Design is assuming a central role in management, both as a key competence to boost the process of product innovation (Verganti, 2003) and as main focus for co-creation processes that represent a crucial part of the management discourse (Brown, 2008). Furthermore, on the intersection between innovation and design, it is fundamental to define a clearer role for a competence that is now becoming more and more strategic, confirming the idea of Simon about “the design process as a means of approaching managerial problems” (Dunne, Martin, 2006, 512). The debate on the role of design in management is still open, because of existing tensions between designers and managers, and their respective models and frameworks. Moving on the fuzzy frontiers among these different perspectives, this paper is aimed at discussing the role of design as a driver of change management in urban spaces, to promote co-design processes for a new city model. The world of consultancy already developed a number of “design thinking” (Brown, 2009) tools, used to introduce a substantial facelift in the process of innovation management, often supporting the launch of new ideas in terms of products and entrepreneurial processes and offering unforeseen perspectives to the field of interdisciplinary projects. Here, we aim at using these tools and applying them to the city of Venice, engaging with local stakeholders and residents to identify potential solutions to the urban challenges that the city is facing, including those generated by the pandemic emergency of COVID-19. Venice landscape is as much a product of its economic activities, past and present, as of its physical environment. In particular, tourism is the main source of income for the city, to the point that many commentators talk about the “touristic monoculture” of the city and point to the problems inherent in such a dominance, namely the de-population of it and its unsustainability from a social and environmental point of view. The recent Covid-19 pandemic was an eye-opener, apparently, or just a pause in a process that will continue to grow unchanged as soon as international mobility will be restored. Prior to lockdowns, 2019 was equally tough for the city: in November 2019, Venice was hit by the worst flooding after 1966, the so-called “Aquagranda” or “Huge water”. It caused more than 1 billion € of damage and, unfortunately, some deaths (FT 2020) COVID-19 forced to close Italian borders. Flooded by huge hordes of tourists, Venice became a sort of ghost town overnight, populated by its few residents (about 50,000 people, less than a third of what it was in the 1950s). Twenty million tourists per year disappeared: the grossly underestimated income the city previously gained from these flows equaled 3 billion euros per year. The paper aims at exploring the themes of urban reframing and revitalization by delving into the peculiarities of the city and investigating the role of higher education institutions, as actors engaged in the transformation of the social fabric they are part of, as triggers and actors of change (Svensson et al., 2012). Venice, in fact, is home to three universities as well as a number of post-secondary education institutions. Students, as well as professionals working within or with these institutions, represent a multifarious set of interests: they are partly living in Venice –albeit on a temporary basis– or commuting. The interests in a redefinition of the city from an eminently tourism-dominated environment to a more heterogeneous and complex one, are paramount in their expectations and in their ambitions. Finally, the recent shift towards “entrepreneurial” universities (Audretsch, Belitsky, 2021; Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth 2019) and engaged scholarship contributed to the creation and growth of novel approaches to research and training in these institutions. Based on the experience developed within a European project aimed at revitalizing and rethinking cities, the paper explores the potential of HEI in transforming cities, the hurdles and critical factors that might inhibit their contribution, the strategies, methods and processes that can facilitate HEIs’ engagement with processes of social and economic transformations on a urban scale. Background: historic recurrences and reimagining cities as a response to Covid-19 Venice already experienced plagues during its history. In the 15th century, an epidemic left a severe. impact on it by reducing the population by two-thirds. The Lazzaretto Vecchio was indeed founded in 1423 and represented the first quarantine station of the world. It still exists today, as a symbol to remind Venetians about those hard times and how they could get back on their feet, and reinvent the city. Venice went through a similar project of redesign one more time in 1797, when the Republic of Venice was conquered by Napoleon and the city’s population immediately dropped from 170,000 to 96,000 people, with diplomats and merchants moving away. The question now may be if the current pandemic could be considered as a new opportunity for Venice to reinvent itself once again, and identify a new model for sustainable tourism for the Queen of Sees, that allows a balance between residents and the presence of tourists. Before COVID-19, as mentioned by the New York Times, hotels in and around Venice used to be overcrowded with tourists. Approximately 10.2 million mostly international guests a year used to stay in the city’s accommodation structures, according to Italy’s bureau of statistics. This number does not take under consideration day-trippers coming