
Ready to go! This is the first European meeting in the presence of the Eureka – European Urban Regenerator Knowledge Alliance project after months of online work. Actually, it is the first working trip to Europe since the lockdown, if we don’t count the meeting just before the summer in Venice between the Italian partners to facilitate a focus group of experts on urban regeneration and social innovation.
We are in Bilbao, hosted by the University of Deusto and Espacio Open. The agenda is dense. We are passing the baton to a new package of activities that will start from the results of the research we have just finished. We want to investigate more and more the figure of the urban innovator, understand its nuances and declinations in relation to the context in which it operates, the skills it must have to work, the job offer to develop training courses adherent to the reality that surrounds us.
There are still many open questions, starting with the definition of the professional profile. Urban innovator? Urban regenerator? Territorial regenerator? Placemaker? Urban manager?
Each of the clusters involved – Italy, Spain, Romania, the Netherlands and Sweden – points in a different direction, due to their different histories.
The starting point is the four master’s degrees of the universities involved, which are related to the theme of urban regeneration, one of which is the U-rise master’s degree from the lead partner IUAV in Venice.
We will discuss the latest facilitation techniques in order to be able to design the modules, once returned, together with representatives of businesses, the third sector, PAs and the academic world. And then we will explore the city and its “regenerated” places to understand the dynamics of social innovation and consolidate that group spirit through the most informal moments of the day.
The research with European best practices on urban regeneration and innovation will be available soon.