The Lyon metropolitan area is quite dynamic and attractive. With 1.3 million inhabitants, it ranks as the third French metropolitan area and its population is still increasing. However, with a poverty rate of 15.2%, more than 195.000 people live under the poverty line. The most deprived areas are located in the South East, combining social and territorial inequalities.

The Lyon Metropolis is an institutional innovation based on the merger of the Lyon urban community and the Rhone Department. Created by law on January 2015, it is responsible for a large number of competencies: economic development, town planning, environment and quality of life, housing and social cohesion, solidarity, education, culture and sport.

The housing strategy seeks to maintain a high level of housing construction (9.000 per year) and to implement a mixed and varied set of construction programmes (every kind of housing, everywhere on the 59 municipalities). Its objective is also to improve quality of the existing housing units and to facilitate provision and preserving housing units.

The Lyon metropolitan area is challenged by many social and territorial issues. Thus, the Lyon Metropolis adopted its first Metropolitan Solidarity Project on November 2017. This project covers a broad range of responsibilities, such as: early childhood, child protection, disabled and elderly people, health prevention and social development. It is built around 4 strategic axes and 80 actions.

Within URBInclusion, the Lyon Metropolis chose to focus on 6 actions addressing a key implementation challenge of the Metropolitan Solidarity project: how to renew social approach to better include vulnerable people among society? These actions are mainly located in two less-favored municipalities of the Lyon urban area: Saint-Fons and Vénissieux.

1. Co-producing, with social workers and researchers, a new framework for social work, in the field of child protection.
2. Training social workers, in the field of social housing, to use collective intervention and citizen participation methods in order to improve community life in social housing neighborhoods.
3. School dropout prevention with social workers intervening in schools to facilitate relationships between families and teachers.
4. Preventing energy poverty, supporting households who can not pay their energy bills to improve the energy performance of their housing.
5. Developing social clauses in public procurement in order to better promote local employment and diversify the types of jobs that are offered.
6. Fostering innovation for solidarity: the « Espace créateur de solidarités » / “space for solidarity making” offers a comprehensive social support to vulnerable families through a wide range of actions for the inhabitants of the area (social grocery, local community gardens, a recycling and upcycling shop, and a tool library).

The idea of the meeting came out by the common need felt by the managers of the many projects working on the issue of urban mobility in Palermo to share the results reached so far and confront them with the various stakeholders in the field. As a matter of fact, Innovability has been organized by the Interactive Cities ULG in collaboration with Urbact III project City Mobilnet and Partecipattivi, also managed by the Municipality of Palermo and Muv, run by the design lab Push.

The four of them have worked or are still working on promoting participation in the field of urban mobility through social media, gamification and open data. At the event an heterogeneous parterre of participants intervened and in particular representatives from: Trenitalia, the Italian railway company, Amat the local company for public transport, Open Data Sicilia, the local web magazine Mobilita Palermo, the Municipal Pon Metro programme, the Department of Transport of the University Kore of Enna.

The experiment turned to be successful by showing as social media and open data can make the difference in the urban development policies if the process is accompanied by the participation and collaboration of the stakeholders involved.  As a matter of fact, Innovability allowed these ones to meet and share the difficulties they encounter in implementing their policies. The debate started up from the presentation of the results of the game event “Ugame: mobilità agrodolce” that took place on the 17^th and 18^th of March in the framework of  Interactive Cities and Partecipattivi and in collaboration with Push, Social Bike and Mobilita Palermo.

During the game event the participants had been involved in a treasure hunt around the city carried on through the use of social media that allowed to record the way they moved and the transports they adopted (thanks to the use of ashtags as #interactivepalermo, #partecipattivi, #ugame). The elaboration of the so collected information produced some interesting findings that have been showed to audience during the Innovability event. For example that majority of participants’ movements have been made by walk (42,45%) and by car (30,94%) whilst the minor average time of journey has been registered by walking and by the use of car. All the speakers invited stated the importance of the use of this kind of data for the implementation of their ordinary policies, and also the need for even more information about citizens’ mobility demand. In conclusion, all the stakeholders agree on the necessity of reiterating meetings as Innovability in order to keep on sharing data and plan integrated activities.

Municipality of Palermo

The survey was scientifically supported by the Transportation Systems Laboratory of the University of Piraeus and was jointly executed by the CITYMOBILNET AGANK team and the supporting external consultants. The survey questionnaire was designed according to modern European standards and particularly modified to the needs and particularities of the Municipality. CITYMOBILNET’s experience in this domain was sought after and the partner cities provided a lot of insights as well as issues to consider as well as to avoid. Its overall purpose was to capture the citizens’ trip profile in addition to behavioral aspects. The questionnaire consisted of three major categories: general household characteristics, mobility behaviors and mobility problems faced at the municipality. The team focused particularly in schools (pupils) and senior centers (senior citizens), since these are the most vulnerable groups but at the same time the main target of the Mayor’s strategic focus. Some initial insight include missing PT links, areas with problematic safety and security issues, economic aspects etc.

Based on the analyzed results, the Municipality of Agii Anargiri-Kamatero will be able to develop sensible decisions about making urban mobility more effective, efficient and sustainable.

See the survey in Greek here:

See Portuguese translation here:

See Romanian translation here:

See German translation here: