Urban Regeneration and Community Empowerment Through ICTs

This book deals with the issue of Digital Participatory Platforms (DPPs) for urban governance. It explains the role and potential that ICTs play in the decision-making processes of the Public Administration and citizens' participation. The book also illustrates the main technologies that encourage innovation and social inclusion, with particular focus on use of DPPs in urban regeneration programs and projects. It presents international best practices from local to European level and it describes the process of creation, development and testing of a DPP project with reference to the Italian case.

The book is divided into three parts:

• the first one gives a framework of neighborhood urban and civic engagement through ICTs, studying in depth the role of ICTs in support of Public Administration’s processes and citizens participation;
• the second part investigates the topic of Digital Participatory Platforms (DPPs) with the description of their potentialities, the presentation of some international best practices and a specific focus on the Italian context;
• the third part draws the conclusions of this path by asking which are the main challenges in the adoption of Digital Participatory Platforms, in order to increase citizen participation and collaboration via technology.

Francesca De Filippi: Architect and PhD, is Associate Professor in Architectural Technology, director of the Research Centre on Habitat in the Global South (CRD-PVS) and Coordinator of the Master’s Programme “Techs4change: Design for Social and Technological Innovation in Development” at Politecnico di Torino (Italy). 

Scientific interests are mainly addressed to appropriate technologies and their implementation at different scales (district/city, building, component/product). Among those, it is worth mentioning collaborative mapping, offline/online methods and ICT tools for social inclusion and community engagement in urban regeneration processes. These fields have been explored and experienced through international research and cooperation projects (i.e. Crowdmapping Mirafiori Sud, MiraMap, Erasmus + My Smart Quartier), teaching activity (i.e. the Master Programme “ICT for Development and Social Good” promoted by the University of Turin and Ong2.0), the participation to International Scientific Committees (i.e. Planet Smart City) and along with professional work. 

Grazia Giulia Cocina: Architect and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Architecture and Design of the Politecnico di Torino (Italy). Her research topics concern ICTs for civic engagement, tools for e-participation and Digital Participatory Platforms for the interaction between citizens and the Public Administration. She took part in the development of different projects for social inclusion and community participation at Italian and European level. After a period of collaboration at the Space Syntax Limited studio in London, she deepens topics related to the study of the configurational analysis of complex spaces, through the application of techniques for the study of spatial models and user flows. Her latest research focuses on the possibility of integrating the two tools (configurational and participatory) for a more complete spacereading.