The Project
The DARE project of the Municipality of Ravenna, winner of the fourth European call for proposals “Urban Innovative Actions”, with a funding of almost five million, was created with the aim of creating and testing a path that combines digital transition and urban regeneration of the city’s Docklands, promoting digital culture among citizens and updating the public administration in a reciprocal relationship centred on the person. The project also aims to make this pathway a repeatable model throughout the city and in other small and medium-sized European cities. DARE stands for “Digital environment for collaborative alliances to regenerate urban ecosystems in middle-sized cities”.
The EU initiative is part of the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) “urban lab” plan (2014 – 2020) which supports frontier innovation projects in European cities. KCity leads the temporary grouping called Multilab, composed of Nomisma, Labsus and Politecnica, to provide a technical assistance service for the strategic management of the urban regeneration process of the Darsena district in Ravenna, activated within the DARE project.
The activities carried out and in progress include: mapping of actors and territorial dynamics in the study area; definition of strategies and vision in cooperation with the DARE project players; development of feasibility studies for the transformation of public space and publicly owned buildings, to support vision and strategies.
DARE’s approach encourages the digital transition not only of services and tools, but also of the way policies are made, based on data and scenario projections. DARE’s aim is to put citizens at the centre by developing their digital culture and their knowledge of the technologies that enable information to be processed and exchanged in digital format, so that they can critically and actively benefit from the opportunities that the digital society offers, so that citizens can become agents of change. In this regard, it is necessary to create a digital infrastructure that allows the collection, management and creation of data related to the Dock, such as, among others, vehicle traffic, economic data on the activities present, environmental data and population data.
The approach used by the Dare project is collaborative: citizens are involved through various tools (portal, app, information totems, interactive benches, workshops and events) in a collective narration of the territory and the regeneration process. The work of collecting, processing and conveying data and the constant dialogue with the community allows to conceive and implement new services strategically based on the specific needs of the Dock, but not only.
The process of digitisation of the area has the further objective of narrating the area and its evolution and making it attractive to residents, visitors and investors, also through the establishment of Dalia, the Darsena’s digital historical archive, thus favouring the process of urban regeneration, i.e. an integrated process for the restart and the social, environmental and economic improvement of the area. Finally, the European funding will accelerate the digital transformation of the Dock and provide it with an ICT platform for urban management.