from cruise ships, or by train and bus tours. The mass tourism of recent decades is a result of the globalization phenomenon, the launch of home-sharing platforms, and the presence of cheap airfares. Ryanair, easyJet and other low-cost carriers fly into the Marco Polo airport, bringing many travelers to Venice at a low-cost fare. Cruise ships used to bring in 1.6 million visitors per year. Eventually, the growth of emerging economies, especially Asian economies, allowed many new tourists to join the crowds traveling from Europe and North America. During the past few years, tourism has changed the soul of the lagoon, putting the natural ecosystem at risk because of pollution and salt marshes erosion. Grocery stores turned into souvenir shops because they were not able to sustain themselves financially any longer, with the few residents still in town; and services to locals started to get more and more scarce. As an example, there is only one ferry per hour that connects the main island of Venice with the smaller islands of the lagoon. Not to mention the rising housing costs, which is another reason that contributed to pushing residents out. Prior to the pandemic, short stays used to be the rule in the city. Venice used to have Italy’s highest Airbnb-to-population ratio, indeed, with more than 8,000 apartments listed on the temporary rentals platform. In terms of policies that might support the city government in coping with its urban challenges, we can mention that before COVID-19, the Municipality had plans to add an entrance fee to manage tourist flows and somehow control them. These plans have now been moved to 2022. By now, the City Hall is collecting data and observations to manage overtourism. In September 2020, the city has indeed decided to launch a control room operation. In order to analyze where, when, and how people are moving around Venice. This way the city aims to interpret data to create a sustainable smart tourism plan, to ideally develop a balance between the life of locals and the presence of tourist flows. Collaborating to face urban challenges In Venice, the pandemic emergency could have been a time for residents and local leaders to rethink their city to “develop an economy that doesn’t revolve entirely around tourism, one that would draw international investors, expand the footprint of the city’s two universities, and turn its empty buildings into environmental research facilities.” (Momigliano, 2020), However, in late 2021, it looks like tourism is regaining its presence within the city and no lessons have been learned during the pandemic and lockdown months. This of course has an impact on the 50,000 residents who live in the historic city and on the lagoon ecosystem that is part of Venice and its identity. This paper aims to assess the current situation in the city and describe a new approach, based on Design Thinking, that Ca’ Foscari University is developing to try and develop new ideas for a more sustainable Venice, where the financial, social and environmental aspects can be considered together within the urban ecosystem, all intertwined. In the light of the Triple Helix model and its extensions () we point out the hybrid role of universities that can act as brokers to facilitate processes and policy implementation, beyond studying the context and the challenges, As part of a project labelled Urban GoodCamp, an Erasmus+ Project that aims to empower Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their urban stakeholders to tackle pressing urban challenges, Ca’ Foscari is currently already actively working to identify what impact COVID19 has left on Venice and what new challenges may have arisen. By applying the Design Thinking methodology, we aim to create and actively engage with urban communities of practice, to then develop, and implement multidisciplinary learning interventions for university students, young researchers and lifelong learners to ideate real- life solutions to the most pressing urban challenges that Venice faces. Following the three steps Design Thinking process (Brown, 2008) created by the Palo Alto based company IDEO, Inspiration/Ideation/ Prototyping, and recent literature on participatory urban rethinking projects based on the approach’s main tenets (Medeiros, 2021), Ca’ Foscari University is now engaging with different stakeholders, from university professors to public administration officers, from students to local entrepreneurs, from tourism experts to local museum managers, to the millions of non-profit organizations present in the city, to assess the current scenario through different perspectives and identify the most urgent pain points about living and staying in Venice, and want then to develop co-design approaches to reinvent a more sustainable Venice. In details, the stages of the project are: i. Inspiration, where the team has reviewed and analyzed urban challenges in the local ecosystem, by observing the city and the people living and transiting within Venice, developing a thorough desk research surfing through the literature available on the topic, interviewing experts, and building case studies on different local learning models that could make a pragmatic impact on the urban challenges that the city is facing. Over-tourism has been confirmed to be a very urgent challenge, linked to depopulation and environmental issues on the lagoon ecosystem. In addition to that, we are currently working with two different courses within Ca’ Foscari University (Communication and Digital Marketing with 80 students, Design and Innovation Management with 60 students) through interviews