sociology starting from feminist tradition. Analysis of life-story and in-deep interviews (Saraceno, 1983; Bimbi, Capecchi, 1986; Balbo, 1987, 1991) and time budget analysis (Belloni, 1984) belong to these fields. Urban sociology - especially Guido Martinotti - reflects on population fluxes and temporary inhabitants who live in contemporary towns and cities (Martinotti, 1993).
Nordic time geographers (the Hågerstrand school) describe a new scene, based on the overcoming of simple house-work mobility patterns (Carlstein, Parkes, Thrift, 1978), which were governed by the idea of the shortest route, typical of the industrial metropolis.
In urban planning, researchers reflect upon urban transformations, wide scale settlement sprawl, city networks and innovative urban phenomena (Indovina, 1987; Boeri, Lanzani, Marini, 1993; Clementi, Dematteis, Palermo, 1996). The Politecnico di Milano school starts a path of time oriented urban design (Bonfiglioli, 1985; Bonfiglioli, 1990) and a time-related interpretation of the city as a system of chronotopos4 (Bonfiglioli, Mareggi, 1997).
4) "Chronotopes, physical places of spatial and temporal architecture animated by the rhythms of presence and co-presence of its citizens and temporary inhabitants" (Bonfiglioli, 1999, p. 125).
In policy and planning theories, the attention shifts from the plan as a product to the social building of the policy process and to the problems related to its management (Crosta, 1990; Dente, 1990; Balducci, 1991).
In public administrations, an article of the main law of reform of local autonomy (article n. 36, act of 1990 n. 142) gives the mayor the power to co-ordinate opening and closing times of public services. The goals of this co-ordination is matching temporal needs of users. In Italy public services that are directly or indirectly regulated by the mayor are: social services, certificates, commerce and restoration (shops and leisure, pubs and coffee bars), urban transportation, nurseries, first grade schools, education, libraries, cultural services and museums. Many social services are managed directly by the town council, which is the largest producer of social services of a town in Italy.
In the practices at local government level, different cities (e.g. Modena, Milano, Genova, Catania, Perugia) started to design and implement experiments and pilot projects on service time schedules simultaneously in 1990. Time offices have been instituted in the municipalities to design and manage these public policies at local level.
On one side, these processes are the expression of a willingness to change the organisation of social time expressed by a number of actors that become promoters of action plans in specific areas. On the other side, they are the outcome of procedures that reflect upon the description of relevant contemporary phenomena from a time-related point of view.
Development Perspectives in European Union Regions
Nowadays a number of European towns – apart from those in Italy – are interested in promoting and implementing urban time policies and in to get a Time office started. Urban time policies started in 1996 and were diffused in different European Union regions. Eurexcter, a network of cities and universities of five states (Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland) financed by Structural founds, has promoted the diffusion of these actions like policies of territorial qualities. This network is now promoting an international foundation. In Germany "time of the city" reflections and the municipal institution "Time office" have been growing since 1996 in a concrete relation with Italy, through changes of good practices. Some cities in Germany, for example the Municipality of Bremen, have a time office (zeitbüro) that is implementing these policies. Otherwise, in France a national law, quite similar to the Italian law on urban time policies (act. 53/2000), has passed, and some cities (Poitiers and Saint-Denis), a big area around Belfort and the Gironde Département are starting experimental initiatives on urban times.
Besides, research centres at national and European level promoted researches. For example, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Condition of Dublin carried out a research on the different situations in European countries (Mückenberger, Boulin, 1999).
Aims and Thematic Areas of Ten-fifteen Years of Experiences in Italy
In more general terms, the aims of urban times policies can be brought back to four spheres:
– improvement of the quality of life for citizens through a better organisation and allocation of living and working hours;– modernisation of public administration by simplifying its procedures, the opening of services oriented towards the temporal profile of demand, the decentralisation and integration of services and office counters;
– up-grading of city public spaces to favour networks of socialisation and to accommodate temporary dwellers and residents on mobility conditions;
– econciliation of the competition between residents and temporary dwellers, between workers and service users.
