The Spaces of Social Services as Social Infrastructure: Insights From a Policy-Innovation Project in Milan

Abstract

The spatial organisation of social services has long been residual for both urban planning and social welfare policies in Italian cities. This often results in randomly chosen locations and poor design arrangements, which ignore the role that space might play in fostering social life and inclusion. The scarce relevance given to the topic both in research and implementation is connected to the historical evolution of social services in the country and the scant resources devoted to their provision. Basing itself on the debate on welfare spaces and social infrastructures and drawing on a collaborative-research experience within an experimental policy-innovation project developed in Milan, this article tackles the role of space in social services provision following three directions. Firstly, it analyses how, at the urban level, welfare innovations and the interplay between urban planning and welfare policies might contribute to reshaping the traditional physical structures of social services and their map to favour more inclusive patterns of access to local welfare. Secondly, it investigates the role of social services as social infrastructures in increasing accessibility, reducing stigmatisation, and interpreting in a more inclusive way the complex public-private partnerships that allow welfare implementation nowadays. Finally, it discusses how, in the face of contemporary trends in the activation of welfare spaces, traditional urban planning tools are challenged in monitoring their increasingly dynamic distribution in the city. This highlights the need to develop innovative urban planning strategies and tools to effectively support decision-making and design.

Spaces of subsidiarity: A comparative inquiry into the social agenda of Cohesion Policy

“…They find that the benefits expected of the quasi-market were never fully realised because sub-regional governments continued operating in the system under better conditions than those experienced by private providers. Similarly, following a pioneering project for spatial social services in Milan, Bricocoli et al (2022) Following Kazepov's seminal contribution as well as the empirical studies reviewed in the previous paragraph, we maintain that subsidiarisation should be theorised as a twofold process, one that unfolds vertically across territorial levels and another that unfolds horizontally across sectoral levels. The interaction of these two processes generates different spaces at which social policies are delivered, whose coordinates have both a territorial and a sectoral dimension.…”

“…They find that the benefits expected of the quasi‐market were never fully realised because sub‐regional governments continued operating in the system under better conditions than those experienced by private providers. Similarly, following a pioneering project for spatial social services in Milan, Bricocoli et al (2022) remark that the strategy of welfare marketisation promoted by the Region of Lombardy under a right‐wing government was opposed by the left‐leaning cabinet in charge of the City of Milan. Outside Italy, Fuertes et al (2021) discuss how nine cities of Germany, Sweden, and the UK, have used different ‘institutional logics’, revolving around the state, the market, professional communities, and local communities, respectively, to deliver employment activation services.…”

They Like to Do It in Public: A Quantitative Analysis of Culture-Led Regeneration Projects in ITALY

“…In doing so, many of the culture-based regeneration projects mapped show an underlying tension in combining the regeneration and restoration of the single asset where the project takes place with the promotion of a set of micro-activities and actions sustaining the regeneration of the surrounding area or neighborhood, ensuring that the project is able to reach a wider audience and that its benefits are distributed fairly among more members of the community [66]. In other words, what is evident is the commitment of the already mentioned networks of actors promoting the cultural activities to make an effort to scale up the project activities, exploring culture as an "enabling device" [12] and a "social infrastructure" [17,45] to contrast different forms of socio-spatial vulnerability in distressed urban neighborhoods, to sustain the rehabilitation and improvement of public spaces, and to improve levels of social cohesion.…”

“…A common and recurring feature in these processes is the cultural element as a «central ingredient for reactivating mechanisms of social reproduction» [44] (p. 44), as a «social engine and coagulant» [16]. Culture hybridizes with welfare services and forms of social entrepreneurship [44], giving rise to social infrastructures [45] that bring together people, institutions, actors, and services and create «affordances for social connection» [17], see also: [46]. The borders between the State, the market, the third sector, and society are blurred [14], and a third dimension that encompasses the dichotomies of public-private and government-market emerges.…”

The Challenges of Social Infrastructure for Urban Planning

“…The first theme-the social consequences of the localisation of social infrastructure for individualscentres on the everyday effects of the localisation, organisation, and design of social infrastructure on individuals and certain groups (here, vulnerable groups and people living in rural areas). In the first article, Bricocoli et al (2022) investigate the spatial organisation of social services, which they argue has long been secondary for both urban planning and social welfare policies in Italian cities. A new concept, "WeMi spaces," which evolved from a reorganisation of the local welfare system of the municipality of Milan, led to innovation in both Milan's social services and its spaces, where improving access was the key strategy in branching out with a broader arena of users and to discourage stigmatisation.…”