and surveys. The goal of the activities with the students is also to develop workshops and involve them, through specific project works and assignments, during the ideation and prototyping phases. Through their eyes and minds, there is the chance to identify potential new approaches on how to pragmatically support the redesign process of the city. We will also then involve the Department of Natural Studies, in early 2022, to do the same. We will soon then create workshops with local stakeholders to have them discuss the different challenges they consider important for the city, and co-define a way to prioritize and validate them. As a result the university can also provide students with a different learning experience and test how to innovate teaching format integrating the different university missions. ii. Ideation: The goal is to develop Bootcamp workshops, innovation tours, mentorship methodologies, to brainstorm possible solutions based on the findings gathered during the Inspiration phase, and identify those that we could then prototype, in order to pragmatically design a more sustainable Venice. iii. Prototyping, testing and validation: During this part of the project, we will develop local bootcamps and mini boutique workshops to test possible solutions and identify which aspects work and which needs to be rethought. This phase will be fundamental to ideally present the solutions to the local public administration and discuss with them possible implementation in their urban plan for the next few years. We think that success in urban development can only be achieved through an integrated approach, where strong partnerships between local citizens, civil society, industry and various levels of governance are deemed necessary. In order to accomplish this, the role of Higher Education Institutions is crucial. They are anchor organizations that can lead transformational change in their urban environments. The paper aims also at providing an insight into the lessons learned through the Urban Good Camp Project, as well as a summary of the participants’ opinions, giving also a strong voice to students, and the collaborative and creative attitude that the design thinking methodology has the potential to inject. Also, we will explore if and how, through the Urban GoodCamp project, Ca’ Foscari University can reach an even stronger role in tackling pressing urban challenges in Venice, by creating and actively engaging urban communities, developing and implementing multidisciplinary learning interventions for university students, young researchers and life-long learners to design real-life solutions that can be implemented to make Venice a more sustainable urban ecosystem.
“Redefining and reframing a city: co-designing a new city model in Venice”
Cinzia Colapinto;Vladi Finotto;Daniela Pavan;Fabio Pranovi
2022-01-01
Abstract
Design is assuming a central role in management, both as a key competence to boost the process of product innovation (Verganti, 2003) and as main focus for co-creation processes that represent a crucial part of the management discourse (Brown, 2008). Furthermore, on the intersection between innovation and design, it is fundamental to define a clearer role for a competence that is now becoming more and more strategic, confirming the idea of Simon about “the design process as a means of approaching managerial problems” (Dunne, Martin, 2006, 512). The debate on the role of design in management is still open, because of existing tensions between designers and managers, and their respective models and frameworks. Moving on the fuzzy frontiers among these different perspectives, this paper is aimed at discussing the role of design as a driver of change management in urban spaces, to promote co-design processes for a new city model. The world of consultancy already developed a number of “design thinking” (Brown, 2009) tools, used to introduce a substantial facelift in the process of innovation management, often supporting the launch of new ideas in terms of products and entrepreneurial processes and offering unforeseen perspectives to the field of interdisciplinary projects. Here, we aim at using these tools and applying them to the city of Venice, engaging with local stakeholders and residents to identify potential solutions to the urban challenges that the city is facing, including those generated by the pandemic emergency of COVID-19. Venice landscape is as much a product of its economic activities, past and present, as of its physical environment. In particular, tourism is the main source of income for the city, to the point that many commentators talk about the “touristic monoculture” of the city and point to the problems inherent in such a dominance, namely the de-population of it and its unsustainability from a social and environmental point of view. The recent Covid-19 pandemic was an eye-opener, apparently, or just a pause in a process that will continue to grow unchanged as soon as international mobility will be restored. Prior to lockdowns, 2019 was equally tough for the city: in November 2019, Venice was hit by the worst flooding after 1966, the so-called “Aquagranda” or “Huge water”. It caused more than 1 billion € of damage and, unfortunately, some deaths (FT 2020) COVID-19 forced to close Italian borders. Flooded by huge hordes of tourists, Venice became a sort of ghost town overnight, populated by its few residents (about 50,000 people, less than a third of what it was in the 1950s). Twenty million tourists per year disappeared: the grossly underestimated income the city previously gained from these flows equaled 