Urban time policies work on different thematic areas in Italy. Seven thematic areas can resume the action sectors and the innovation guidelines of urban time policies (Bonfiglioli, 1994; Zedda, 1996; Belloni, 1997; Bonfiglioli, Mareggi, 1997; Bartoletti, 1998; Amorevole, Pozzo, 1999; Comune di Venezia, 1999; Menichini, 1999; Zajczyk, 2000; Mareggi, 2000):
- accessibility of services to the public
5) A number of examples of intervention on the accessibility of services to the public in Italy are related with: 1) the citizen’s day, all municipal offices and services are open right through the day and/or include schedules that extend into the late afternoon; 2) the public relations office, new form of service to citizens that has been designed to improve communication between the administration and citizens, or to listen to and monitor citizens’ needs in an ongoing manner; 3) services for improving time devoted to family responsibilities; this case shows a conceptual shift from timetables to time. The interpretative focus is placed on the organisation of daily times and on those who have to cope with this organisation. The improvement consists in making greater flexibility available with broader choice in the organisation of daily activities. These services are characterised by non-standard, personalised schedules; 4) improving the quality of services to the public, as a reduction of bureaucratic burdens, simplification of administrative procedures, computerisation of archives and access to them, and multiplication of access points.
At the end of the Eighties the first project experiences were mainly concerned with service timetables (counter services, to the public - in particular towards children and the aged - teleservices, and public relations offices). Their logic is time-oriented, and it is mainly interested in studying and intervening to modify and adapt the opening hours of the activities according to users’ needs. Since the first half of the Nineties, a slow but constant thematic migration of intervention areas has occurred. Actions have been gradually transformed into policy, that is to say articulate and coherent lists of integrated actions.
The approach has been changing and changing towards a time oriented point of view that develop relations among the urban characteristics of the place, the activities, the social practices and the habits of the people who live there. Commerce, schools, tourists’ reception and social relationships (time banks) elaborated from the point of view of the urban renewal and social revitalisation are the thematic fields where local experiences have been produced.
For the future, Sandra Bonfiglioli (1999, p. 119) thinks that the thematic areas of action of urban time policies and of a time oriented planning will be: modernisation of public administration, design of public space and sustainable mobility.
Two Experiences of Italian Time Oriented City Actions
My aim here is to introduce urban time policies developed in two Italian cities, Bolzano and Pesaro. In Bolzano different actors of the productive area in the South of the city are involved in an "Agreement on mobility". In Pesaro social actors and municipality design the social revitalisation and the redesign of a square.
I chose to present these experiences because both towns are developing in medium size ones (80.000-100.000 inhabitants); these city actions are part of a Territorial Timetable Plan of the town and in this sense they are local actions that have the ambition of possessing a whole view of the town; at different times, the Politecnico di Milano has been an advisory expert external to these municipalities and it has introduced the way to build the process according to the so-called tables of co-design; this method has different developments and actors involved according to the various experiences; these actions do not focus only on service time schedules, but also on people’ time schedules, on the physical aspect of the town and on kinds of mobility of the various people that go to the areas of intervention.
In these two experiences, public and private actors are involved in city actions management. The focus will be on the multipartner tables of co-design, which is useful for urban planning and for a social building of decision making processes in a urban public policy. Does the cases present an innovative and interactive way to involve stakeholders, citizens and the public administration? is this an action of governance? is this an interesting way to manage city actions?
The Local Agreement on Mobility for the Productive Area in South Bolzano
Bolzano is a city in the North of Italy with about 97,000 inhabitants (1995).
The productive area of south Bolzano has become the main economic pole of the town and its province. It occupies about a quarter of the whole built up city. It was industrialised in the 1920s. Currently it is a service area characterised by industry, commerce, handicraft, service providers for enterprise and for leisure (PalaOnda - an ice rink and two discos) and the new trade fair (in the area there are 700 enterprises with 8,000 employees). South Bolzano is well connected to the national transport network. On the contrary, local transport is more difficult. Urban public transport is poor. The traffic - flow of commuters (employees, clients and suppliers of local factories) and crossing traffic - in south Bolzano is very congested. Local traffic problems are: heavy congestion not only during rush hours with the further problem of seasonal traffic, but also safety for slow mobility (slow mobiles and pedestrians), making rules for parking and degradation of urban structures.
