Beyond the local. The innovation effects of citizen supralocal networks and organizations in citizen-initiated urban transformations

Citizen initiatives in our cities are developing innovative answers to local public needs, through direct actions such as urban transformation processes.

Urban scholars have interpreted these processes and innovations as locally-determined phenomena, disregarding the increasing participation of citizen initiatives in networks and organizations at national, european and global level.

The aim of SUPRALOCAL is to investigate whether and how supralocal networks and organizations of citizen initiatives share, institute and innovate knowledge and resources for urban action, influencing the generation of innovative urban transformation processes by local citizen initiatives.

Combining two inquiry methods - ethnography and cooperative action-research - the research explores the local effects of three supralocal networks and organizations on two cases of citizen-initiated urban transformations in Italy and Germany, focusing on their long-term development and their short-term adaptation to the COVID-19 crisis.

Relevance of SUPRALOCAL: i) to enrich the debate on citizen-initiated urban transformations and innovations with a supralocal analytical perspective, beyond localistic interpretations ii) to scale up the innovative impacts of supralocal networks and organizations, informing leaders of networks, policy makers and citizens.

SUPRALOCAL objectives: i) to understand whether and how these supralocal networks and organizations influence the generation of innovative answers to problematic situations in urban transformation processes developed by local citizen initiatives ii) to describe how supralocal networks and organizations share, institute, and innovate repertoires of knowledges and resources for urban action ii) to further explore the effects of direct citizen action in the publicization of problems iii) to develop a strong interdisciplinary and independent research profile in urban planning and policy, focused on citizen initiatives, supralocal dynamics and innovations