REAGENTE. A label for social innovation.

Abstract

The paper presents Reagente, an initiative aimed to investigate the possibility of involving people in co-design processes to create a blueprint for a quality label. It is conceived as a system that recognizes values to bottom-up actions giving new meanings to vacant spaces. Reagente is a strategy to simplify policies, to embed reactivation in our cities and to enhance social innovation. Reagente aims to propose a tool conceived as a brand to test an inclusive and participatory process to define guidelines and labeling requirements for activists in order to communicate their actions and to spread shared values. The city is perceived as an experimental laboratory, where people cooperate to produce social, economic and environmental benefits taking care of urban voids. In this direction, the label certifies the initiatives of active citizens, regulates the activities carried out and becomes a tool risen from below rather than imposed from the top

Co-Creating for Locality and Sustainability: Design-Driven Community Regeneration Strategy in Shanghai’s Old Residential Context

“…On the other hand, design-centric collaboration is another sustainable engine and foundation of community regeneration. It amounts to co-creating values by engaging people as co-producers and embedding design experts as parts of a community to improve living quality [36]. Such collaboration enables multirole capacity and benefit-sharing, and facilitates complex solutions in state agencies and the market, voluntary, and community sectors [37].…”