In and beyond Europe today we witness strengthened structural spatial divisions within city neighbourhoods, with increased inequality and sharper lines of division. Neighbourhoods are increasingly diverse in socio-economic, social and ethnic terms, but many differences also exist in lifestyles, attitudes and activities. Continuing immigration and increasing socio-economic and ethnic concentration in neighbourhoods question social cohesion in local societies worldwide.
In Europe, high rates of unemployment, austerity and poverty make diverse neighbourhoods and local societies increasingly complex and contested. The polarisation of urban space exacerbates and ethnic concentration in neighbourhoods overlaps with situations of social exclusion and deprivation.
Against this backdrop, we witness a stalled urban regeneration investment as well as the welfare state provisions across many European cities and disadvantaged neighbourhoods,
with finance enormously inhibited outside core economic areas following the 2007 financial crisis; more importantly, dissimilar top-down revitalisation strategies have resulted in new urban dynamics and urban tensions, gentrification processes and social exclusion.
In this context, urban neighbourhoods have become a privileged unit of policy intervention where community-based initiatives have been experimented with the aim to produce social cohesion and transforming power relations and socio-spatial inequalities. Social innovation has become a buzzword often associated to community-led regeneration processes.
But the efficacy of community-based initiatives inspired by a social innovative approach needs to be further assessed in a condition when the State is constantly retreating.
Given this backdrop, the aim of the project is to investigate whether and how area-based programs inspired by an innovative social approach targeting deprived and hyperdiverse neighbourhoods can intervene on increasing socio-spatial inequalities at the same time promoting institutional learning.
