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ROCK Project
The ROCK project (Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities) aims to use new environmental, social, economic, and sustainable processes to regenerate the university zone around Via Zamboni.
The project won first place in the European call Horizon 2020 in the Climate – Greening the Economy axis in response to the call ‘Cultural heritage as a driver for Sustainable Growth’, with total financing of €10 million, €2 million of which are destined for Bologna. The project, with 32 European partners, is led by the City of Bologna, which worked to draft the project proposal together with the University of Bologna.
The project aims to show how historical centres in European cities can be considered extraordinary living laboratories where new models of urban regeneration guided by the cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) can be tested and where mechanisms of innovative and unconventional financing can be initiated in a vision of the circular economy.
The project in Bologna is concentrated on the university district around Via Zamboni, which includes 8 university buildings, 6 museums, 3 libraries, and the city’s main theatre, extending the area of interest to Piazza Maggiore. In line with the two guiding concepts of the creative city (recognizing creativity as a strategic factor in sustainable development, as defined by UNESCO) and the knowledge city (i.e. characterized by a knowledge-based economy as a primary point of reference and an engine for socioeconomic and technological dynamics), the objective of ROCK is to test new formulas of regeneration and new means of access to cultural goods. This includes promoting a new perception of collective property as common, shared heritage and thereby supporting social cohesion, testing solutions to attract residents, students, tourists, activities, events, and cultural operators, transforming them into an engine for the economic, social, cultural, and environmental quality of the city.
The ROCK project covers three years of activity and two years of monitoring.
Seven model cities — Lyon, Turin, Liverpool, Vilnius, Cluj, Athens, Eindhoven — with their different profiles, have offered a range of examples and solutions to be transferred to three cities for replication — Bologna, Lisbon, Skopje — thereby defining a specific agenda of regeneration in a process in which the key elements of the cultural heritage (buildings, monuments, open spaces, roads, cultural spaces) become the supporting column and also the motor to permanently regenerate specific areas. In this way, the goal is to create true collaborative protocols between model cities and replication cities to trigger the process of support, the transferability of activities, and dissemination of the results through the network of stakeholders in the project.
On the local level, a network of public and private representatives has already begun to collaborate to carry out the activities.
Under the ROCK project, the Fondazione per l'Innovazione Urbana has implemented U-Lab as the main action.
Timeline: 5 years, 3 of activities and 2 for monitoring
Economic resources: €10,000,000 – overall project; €2,000,000 – project for Bologna
Actions carried out in Bologna under the ROCK project have been described as case studies in two dossiers by Eurocities, a partner in the ROCK project.
Climathon 2018
On 25 and 26 October 2018, the Fondazione per l'innovazione Urbana, in collaboration with the City of Bologna, organized the third edition of Climathon in Bologna, the worldwide 24-hour marathon promoted annually by Climate-Kic to develop innovative proposals to combat the impacts of climate change in urban contexts.
The challenge posed in this edition — 24 participants, including developers, communications experts, geographers, students, and enthusiasts with various training — was to design the interactive section of a mobile app dedicated to air quality in Bologna, which had already been partially developed under the Laboratorio Aria.
AELCLIC project
The goal of the AELCLIC project (Adaptation of European Landscapes to Climate Change) is to define and test models to create networks of regional/local stakeholders with the social, financial, administrative, and technical capacity to co-define a plan to adapt the landscape to climate change.
This plan is intended to be an integrated, systemic solution (i.e. non-sectoral) and an informational document to support territorial and sector planning, as well as a reference for public or private initiatives in matters of adapting to and mitigating climate change. It includes policies, strategies, pilot actions, and regional/local initiatives aimed at promoting adaptation to climate change and is defined in a process based on the joint involvement of various local and regional interest holders.
AELCLIC has breathed life into different regional/local stakeholder networks, constituting a set of European pilot landscapes selected strategically in order to cover a range of climate, socioeconomic, cultural, and biogeographical strata in Europe, and to produce highly transferrable, scalable models.
On the local scale for the pilot landscape of Bologna, the project has entailed a diagnosis of the impacts of climate change on the local economy and the life, environment, cultural heritage, and well-being of inhabitants. The diagnosis is based on all interest holders identifying the impacts together, relying on existing studies and reports on the national and regional/local levels; and a co-defined document containing the issues and main content in a future plan for adaptation to climate change of the landscape of the area.
Project Leader: Juanjo Galan (Aalto University, Finland)
Coordinator for implementation in the pilot area of south-eastern Europe: University of Bologna
Additional partners in the pilot area of Bologna: City of Bologna, Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana.
European Urban Agenda
After signing the Pact of Amsterdam in June 2016, which instituted the Urban Agenda for the European Union and fixed the areas and timelines, 12 partnerships began for collaboration to address as many priorities.
The City of Bologna, together with the Polish Ministry for Economic Development, were chosen to coordinate the working group on sustainable land use and nature-based solutions.
One of the objectives of the partnership is to clarify and simplify the language with which the importance of nature-based solutions (NBS) is communicated. In fact, the use of a simple, correct language is fundamental since the concept of NBS is still not universally clear or applied uniformly in all countries, including the relationship with concepts such as ‘green infrastructure’, ‘ecosystem services’, and ‘green corridors’. This leads to the existence of a civil society that is little informed and has limited access and involvement in initiatives to apply NBS and the positive effects that may be obtained.
In addition, citizens might show a low level of appreciation and acceptance for measures that promote sustainable urban development (e.g. green spaces converted into wells to collect rainwater rather than car parks) since the benefits are not always explained or communicated properly.
This is why the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana, the University of Bologna, and the City of Bologna have come together to draft a glossary, a tool regarding NBS and their application in urban centres that is easy to use and understand.
The glossary is therefore aimed at:
- simplifying the language and providing recommendations to different stakeholders through the creation of a standardized vocabulary conforming to the one used in European projects focused on NBS, thereby providing institutions and citizens with a complete set of clear terms that are simple to use.
- facilitating joint work to create and standardize a vocabulary regarding NBS for use by the scientific and institutional communities, experts in communication, and experts in the sector.
The NBS glossary was created by the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana, the City of Bologna, and the University of Bologna with the support of the European Commission.
