Civic intermediaries and urban change: UK and Italian perspectives

The Urban Transformations and Transitions Research and Scholarship cluster at the University of Glasgow invite interested colleagues from academia and the city to explore the possibilities and politics of urban and civic intermediaries.

Urban and civic intermediaries take many forms. Depending on their scale, location and purpose they might be known as “living labs”, “neighbourhood centres”, “urban facilitators”, “imaginariums”, “community connectors” and “bridging groups”. Examples include the Sheffield and Folkestone Urban Rooms, the Farrell Centre (Newcastle), the New Glasgow Society and the Foundation for Urban Innovation (Bologna). In different ways, these hybrid infrastructures mediate, translate, and recompose relations among actors, while promising new forms of agency.

This event brings together speakers from the UK and Italy to reflect on how different groups—civic, academic, and institutional—work together to shape urban spaces and places. Speakers from the University of Bologna, the University of Glasgow, New Glasgow Society, and the UK Urban Rooms Network will share experiences and insights from their respective contexts as researchers and practitioners working as or with civic and urban intermediaries. Drawing out comparative lessons and fresh perspectives on the evolving nature of urban and civic intermediation in both the UK and Italy, the event will address topics such as:

• How intermediaries navigate existing power structures, foster collaboration, and support long-term decision-making for place and community development.

• How local characteristics and cultures influence governance and planning

• The different roles of intermediaries as agents of change.

• The risks for intermediaries to become appropriated as extensions of the state or vehicles for extractive urban development.

The format will consist of a series of short talks followed by a chaired discussion and audience Q&A. The session will be of interest to urban scholars of all disciplines, to place-based practitioners and policymakers, and anyone in the city interested in place and decision-making.

The Urban Transformations & Transitions research and scholarship cluster is based in the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy at the University of Glasgow. Through interdisciplinary research and scholarship from diverse perspectives, we are developing understandings of the processes, policies and cultures that shape the lived and felt experiences of our built environments. We collaborate within the University and with external partners to enhance connections and knowledge exchange with industry, communities and governments.

Speaker biographies:

Valentina Orioli

Architect and PhD, Associate Professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna. Previously Deputy Mayor of Bologna in charge of New Mobility, Infrastructures, Local Public Transport, 30 km/h City, Protection of cultural heritage and historic gardens. In the mandate 2016-21, she was Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, Real Estate, Environment, Protection and regeneration of the historical city and candidacy of Bologna’s “Porticoes” for the UNESCO World Heritage List, Climate Pact, and vice-mayor from 2020. Her teaching and research activities are aimed at the knowledge and experimentation of tools for the design and governance of urban transformations, in a perspective that focuses on the quality of urban space and its regeneration. She is President of Urban@it, a National center for urban policy studies based at the University of Bologna. She participates in the Board of the Doctorate in Service Design for Public Sector (SDPS) at Sapienza University in Rome. Author of various publications, one of her most recent works is Praticare l'urbanistica. Traiettorie tra innovazione sociale e pianificazione, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2023, pp. 136 (with M. Massari).

Martina Massari

Architect and PhD in Urban Planning. Currently Junior assistant professor in Urban Planning at the architecture Department of the University of Bologna and freelance architect/planner. She has been a Research Fellow at the Chair for Regional Building and Urban Planning at the Leibniz University of Hannover. She is part of the “TRACE Team” and the “Collaborative and Adaptive Cities” research groups of the university of Bologna. She has contributed to more than 14 European projects, including Horizon 2020, European Urban Initiatives, and Horizon Europe. Among these are the H2020 project ROCK (Regeneration and Optimisation of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities, 2017–2020) and the Horizon Europe project WeGenerate (Built4People – Co-creating People-centric Sustainable Neighborhoods Through Urban Regeneration, 2023–2028). Her research and practice interests originate from her PhD thesis, which explored the role of “intermediate places” between social innovation practices and urban planning in Bologna, Barcelona and Berlin. She brings this perspective into her projects, particularly by developing research-action methodologies for public engagement and strengthening connections between research and local territories. Author of various publications in national and international journals, among which “Hidden gems: The potential of places and social innovation for circular territories in Bogotá”. Cities, 144, 104645 with Alissa Diesch.

Carolyn Butterworth

Carolyn is a Senior University Teacher at Sheffield University School of Architecture and Landscape. She is Director of Live Works, the UoS' city centre Urban Room and Project Office, supporting student, community and civic partner collaborations. She also supervises the School’s Live Projects programme, now in its 25th year, where students work with external partners to deliver real projects for the benefit of community and civic organisations in Sheffield and beyond. Carolyn is Co-Chair of the Urban Rooms Network, a national interdisciplinary network that engages local people in the future of their place through creative situated practice.

Chris Philo

Chris Philo is a Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow. His interests embrace: the historical and social geographies of marginalised and othered peoples and places; the history and theory of geographical inquiry; and, more specifically, questions about the socio-spatial relations swirling around rurality, childhood and non-human animality. One angle of concern has been with 'civic geographies': with how civics from above (in an older formal-municipal vein) and civics from below (a more diffuse scatter of community, activist and advocacy possibilities) may articulate within place. His engagements with 'the urban' have been glancing rather than sustained engagements, but he enjoyed his role as Chair of the Urban Studies Foundation in the 2010s.

More speakers to be announced…