Italy
Virginio Merola
392,027 (2019)
Engage residents and other stakeholders
Simplify administrative procedures for firms and residents
Improve service delivery
Dedicated funding
Focus on measurement
Human resource support
Culture of innovation in city
Support from outside city administration
Leadership from Mayor
In Bologna, the Civic Imagination Office serves as an urban policy innovation lab to research, communicate, and co-design urban transformations. The Office helps oversee six District Labs—hubs of collaboration and innovation where city officials and residents work together to tackle challenges facing Bologna. These Labs not only accompany citizens’ project proposals (called collaboration pacts), but also facilitate the participatory budgeting process in Bologna. These efforts have led to a significant increase in citizen engagement: resulting in more than 480 collaboration pacts being implemented, and more than 14,000 people voted in the first year of participatory budgeting.
Along with 50% of cities surveyed, Bologna has an explicit innovation strategy. Similar to more than half of cities surveyed, Bologna approaches innovation capacity both from a holistic/macro level, as well as in specific policy areas.
See more examples of District Labs (citizen engagement) and INCREDIBOL! program (urban regeneration)
The Deputy Mayor, in charge of Civic Imagination, is responsible for innovation. The work of his office is supported by the Urban Innovation Foundation, through the Civic Imagination Office, the Digital Agenda Department and the Culture and City Promotion Department.
Taking risks or testing new ideas
Data-driven analytics/public data management
Engaging residents in new ways
Developing new solutions based on digital technologies
Organizational change within the municipality
Human-centered design
Rethinking your city’s approach to financing partnerships
Like 81% of cities surveyed, Bologna has dedicated funding to support innovation capacity.
*"Training staff and building capacity" is not an option in the 2018 survey, while "Launching or sustaining a project" is not an option in the 2020 survey.
Bologna has developed partnerships to promote innovation capacity with other public agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and city residents/resident associations.
To improve data use, the city has also developed data partnerships with the University of Bologna and the City of Barcelona with the aim of establishing their Data Office.