The design of an agreement on mobility for the productive area in South Bolzano was an enterprise of Bolzano urban time policies developed by the Council team of Territorial Timetable Plan (TTP team). This team was composed by the alderwoman responsible for Public work and viability, the alderman responsible for Town planning, the City time office and external consultant from the Politecnico di Milano, expert in urban time policies.
In Bolzano the idea of an Agreement on mobility arose in 1997. Such agreement is a pact among the major local schedule producers. The goals of this policy are:
- promotion of an exchange of views between citizens as real actors of mobility and time decision makers. The aim is to make common representation of mobility problems and take part in their management;
- management al local level of the flow variability of movement of persons and goods, either in quantitative terms or as a path;
- for the citizen, learning of a reflexive strategy of multimode movement respectful of individual needs and of the environment;
- observation of daily life problems of mobility of enterprises, citizens and organisations located in the same urban area, also in relation to individual and collective time budget.
The local agreement wants to act on demand of mobility and not on the supply of infrastructure. The municipality does not feel that control action is necessary. It is more in favour of following changes, right from the start. This means being actively involved with the real people who have to make the changes (employees, employers, transport companies).
The South Bolzano agreement on mobility has been gradually developed through two different tables of co-design.
The first table of co-design or table of representatives calls upon the representatives of reference groups (stakeholders), develops strategies and identifies initiatives.
Starting from September 1997, the municipality TTP team, provincial aldermen responsible for Commerce, for Planning, for Industry and Transport, the local public transport company, the national railway, the
Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Handicraft and Agriculture, handicraft associations, executives and representatives of Employers’ Organisation, trade sector organisations, the Trade Fair of Bolzano and Italian trade unions have been involved. In different meetings between the TTP team and the stakeholders one by one, a survey produced by City time office with external consultant expert on traffic to build a common background and meetings with all the actors involved (called by the TTP team «tavoli quadrangolari di coprogettazione» because four actors are involved: municipality, trade unions, enterprises and representatives of citizens) define objectives, starting from objectives proposed by the municipality. Short terms objectives are: improvement of the supply of public transport; reduction of private car traffic with the promotion of car pooling; definition of rules for private parking; completion of the network of cycle ways and renewal of some elements of urban fixtures. Long terms objectives are: urban renewal; building of the South city gate of Bolzano; restoration of a railway line (currently used only to transport goods).For these initiatives action plans were defined related to rules for private parking, to the maintenance of streets. Besides, in the summer 1999, a new dedicated line of public transport was instituted. Initiatives designed by this table are frequently tasks of the municipality and of the local public transport companies. The actors involved in this table guarantee a common vision of problems. Rules for private parking and maintenance of streets was well developed. The dedicated bus does not work any longer because there is not information directed to the employees of the productive area, the timetable of trips does not agree with factory timetables and the bus stop is not near the entrance to the factories. This results point out to the TTP team that it is necessary to involve not only the representatives of the stakeholders at city level but also to understand and involve actors who directly live and work in the area.
For this reasons a second table of co-design or table of located actors started. This, unlike the first, is calling upon enterprises located in the project area and uses them to assess, describe, and focus on mobility from their point of view. The subjects are: employees, customers and suppliers of the complex cross-section of companies located in that particular productive area and residents in project area.
The table of located actors began to work at the and of 1999 involving employers first thought interviews "in their office" conducted by TTP team (alderwoman responsible of Public work and viability, the executive in charge of agreement on mobility and a time planner external consultant). Employers involved were selected in relation with well-known availability to make changes. The interviews pointed out that the employers are interested to manage with mobility problems in a collective way and that there is not common knowledge on numerous initiatives acted in South Bolzano by different companies without co-ordination and strategic vision. After that, some interested employers started to have meetings. The tasks of this table is to implement the goals of the table of representatives defining initiatives. In particular the goals are: to foresee and organise possible critical situations or new traffic flows in advance, for example due to urban transformation, events or demonstration; to promote a cultural change in the enterprises in the direction of a sustainable mobility able to manage daily strategies of use of public and private transport, collective and individual, slow and fast mobility. This mobility guarantees flexible and individual moving and it is a contribution to improve quality of life.