3 billion euros per year. The paper aims at exploring the themes of urban reframing and revitalization by delving into the peculiarities of the city and investigating the role of higher education institutions, as actors engaged in the transformation of the social fabric they are part of, as triggers and actors of change (Svensson et al., 2012). Venice, in fact, is home to three universities as well as a number of post-secondary education institutions. Students, as well as professionals working within or with these institutions, represent a multifarious set of interests: they are partly living in Venice –albeit on a temporary basis– or commuting. The interests in a redefinition of the city from an eminently tourism-dominated environment to a more heterogeneous and complex one, are paramount in their expectations and in their ambitions. Finally, the recent shift towards “entrepreneurial” universities (Audretsch, Belitsky, 2021; Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth 2019) and engaged scholarship contributed to the creation and growth of novel approaches to research and training in these institutions. Based on the experience developed within a European project aimed at revitalizing and rethinking cities, the paper explores the potential of HEI in transforming cities, the hurdles and critical factors that might inhibit their contribution, the strategies, methods and processes that can facilitate HEIs’ engagement with processes of social and economic transformations on a urban scale. Background: historic recurrences and reimagining cities as a response to Covid-19 Venice already experienced plagues during its history. In the 15th century, an epidemic left a severe. impact on it by reducing the population by two-thirds. The Lazzaretto Vecchio was indeed founded in 1423 and represented the first quarantine station of the world. It still exists today, as a symbol to remind Venetians about those hard times and how they could get back on their feet, and reinvent the city. Venice went through a similar project of redesign one more time in 1797, when the Republic of Venice was conquered by Napoleon and the city’s population immediately dropped from 170,000 to 96,000 people, with diplomats and merchants moving away. The question now may be if the current pandemic could be considered as a new opportunity for Venice to reinvent itself once again, and identify a new model for sustainable tourism for the Queen of Sees, that allows a balance between residents and the presence of tourists. Before COVID-19, as mentioned by the New York Times, hotels in and around Venice used to be overcrowded with tourists. Approximately 10.2 million mostly international guests a year used to stay in the city’s accommodation structures, according to Italy’s bureau of statistics. This number does not take under consideration day-trippers coming from cruise ships, or by train and bus tours. The mass tourism of recent decades is a result of the globalization phenomenon, the launch of home-sharing platforms, and the presence of cheap airfares. Ryanair, easyJet and other low-cost carriers fly into the Marco Polo airport, bringing many travelers to Venice at a low-cost fare. Cruise ships used to bring in 1.6 million visitors per year. Eventually, the growth of emerging economies, especially Asian economies, allowed many new tourists to join the crowds traveling from Europe and North America. During the past few years, tourism has changed the soul of the lagoon, putting the natural ecosystem at risk because of pollution and salt marshes erosion. Grocery stores turned into souvenir shops because they were not able to sustain themselves financially any longer, with the few residents still in town; and services to locals started to get more and more scarce. As an example, there is only one ferry per hour that connects the main island of Venice with the smaller islands of the lagoon. Not to mention the rising housing costs, which is another reason that contributed to pushing residents out. Prior to the pandemic, short stays used to be the rule in the city. Venice used to have Italy’s highest Airbnb-to-population ratio, indeed, with more than 8,000 apartments listed on the temporary rentals platform. In terms of policies that might support the city government in coping with its urban challenges, we can mention that before COVID-19, the Municipality had plans to add an entrance fee to manage tourist flows and somehow control them. These plans have now been moved to 2022. By now, the City Hall is collecting data and observations to manage overtourism. In September 2020, the city has indeed decided to launch a control room operation. In order to analyze where, when, and how people are moving around Venice. This way the city aims to interpret data to create a sustainable smart tourism plan, to ideally develop a balance between the life of locals and the presence of tourist flows. Collaborating to face urban challenges In Venice, the pandemic emergency could have been a time for residents and local leaders to rethink their city to “develop an economy that doesn’t revolve entirely around tourism, one that would draw international investors, expand the footprint of the city’s two universities, and turn its empty buildings into environmental research facilities.” (Momigliano, 2020), However, in late 2021, it looks like tourism is regaining its presence within the city and no lessons have been learned during the pandemic and lockdown months. This of course has an impact on the 50,000 residents who live in the historic city and on the lagoon ecosystem that is part of Venice and