The Transformative Power of Social Innovation for New Development Models

The aim of the paper is to reflect on the link between social innovation and urban development. Starting from the recognition of social innovations as collective energies and intelligences, increasingly shaping urban systems, the paper states that the growing dimension of these experiences indicates the emergence of a phenomenon that deserves to be investigated, in order to understand its innovation in organizational systems, design capabilities and growth ambitions. Building on the assumption that social innovation practices can become lever of transformation of the traditional city planning approaches and practices, the paper highlights the crucial role of intermediate place in fostering social innovation, replacing and integrating complex planning, triggering processes of mutual institutional learning, and challenging public authorities in rethinking their intervention in more adaptable forms. The paper seeks to investigate, through the analysis of intermediate places of innovation, how to promote the implementation of new urban models, which deepen the link between social practices and urban and territorial development. The aim is to explore the role of the specific intermediate places and their capacity to become nexus for innovation in urban policies, planning tools and the territory, through the analysis of two models of intermediate place, Urban Living Lab and Community HUBs, which are useful bridges, able to answer to the transition from social innovation to transformative innovation.