In May 2000, the table of located actors managed mobility during the days of opening of a new street in the South Bolzano, the Arginale street, a new ring road along the river Isarco, that connects the productive area with the motorways. The table co-ordinated:
– diffusion of an informative map of the new circulation related to the opening of the Arginale street (leaflets sent by the Municipality to all the families; map personalised by every enterprise and sent to the employees together with the pay-packet, or faxed or mailed to customers and suppliers; publication of the map in the web site of the Municipality);– hypotheses of change in time schedule of enterprises to decongest rush hours; (these measures of intervention have not been activated because there have not been queues);
– monitoring of mobility in the area during critical periods (presence of local policemen in the street critical points).
Other medium-term goals were defined. The first one is to reduce queues during rush hours through promotion of public transport and collective use of car for house-work moving; the second one is to limit disruption during the summer, when trips and the frequency of public transport are reduced due to the fact that schools are closed. Now in order to design action plan for the first objective, the TTP team and the table of located actors are designing projects for enterprises mobility managers and, as preliminary action, they are carrying out a research to point out provenience of the different actors who work there, their paths, either at local or provincial level, duration of moving and entering/break/coming out hours. For this research the table can use some experimental instrument of chronotopic analysis elaborated by the Politecnico di Milano (Zedda, 2000).
Up to now, the involvement of citizens and employers has been indirect. The table, as long terms objectives, foresees to activate a permanent listening-point located in every enterprise. This is a listening and information point for employees, customers and suppliers managed to favour sustainable mobility and also to personalise multimodal mobility services.
Another long-term goal is to put into action preliminary studies and instruments useful to desynchronise entering/break/coming out working hours, for a period to be defined. The team thinks to use them during periods when thresholds of pollution are critical.
This decision making arena acts coming from local problems of the people who live there everyday. Planners and politicians involved in this process consider that this way to set problems - involving private actors - can promote and manage actions useful to manage mobility problems also of collective interest.
Urban Renewal and Social Revitalisation of a Square in Pesaro
Pesaro is a town in Central Italy, facing the Adriatic sea with about 88,000 inhabitants.
In Pesaro some municipality offices are redesigning a square with different social actors, starting to every day life of the people who lives in and near the square.
Piazza Redi is located in an urban area in the neighbourhood of Montegranaro/Muraglia, and it is mainly inhabited with family groups. The neighbourhood is the village in the city. Piazza Redi may be considered as the centre, the core of a local network of social attractors within the village (parish centres, leisure and sports centres, public green areas, two cinemas, two "Case del popolo", several schools, from nursery to lower secondary, a youth centre, an old people’s home, a post office and a public health local centre). At present, piazza Redi does not act as the centre of such a widespread system of services; by contrast, it has an almost exclusively commercial connotation.
A chronotopic analysis revealed that the opening times of shops located in piazza Redi had a lunch time break (8.00-12.30 and 15.30-19.30) and that at dawn the only places open in the square were the news-stand, the bakery, the tobacconist and the shop selling items for animals. On Sunday and Monday morning all shops were closed, apart from a pastry shop, the cinema and the former communist party meeting place (Casa del popolo). The arcades - the place in the square where most people go to - were busy during the day thanks to different people: old people in the morning; women on errands at mid morning; children with roller blades and bicycles in the afternoon; on the contrary, nobody was there in the evenings.
Since the 1970s, this neighbourhood has seen a constant decrease in population, now mainly made up of nuclear families of one or two people (50.85%). The elderly people are 27% of the population, with a significant number of people above 80 years of age (over 600). Children below school age are numerous as well (549 people).
Since 1990 the dealers working in piazza Redi and the inhabitants of Montegranaro/Muraglia asked the Municipality for solutions to the following problems: renewal of the whole square; access to the central green open spaces; regulation of parking (now free); cleaning and maintenance of the square; renewal of the arcade; recognition of piazza Redi and its area as natural shopping centre.
