Ricerc@Sapienza

Green, Regenerated, Inclusive, Digital, Oases for healthy and happy cities (GRIDO)
1. Excellence
The Habitat III New Urban Agenda enshrines the right to multipurpose, safe, inclusive, accessible, green and high quality public spaces. Green urban spaces and nature-based innovations (NBIs), combined with digital applications have great potential to support healthy, sustainable, resilient and liveable cities. However, while the value of green space interventions is widely accepted, their potential to produce unintended effects such as exclusion, displacement and segregation of vulnerable populations, has been under-explored. The GRIDO project aims to regenerate and transform environmentally and socially challenged neighbourhoods and districts in nine European cities - Athens, Mannheim, Moscow, Paris La Défense, Reykjavik, Rome, Sarajevo, Vejle and Wroclaw. NBI will be employed to improve the cities’ infrastructure (green, blue and grey), foster citizen participation and stakeholder engagement, and maximize health benefits at the local level for a variety of socioeconomic groups.
GRIDO will develop, implement, monitor and maintain a network of Oases, to be people-public-private owned spaces, through a combined model and framework of integrated urban infrastructure. The framework will bring together citizens, nature and the urban fabric, taking into account individual needs and behaviour, while putting an emphasis on socially vulnerable and marginalized groups. In order to meet these challenges, the Oases will be selected jointly with the local population, while the local administrations, research organisations and industry partners will act as facilitators. The Oases in the nine partner cities will serve as testbeds for the development of the GRIDO framework and a corresponding variety of digital tools and solutions to improve the well-being and health of citizens, while paving the way for their Europe-wide standardization. The GRIDO consortium consists of 30 partners from 11 countries, from which: nine are local authorities (all of which implementing a separate, local pilot), nine research institutes/universities, four large-scale companies, five non-profit organisations, one national standardization body, three local NGOs, 1 large city network and two SMEs.
1.1 Objectives
GRIDO aims at developing resilient, smart and green cities to enhance citizens’ life and well-being, and steer the transition towards healthier and happier communities. GRIDO will support social inclusiveness and try to avoid or minimize urban inequalities by understanding and tackling the social-ecological trade-offs resulting from the regeneration and transformation of public spaces. By applying collaborative approaches to the design, implementation and operation of public and semi-public spaces, and addressing the needs and wishes of different actor groups, GRIDO will develop diverse models of urban governance, creating spaces that will enable different groups of people/stakeholders to meet and support citizens and local people in taking ownership of the public spaces. Our collaborative approach to governance, decision making and monitoring will therefore help both the inclusion of different stakeholders and to address complex local power structures.
GRIDO will reach its aims through the transformation of nine selected pilot areas (one in each partner city) with the following objectives:
1. Define the socio-economic and environmental conditions for the development and introduction of urban Oases, making use of an integrated assessment and monitoring system that measures public health, happiness levels and well-being;
2. Implement urban Oases at a neighbourhood, district or city level demonstrating social, cultural, digital and nature-based innovation to increase the health and well-being of citizens;
3. Pilot test a framework based on the knowledge emerging in the local cases, linking urban plannin