Abstract
Social innovation is recurrently positioned as an important collaborative element in helping cities to transition and address human needs and societal challenges to enhance the health, wellbeing, and welfare of citizens. To address a call for more sector-specific research on the spatiality of social innovation, and also further understanding of the process dimension of social innovation, this article presents a conceptual framework of the process of social innovation. By combining social innovation insight from process theories and urban spaces discourse the article indicates that of social innovation in the co-production of space can be grouped into four major processes: 1) Identification of human needs or societal challenges to sustainable development; 2) Development of social relations in systems or structures; 3) Provision of opportunity for social empowerment; 4) Reflection of socio-spatial development practice. Applying this framework, the article examines how productive green infrastructure emerges in the urban landscape as a Place of Social Innovation (POSI).
Highlights
Contemporary cities need to find more effective and efficient solutions to the societal challenges of climate change, immigration and demographic changes, inclusive public spaces, inequality, and healthcare (BEPA, 2011; European Commission, 2013; Frank, 2017)
Places of Social Innovation are emerging in the urban landscape as a result of the co-production of space between multilevel stakeholders
An iterative sequence of interpreting and translating empirical data is summarised as follows: Case narratives: rich text narratives are constructed by outlining chronological sequences of events and use of plot structures to handle data in an accessible manner with each case sequence produced from data gathering; Data coding: coding integrates preconceived theory driven codes directed by the conceptual framework with emerging data driven codes (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006); Within case analysis of key social innovation process: A study protocol of common questions derived from the conceptual framework is examined within each case narrative
Summary
Contemporary cities need to find more effective and efficient solutions to the societal challenges of climate change, immigration and demographic changes, inclusive public spaces, inequality, and healthcare (BEPA, 2011; European Commission, 2013; Frank, 2017). In terms of collaborative approaches to addressing needs, participatory forms of urban growing have been emphasised in the search for socially innovative solutions to the social, economic, and environmental challenges of changing cities, whilst civil society and institution instigated growing projects have multiplied in recent times (Cunk et al, 2017). This socio-spatial process is reshaping urban landscapes, experimenting with alternatives to capitalist formations of urban environment (Harvey, 2012), and co-producing public spaces as sites of productive green infrastructure (Rosol, 2012).
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