A project related to piazza Redi is included in the framework of planning tools renewal that the municipality started in 1994, when its period of office began: Plan on commerce, Urban Traffic Plan, Urban Master Plan. In December 1995, when the City time office was created in the Municipality, the integrated project "Urban renewal and social revitalisation of piazza Redi" became part of the pilot projects in the Territorial Timetable Plan of Pesaro, managed by the City time office.
The decision making process was organised by the City time office and the Interassessorile6, supported by external consultants of the Politecnico di Milano. In April 1996 they decided on a transversal management of the pilot project among the City time office, the Plan on commerce office, the General urban master plan office and the Public works office.
6) The Interassessorile is a group of aldermen and alderwomen involved in Territorial Timetable Plan. This political body decide on the priority of projects to be implemented and on the assignment of these projects to the executives.
The goal of the pilot project was the integration of actions on trade, actions of renewal of the square physical space and cultural and entertainment events managed by the piazza Redi association, a local association of people living in the square and dealers working in the area around the square. The association was created during the process.
The actors involved in the decision making process for planning, goal setting and implementation phases are: the City time office (since October 1996 made up of a sociologist, an architect and an executive); the alderwoman in charge of co-ordinating the Territorial Timetable Plan; the executive in charge of the Employment and development project, and of the new Plan on commerce that co-ordinates the pilot project in planning and goal setting phases; the external consultant for the Plan on commerce; the external consultant for urban time policies, the Politecnico di Milano; the piazza Redi Association; the Consumers’ Council; the District, a body made up of the elected area representatives; and trade sector unions.
The City time office dealt with the meeting organisation and management, with the material preparation and the preliminary tests carried out with the active participation of the dealers and artisans working in the area.
The interactions between the different actors and institutions lead, on one hand, to the exploitation of direct analysis7 as a mean to involve and awaken a large number of people, and, on the other hand, to tables of co-design. These tables of co-design represent the ruling class and citizen participation to the pilot project decision making process. Two different tables were set up:
– the political table in charge of determining and sharing the planning strategies. At this table were: the Piazza Redi association, the town trade sector organisations, the trade union organisations, the Consumers’ Council, the municipality (aldermen/alderwomen of the sectors involved, City time office and external consultants). The group met a few times at the beginning of the planning process;– the operative table in charge of determining the issues, the project ideas and the ways to implement the pilot project. At this table were the actors located in the area: the Piazza Redi association, the local associations interested in the project (aggregation centres for young people, parish, local circles), Aspes (a company working on the open spaces maintenance, waste and public transport sectors) and the Municipality (the City time office and the executives in charge of the pilot project).
7) Preliminary analysis on the time features of the area around piazza Redi have been carried out: a) a socio-economic analysis (collection and interpretation of statistical, personal and census data of the resident population, questionnaires aimed to the dealers); b) a space-time analysis (evaluation of studies and tools concerning the town planning and the area morphological analysis; analysis of the commercial offer; analysis and evaluation of the event schedule; analysis of time usage and needs; map of places of social aggregation; map of the ground order and service activities; photographic survey of usage and degradation conditions); c) receptiveness to changes/importance of the interaction (focus group, press release).
The objectives of this project, slowly built up in the course of the interactive process, were: to promote piazza Redi as a town square; to enhance neighbours relationships, and relationships between dealers and residents; to create a liveable and attractive urban space, favouring for instance slow mobility; finally to qualify and strengthen the commercial mix of both the retail shop network and commercial business. The project was meant for the families who live in that area.
The slowness both in pointing out the targets and in implementing the initiatives is linked with two matters that come out during the process. On one side, there is a kind of competition among the politicians who want a formal project authorship acknowledgement. On the other side, among municipality sectors and other social actors and subjects, participate project design is slow and complex due to the difficulty of communication.
The initiatives to be carried out to implement the project - as determined in the tables of co-design – were mainly concerned with two contexts: the first pertains to the definition of temporary animation initiatives (started partly by the Association with the City time office; others - co-financed by the Council Plan on Commerce – have not been activated). The second context concerns the definition of a plan of requalification that the Public Works Sector has to develop in accordance with the Urban Master Plan and the Urban Traffic Plan.
