Current activities at the Foundation come together under the project ‘Mapping the Present’, a research and documentation centre regarding changes in the contemporary world which favours the use of cartography and multimedia technologies.

This project began in 2006 and forms part of the Cartographic Office in the Department of History, Culture, and Civilization at the University of Bologna in collaboration with newspapers, journals, publishing houses, research centres, and other foundations. At the same time, it provides innovative training activities through the organization of laboratories and educational courses.

In this respect, the Foundation aims to develop two main project threads. The first is Data-Lab, whose purpose is to document urban changes through visual representation that can select and synthesize the growing flow of data and information available following the digital revolution. This project focuses on the production of digital, interactive informative maps in the form of archives and digital atlases and the synthetic processing of big and open data (urban atlas).

The second entails training and applied research activities that the Foundation, always in close collaboration with the University of Bologna, offers in relation to the challenges of the continuous transformation that the city is faced with. The focus is the use of digital tools and data and their visualization, also through innovation labs capable of developing and collecting proposals for new ideas and products.

Published: 11 June 2018

The Foundation promotes Civic Imagination, that is, a means of listening, collaboration, participation, and co-production related to projects and policies in the city, its neighbourhoods, and the entire metropolitan area. The specific focus is the care and regeneration of urban common goods.

Occasionally relying on methods and tools combined according to the objectives, places, and contexts addressed, our multi-professional team in the Office of Civic Imagination works as a research and development group to connect the resources, choices, and projects of the Administration with the needs, potential, and capacities of citizens and the community. With the strategies identified by the Urban Innovation Plan, the goal is to imagine new solutions so that city government is increasingly the fruit of exercising shared responsibility in caring for spaces and places, in the sustainable use and equal enhancement of local resources.

To this end, our task at the Foundation is to facilitate the activation and design of participatory processes and manage its monitoring. To perform these activities, the Foundation organizes campaigns, initiatives, and events regarding the territory in close collaboration with associates, neighbourhoods, and other public and private institutions. We also promote co-design and innovation laboratories, involving and enhancing the different skills characteristic of the territory of Bologna to develop and collect proposals for new ideas and solutions. Laboratory activities are organized both for places undergoing transformation (for example, the use of buildings and participatory budgeting) and for issues of community interest (for example, mobility, air quality, management of public spaces, etc.).

Our perspective aims to be increasingly oriented not only at mutual listening and collaboration, but also at establishing true ways for the Administration and citizens to co-produce decisions regarding public policies.

Published: 11 June 2018

Urban Center aims to promote culture and the dissemination of urban issues on the community level, as well as in Italy and abroad.

Access to knowledge is the unavoidable premise of any participatory process. This therefore includes the ‘historical’ function of telling the city about the city and, in particular, current urban transformations and those planned for the near future.

The goal of Urban Center is to situate Bologna at the centre of narration made accessible in its forms and content through constant work to ‘translate’ technical language into a language and visualization that can be understood by everyone. The goal is to bring together data and information, thereby stimulating reflections, public debate, and proposals for the city’s future.

This objective is also combined with the way in which the spaces managed by the Foundation — which constitute our offices — are used. They are designed to house various activities intended to involve different participants interested in the material and immaterial changes in the city, also enabling the Foundation to become a recognized place for information and communication about these topics.

The Foundation has organized and hosts a permanent exhibition in its spaces (currently being prepared) to present the major current and future projects to regenerate the city and urban policies tied to the environment and mobility, territorial promotion and urban enhancement, and the digital city. The Foundation’s spaces are also used to organize and host many temporary exhibitions, laboratories, workshops, seminars, and conferences, whether organized by the Foundation or other subjects.

Published: 11 June 2018

The Foundation is involved in the development and the implementation of european and international project. These are the projects realized during the last years:

2020 » Just transformation Emilia-Romagna 2020 for Europe’s Heavy Industrial and Coal Regions
funding: Deep Demonstration Climate-KIC
The project was coordinated by ART-ER. The goal was to develop a package of innovative initiatives with which to facilitate the conversion of Emilia Romagna in a region with low CO2 emissions and good air quality through the involvement of all public/ private stakeholders..

2019 » European Urban Agenda
The Foundation for Urban Innovation, the University of Bologna and the Municipality of Bologna have compiled a glossary focusing on “Nature-Based Solutions” that is easy to consult and understand, in order to simplify the language and provide institutions, scientific community, experts and citizens a comprehensive set of clear and easy-to-use terms.

2019 » AELCLIC
funding: Pathfinder Climate-KIC
The project aimed to define and test models for the creation of networks of regional/local stakeholders with the social, financial, administrative and technical capabilities to co-define a “Landscape Adaptation Plan for climate change”. The project has guaranteed the Bologna pilot landscape a diagnosis of the impacts of climate change on the local economy and on the life, environment, cultural heritage and well-being of the inhabitants.