its identity. This paper aims to assess the current situation in the city and describe a new approach, based on Design Thinking, that Ca’ Foscari University is developing to try and develop new ideas for a more sustainable Venice, where the financial, social and environmental aspects can be considered together within the urban ecosystem, all intertwined. In the light of the Triple Helix model and its extensions () we point out the hybrid role of universities that can act as brokers to facilitate processes and policy implementation, beyond studying the context and the challenges, As part of a project labelled Urban GoodCamp, an Erasmus+ Project that aims to empower Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their urban stakeholders to tackle pressing urban challenges, Ca’ Foscari is currently already actively working to identify what impact COVID19 has left on Venice and what new challenges may have arisen. By applying the Design Thinking methodology, we aim to create and actively engage with urban communities of practice, to then develop, and implement multidisciplinary learning interventions for university students, young researchers and lifelong learners to ideate real- life solutions to the most pressing urban challenges that Venice faces. Following the three steps Design Thinking process (Brown, 2008) created by the Palo Alto based company IDEO, Inspiration/Ideation/ Prototyping, and recent literature on participatory urban rethinking projects based on the approach’s main tenets (Medeiros, 2021), Ca’ Foscari University is now engaging with different stakeholders, from university professors to public administration officers, from students to local entrepreneurs, from tourism experts to local museum managers, to the millions of non-profit organizations present in the city, to assess the current scenario through different perspectives and identify the most urgent pain points about living and staying in Venice, and want then to develop co-design approaches to reinvent a more sustainable Venice. In details, the stages of the project are: i. Inspiration, where the team has reviewed and analyzed urban challenges in the local ecosystem, by observing the city and the people living and transiting within Venice, developing a thorough desk research surfing through the literature available on the topic, interviewing experts, and building case studies on different local learning models that could make a pragmatic impact on the urban challenges that the city is facing. Over-tourism has been confirmed to be a very urgent challenge, linked to depopulation and environmental issues on the lagoon ecosystem. In addition to that, we are currently working with two different courses within Ca’ Foscari University (Communication and Digital Marketing with 80 students, Design and Innovation Management with 60 students) through interviews and surveys. The goal of the activities with the students is also to develop workshops and involve them, through specific project works and assignments, during the ideation and prototyping phases. Through their eyes and minds, there is the chance to identify potential new approaches on how to pragmatically support the redesign process of the city. We will also then involve the Department of Natural Studies, in early 2022, to do the same. We will soon then create workshops with local stakeholders to have them discuss the different challenges they consider important for the city, and co-define a way to prioritize and validate them. As a result the university can also provide students with a different learning experience and test how to innovate teaching format integrating the different university missions. ii. Ideation: The goal is to develop Bootcamp workshops, innovation tours, mentorship methodologies, to brainstorm possible solutions based on the findings gathered during the Inspiration phase, and identify those that we could then prototype, in order to pragmatically design a more sustainable Venice. iii. Prototyping, testing and validation: During this part of the project, we will develop local bootcamps and mini boutique workshops to test possible solutions and identify which aspects work and which needs to be rethought. This phase will be fundamental to ideally present the solutions to the local public administration and discuss with them possible implementation in their urban plan for the next few years. We think that success in urban development can only be achieved through an integrated approach, where strong partnerships between local citizens, civil society, industry and various levels of governance are deemed necessary. In order to accomplish this, the role of Higher Education Institutions is crucial. They are anchor organizations that can lead transformational change in their urban environments. The paper aims also at providing an insight into the lessons learned through the Urban Good Camp Project, as well as a summary of the participants’ opinions, giving also a strong voice to students, and the collaborative and creative attitude that the design thinking methodology has the potential to inject. Also, we will explore if and how, through the Urban GoodCamp project, Ca’ Foscari University can reach an even stronger role in tackling pressing urban challenges in Venice, by creating and actively engaging urban communities, developing and implementing multidisciplinary learning interventions for university students, young researchers and life-long learners to design real-life solutions that can be implemented to make Venice a more sustainable urban ecosystem.
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