During the spring of 2014 I assisted the International Society of Biourbanism to prepare the detailed proposal for Project Leo , which also participated to the 2014 edition of the Edison Start Prize on innovation in and by small organizations.
Overall,
"The LEO project stems from a synergy action between the International Society of Biourbanism and the City of Carpineto Romano (Rome, IT). Overall objective is to facilitate the socio-economic revival of the local community, enhancing technical and creative skills necessary to improve both the socio-economic and cultural field.
The project consists of actions to start a mini-incubator of city and territorial development, able to convey technical, professional and managerial knowledge, and a promotion process of Carpineto Romano as tourist territory. Every action is structured in a systemic way, according to a peer-to-peer model, combining tradition and innovation, local and global.
(the paragraphs above are the abstract of the article “Il Progetto LEO. Un approccio duale per lo sviluppo di Carpineto Romano (RM)" by A. Caperna, G. Minervino, S. Serafini, BDC - Bollettino del Centro Calza Bini, XV (2015) 1, pp. 151-166. The article is also available on Academia.edu.
More in detail, as far as I am concerned, Project Leo, proposed, working in and with the City of Carpineto Romano:
- generation of a new model of local community development, based on biourbanism and the strength of small towns
- improvement of the social and economic resilience of the community, and consequently of quality of life, in small towns
- systemic development of the economy of Carpineto_Romano through several bottom-up forms of citizen participation
- involvement of all artisans and creative young people, with special attention to the weakest parts of population
My own contribution consisted in defining how to implement the several forms of participation, and to increase the technical skills of the residents, through Open Data, Open Hardware and other open digital technologies, with the same approach I had already presented in 2013 in another small, wonderful town of the same area, Segni.