2018 » Climathon
funding: Climate-KIC
In 2018, the third edition of “Climathon” in Bologna was organized to develop innovative proposals to help combat the impacts of climate change in urban contexts. As part of the challenge proposed to the participants of this edition, the group presented the project "App Air" with the aim of encouraging and monitoring good practices that can help reduce air pollution in the province of Bologna.

2017-2020 » ROCK - Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural heritage in creative and Knowledge cities
funding: Horizon2020 - Climate - Greening the Economy in risposta alla call Cultural Heritage as a driver for sustainable growth
The project aims to regenerate, through new environmental, social, economic and sustainable processes, the university area around Via Zamboni, demonstrating how the historic centres of European cities can be considered extraordinary living laboratories where to experiment new models of urban regeneration guided by cultural heritage and where to activate innovative and unconventional financing mechanisms in a circular economy approach.

2017 » Climathon 
funding: Climate-KIC
Urban Center Bologna organised in October 2017 the Bologna edition of “Climathon”, with the aim of bringing together experts in different sectors to develop innovative proposals that help combat the impacts of climate change in urban contexts. Participants were asked to develop innovative product and service ideas for the development of green and blue networks in the urban area of Bologna.

2017 » EUCANET - Europe for Citizens
funding: Europe for Citizen
The main objective of the project, funded under the “Europe for Citizens” programme, was to promote greater civic involvement in urban debate and decision-making, and to strengthen links between public authorities, civil society, local institutions, social and economic actors

2017 » PhD Summer School “Urban Transition: Reshaping Urban District”
funding: Climate-KIC
The main objective of the project, funded under the “Europe for Citizens” programme, was to promote greater civic involvement in urban debate and decision-making, and to strengthen links between public authorities, civil society, local institutions, social and economic actors.

2016 » Climathon
funding: Climate-KIC
Urban Center Bologna organised the Bologna edition of “Climathon”, the world’s largest climate marathon held simultaneously in the world’s major cities. The initiative, promoted annually worldwide by “Climate-Kic”, aims to bring together experts in different fields for 24 hours to develop innovative proposals that help combat the impacts of climate change in urban contexts.

2016 » Phd Summer School "Urban Metabolism and Water Management"
funding: Climate-KIC
The second phase of the “PhD Summer School” of Climate-KIC 2016 "Urban Metabolism and Water System Management" took place in Bologna, where twenty students from ten different countries worked on the theme of the edition "Smart solutions for the Urban Metropole"with the task of dealing in a sustainable and innovative way with urban metabolism and water management, starting from concrete cases like Via Zamboni in the historic centre of Bologna. The ambitious challenge was to rethink urban metabolism to improve the quality of life and create a 'Sustainable Cultural Campus' based on the principles of the circular economy.

2015 » One Tonne Society
funding: Pathfinder Climate-KIC
The project, inspired by the One Tonne Life project, aimed to study and develop a business model aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of a voluntary group of private citizens in three European cities (Uppsala, Berlin, Bologna). In Bologna, the funding concerned the phase of investigation on the concrete possibilities that the project had positive feedback among the citizens.

2015 » Phd Summer School "Design for Adaptation. Resilient Urban Communities"
funding: Climate-KIC
The two-week intensive programme focused on climate change adaptation and the impacts that cities will increasingly face. Taking its cue from the city of Bologna, with its particular environmental, climatic and structural characteristics, and analysing the projects implemented by the city to counteract the effects of climate change on the spot, Students were asked to design innovative solutions through a "learning by experience" approach.

2015 » Transition Cities: "La sostenibilità è il nostro centro"
funding: Pathfinder Climate-KIC
The project aimed to transform the area of the former ghetto of Bologna into a district with high energy efficiency through the involvement of retailers in energy saving and sustainability activities.

2015 » Bologna Carbon Market (BoCaM)
funding: Pathfinder Climate-Kic
Within a European “Climate-KIC” call, the project has ensured that reliable carbon credits linked to projects that can be verified over time were offered to private buyers operating in the same geographical area, in order to increase the environmental sustainability of all actors in society. It has therefore been possible to test the creation of a real market in which public administrations can "create" the carbon credits generated by their projects and policies, certified by a third party and which private companies can purchase to neutralise CO2 emissions.

2013 » Bologna Local Urban Environment Adaptation Plan (BlueAp)
funding: Life+
The objective of the project was to develop and define a “Local Climate Change Adaptation Plan” for the city of Bologna. Urban Center Bologna has carried out a work of support to the communication of the partners, to the organisation of the final conference, to the translation and to the elaboration of the tests for the final Leyman.

2012-2016 » Holistic Energy-efficient Retrofitting of residential Buildings (Herb)
funding: Settimo Programma Quadro (7FP)
The project aimed to develop and test new and innovative energy efficiency technologies, and solutions to redevelop existing buildings. These solutions will be installed and monitored, from the point of view of the result, in different typical residential buildings, in different European countries. At Urban Center Bologna was held the final conference of the project, organised in collaboration with the Order of Engineers of Bologna

Published: 08 June 2018

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