Overview
Cities generate over 80% of global GDP, with nearly 70% of the population projected to reside in urban areas by 2050. Urban sustainability is a critical challenge involving demographic, technological, economic, social, and environmental transitions. These transitions aim to create resilient, fair, and habitable cities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts. Achieving urban sustainability necessitates new practices, knowledge exchange, and mindset shifts, which lead to changes in socio-technical-ecological systems and the emergence of “new patterns of interactions and outcomes” that enable effective responses to current crises.
Eco-social innovation (ESI), integrating inter- and transdisciplinary practices, offers a promising approach to urban sustainability transitions. Firmly rooted in sustainable innovation, ESI advances sustainable development goals by fostering systemic social-ecological transformations at various scales, amplifying existing social innovations, and promoting inter- and transdisciplinary relationships that empower people, often through social entrepreneurship or social experimentation.
With this project, we will explore and map collaborations between local authorities and the social innovation ecosystem in Lucerne. By identifying key stakeholders and understanding their roles, theories of change, and collaboration-specific barriers and opportunities, this study aims to enhance our knowledge and network within social innovation activities, focusing on their potential and challenges in sustainable urban transitions.
This project serves as an acquisition initiative for the Horizon-WIDERA 2025 Twinning Bottom-Up proposal, which seeks to explore and build upon strategies for ESI across different cultural contexts. This will be achieved through research activities, case studies, and the development of teaching formats in Switzerland (HSLU), Türkiye (Dr. Serkan Bayraktaroglu - İstanbul University), and Italy (Prof. Kris Krois, Dr. Teresa Palmieri - Free University of Bozen-Bolzano).