For what concerns the conflicts about the project competence at decision level inside the municipality, the architectonic draft of the project has to be designed by the Time office with the consultant. The architects assume as guidelines the indications given by the tables with the social actors. The transformation in the daily life of the residents of Montegranaro/Muraglia of the present roundabout in the square of the quarter by means of the architectonic design has invited: to define the detailed design of an area with a situation of moderate traffic where fast and slow mobility can coexist with balance and considering the commercial nature of the place (the square is also a place for strolling, halting and meeting); to riqualify the arcades as the borderline between the commercial side and the square; to equip the open space so as to guarantee a usage palynsest that grants a privilege to the citizens of various ages. To these actions are linked those that promote sociality (animation cycles, thematic markets, time banks), that riarticulate the schedules of the installed activities (in days/hours that are now "dark" for the square, as on Sundays and in the evenings, and/or by settling and programming the opening of other activities as a news-stand, a flower shop, a pastry); that reorganise some services (arcade maintenance, waste recovery, public transport routes, maintenance of green areas).
In June 1998, a general design for Piazza Redi were given to the Directors of the Public Works Sector of the Council. In spring 1999 it was selected as the pilot project of a more general riqualification strategy of the public places in town to be proposed to the Ministry for funding (Prusst). In the meantime, the City time office goes on in its strategy of involvement - also to fund the intervention - of private subjects, citizens, and local firms.
As far as architectural design is concerned, the major problems were represented by the poor funds available and by political obstacles. About the process, the pilot allowed testing of a transversal co-operation between sectors within the Council. Furthermore, the tables of participated collaborative design carried on with the actors active in the process have turned claiming situations into opportunities for confrontation.
Multipartner table of co-design
The cases present an interactive way to involve stakeholders, citizens and public administrations.
The public administration in Italy, which in the last decades has been traditionally the designer and manager of public policies at local level (urban planning, public services, transport, housing etc.), witnesses today to a redefinition of its own role in the face of the intervention of a number of other actors who can represent the private sector (chambers of commerce, business associations, Employer’s Association, enterprises as in Bolzano agreement on mobility, shop owners as in piazza Redi project in Pesaro), or that can be directly citizens (for instance, women, neighbours as in Pesaro, employees and customers as in the intentions of agreement on mobility in Bolzano). Urban time policies and the way of interaction between institutions (here municipality) and social actors present in the cases of Pesaro e Bolzano take part to this general trend.
Tables of co-design in Pesaro and Bolzano – as it was diffused in some urban time policies of other cities, e.g. Cremona and Catania – are not only negotiation table or a place to solve conflicts. It is frequently an effective arena to work together, for semi-structured dialogue in which the actors involved take part in the construction and representation of the problems and their solutions, in the design and management of actions in a constructive and creative way. Interaction between actors occurs through the definition of strategies and integrated actions to be developed, creation of proposals, definition and sharing of on-going researches, studies and monitoring, implementation.
"The action to be taken is decided collectively and often managed in partner agreements, which are linked by economical and ethical interests, that they share until the beginning of the putting into focus of the problem, its configuration and its portrayal" (Bonfiglioli, 1999, p. 123). "Opening of negotiation tables are based on initially striking root, between the participants, of the questions at play through individual commitment towards really mutual consensual resolution; opening table can be thought of as a generative action, that open a new concrete design perspective in which innovative problem solutions are created" (Pacchi, 1997, p. 140).
These tables, said S. Bonfiglioli (2000), are a way of urban governance because this way goes beyond the traditional "partnership with two voices" (municipality – social actors; trade unions – employers) in the direction of building a "partnership with four voices". Or, as U. Muckenberger (1999) said, it’s possible to say that the enlargement of involvement of actors in public actions is a concrete realisation of the passage from "social dialog to the societal dialogue".
Likewise, as other policies in Europe, urban time policies are by tradition integrated, cross-cutting, multipartner and, sometime, participate policies, as showed in the two experiences described. Concretely, the experiences described point out that the public and private actors involved in table of co-design are the municipality (in each level and role), trade unions, enterprises and citizens.
