WELCOME TO PLAYFUL PARADIGM NEWSLETTER!
“Playful Paradigm” is one of the 25 transfer networks funded by URBACT, the European Territorial Cooperation programme aiming to foster sustainable integrated urban development in cities across Europe.
“Playful Paradigm” aims to adapt and reuse the good practice of “games for promoting inclusion, health and sustainability” in other 7 European cities: Cork (IE), Esplugues de Llobregat (ES), Katowice (PL), Klaipeda (LT), Larissa (EL), Novigrad (HR) and Viana de Castelo (PT).
We will be glad to update you (approximately each three months) about our network work and about games topics.
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What is the Playful Paradigm?
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Among other national and international cities recognitions, Udine has been awarded the label of Good Practice city by URBACT in 2017 for the Playful Paradigm project. As a result, Udine has become the lead city of an URBACT network aimed at transferring such good practice to other cities across Europe. Games offer unique opportunities for engaging stakeholders in contemporary cities.
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The first Trasnational Meeting in Esplugues (Spain) – 5/6 March 2019
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The first Transnational Meeting had 3 different scopes:
- Deliver in the most straightforward and simple ways the information provided by URBACT Secretariat in Paris;
- Make Project Partners familiar with Transfer Plans to be finalised within March 2019;
- Bring in game sessions, between workshops, to understand the complex side of gaming used as well as mathematic/numerical or spatial educational wizards to stimulate complex reasoning and individual intelligence;
- Moreover, URBACT Local Group representatives of the Spanish partner of Esplugues had a direct experience of the workshops to and fresh hand info on the transnational Exchange & Learning activities.
- Finally, they presented their most relevant activities carried out at local levels endorsing the Playful Paradigm overall scope and philosophy (“on stage” session).
PARTICIPANTS
Each partner city was present with 1-2 officials and representatives from their local ULG.
Direct participation of the Mayor of Esplugues Mrs. Pilar Diaz and one of the Councilor Mrs. Monferrant confirmed URBACT methods backing political commitment can have great impact on the project’s implementation. The Mayor of Novigrad, Mr Anteo Milos, was also present all through the sessions.
MAIN TOPICS OF AGENDA
The meeting Agenda worked on project activities (Work Packages) while working groups were centered around Transfer Plan and Improvement Plan, ULG and local activity
Communication (Basecamp&Urbact Campus) and fresh game sessions from Udine’s Toylibrary made the meeting more enjoyable.
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The Playful Paradigm: cruising across complexity of URBACT Transfer Plans
– by URBACT expert Paola Amato
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Gaming and gamification are broader concepts that can help cities cope with demographic changes and the complexity behind an evolving society. This requires a shift in mentality and adoption of participative models where local communities are called to actively share and co produce solutions. But every context is different and much depends on the local governance and the role subsidiarity plays in each and every context. Based on that, URBACT new experimental Transfer Networks aim at increasing capacity of cities to adopt or rather adapt successful urban practice in order to shape their competitive profile and anticipate changes in society.
And this is what is the main aim of the Playful paradigm, Udine’s Good Practice (GP) and one of the 25 approved operations.The Playful Paradigm lies on a policy framework (umbrella) which combines different sector policies aiming in an integrated way towards achieving different goals: promoting social inclusion, healthy lifestyles and energy awareness, place-making and economic prosperity. It also demonstrates that when urban policies are clearly linked to EU/international/national/local protocols/ initiatives, they can contribute to build cities’ durable capacity towards greener behaviors and more social cohesion. It must be observed that most PP cities, and EU cities in general, do not have a direct legal competence in all policies emerging from the GP application/transfer and such difficulty can largely determine a sound/weak local governance as well as a strong/weak commitment of stakeholders (vertical/horizontal subsidiarity). So finding a local road map, getting inspired by the exchange and learning at transnational levels, have been the main scopes behind the URBACT Transfer Plans elaborated by each of the 7 EU partner cities of the Playful Paradigm in the project’s first three months on the base of URBACT guidance.
Based on a modular adaptation which represents a new set of interrelated activities that will feed the cities' final urban plan/programme at the end of the project, the Playful aims to make cities reflect on the best way to embed the new approach within the city’s individual capacity to shape future innovative policies.
So how can cities adopt more innovative and inclusive urban policies but rather what are the basic factors that can make transfer of a good practice successfully adopted by another city according to the URBACT guidance?
As the Playful Transfer journey demonstrated the answer is there is not one fits all path: on the other hand by means of the Transfer Plan, PP have been called to clearly identify and reflect on their own barrier, assets, resources, ambitions all elements that start, first and foremost, on the capacity of the city to co-produce solutions with their stakeholders. As adaptation also requires finding the right scale of implementation at local levels, the elaboration of the Transfer plan has been a very complex and demanding task as the Plan itself is and will be a "work in progress" that can change and be further improved all across the next 2 year duration of the URBACT network. Among the successful factors that have clearly emerged during elaboration, are:
— Setting of an open and inclusive process to identify relevant ULG and stakeholders;
— Setting of a detailed ULG agenda in order to have continuous feedback and support that in perspective will enhance the city’s reputation and reliance on the part of local communities;
— Identifying a clear methodology to incorporate finding at transnational to local level and vice versa;
— Individual city’s specific internal factors based among others on cooperation among different departments and cooperation with local politicians;
— Strong willingness and capacity to communicate outside the network.
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