It is interesting to underline the role of the different actors involved, more than say something about their social or economical category:
– on one hand, during the whole process of policy making, the presence of decision makers is essential: first of all politicians – who guarantee (with an act of responsibility) the concrete realisation of agreement between actors involved –, but also the ruling class of the city. I think that, as for any action of urban transformation, the process of changing hours and time organisation is intentionally the result of a long and gradual process of social building. This process is usually involvement, animation and activation of the local ruling class willing to make changes. In Bolzano the involvement of enterprise and public transport company managers and the political will produced a lasting process; in Pesaro the sole presence of the citizens, traders, and the Time office do not allow a fast fulfilment of the project;– on the other hand, the availability of concretely active actors is necessary. This frequently means involvement and giving reasons from the beginning of the decision making process and giving public recognition of their actions. I mean, as in the case of Bolzano, the employers located in the productive area of the city, the executives and officials of the municipality prepared administrative procedures for implementation of the project.
The involvement of decision makers and active actors during the process transforms the table of co-design in a decision making arena. Here, time policies reveals one of its urban elements. The nature of the agreement on urban times and hours mobilises, that is to say, social resources. These social resources, on one hand, go beyond role of representation in favour of involvement of real actors active in that place (there located) and in that issue process, trade-unionist, employer … These actors are able to take decisions in relation to that action. On the other hand, these actors "give voice" to a person in relation to his/her deep and local knowledge related to his/her daily life experience of that place, its habits and its calendars. "To change hours, also in a best way, involves to rewrite and to find measure and consensus, for a new social pact. This pact introduces changes in consolidated daily behaviours of employees and their families, of customers an their families" (Bonfiglioli, 2000, p. 93).
This characteristic makes urban time policies different from other public policies. In Italian urban time policies, the involvement of different actors (public and private, who establish the resilient times network) is a crucial point: the features of planning which is addressed to citizens' life times and works on the urban time schedules, are as a matter of fact of a kind which
necessarily implies the involvement of different stakeholders at the local level. "Urban time policies bring to life and verify day by day the social pact that ties resident citizens to their city. They act to improve the exercise of citizen’s rights that, for many, are not substantial but in fact are rights in name only" (Bonfiglioli, 1999, p. 124). The participate, grassroots character of these policies depends less on the ethical choice of the decision makers than on the nature of schedules and social time. To modify them means to move in the direction of drawing up a social pact on a local scale. This cannot be imposed, or at least not significantly.Is the choice to design the decision making process through the selection of a the ruling class and actors directly involved in the operative decisions and not through generic participation (bottom-up) a guarantee of success? The cases presented above show how strong the political will is in decreting the success and durability of the initiatives, despite the engagement taken by the local actors involved.
I can say that it is true that this approach has, in relation to the actors involved, the appreciation of politicians because it offers visibility and it is a way of consensus building. It creates new collaborative alliances between social actors involved and public administrations. It gives right of voice to the subjects; it is a consensus building as a production of meaning-in-common, this is the declension to the present of an urban action8; this approach is a forge of design for experts; it favours cross-cutting collaboration of technical bureaucracy of public administrations on a concrete actions. Moreover, for the urban time planners this approach does not hide that any interpretation of the city as an idea or ethic principle becomes action when it is a result of a process of assumption of responsibility from the active actors, that is to say a political act. The method of the experiences described can be collocated between government (role of Time office in the Council) and governance9 (thematic table of co-design as place of creative interaction an management). Learned by doing practices, this approach tested by some urban times planner (expert, politicians, officials) can be considered a management of public actions useful to design city action and urban projects. This is the direction urban time policies in Italy seem to be going towards.
8) On the differences between consensus understood as a production of meaning-in-common and agreement (Crosta, 1998, p. 11).
9) Urban time policies set themselves in a perspective of governance as actions addressed to grow "capacity of citizens, of their groups and institutions, in the way that they can undertake convenient political actions" (March, Olsen, 1997, pp. 65-66). "Governance is government action which effectively mobilises a series of bodies that are in very different positions both hierarchically (central and local actors) and as regards status (public, semi-public or private sector). Governance is the effect of government in a determined policy area, produced by the action (intended and unintended) of many actors none of which cannot be directly attributed to any one of them " (Balducci, 1999, pp. 135).
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Workshop 1 |