Building cities that work for people: From Braga to Europe, a new social innovation model is travelling across Europe
In Braga, Portugal, social innovation experimentation has been underway since 2015. What began as
a strategic vision developed during the URBACT BoostINNO network - a plan to harness the city's
human potential rather than simply its economic resources - has evolved, over a decade and through
successive waves of funding and iteration, into something far more substantial: the Human Power
Hub, a permanent, municipally-anchored platform for social innovation that has helped create over
50 social enterprises, brought more than a thousand citizens into active co-creation processes, and
generated 200 jobs in the social economy.
The Human Power Hub is not a conventional incubator. Where most innovation centres operate on
Business-to-Business or Business-to-Consumer logic, Braga's model is built on the different premise:
a Human-to-Human philosophy, the idea that the most powerful driver of social change is a person
supported to become a change-maker. The Human Power Hub (HPH) functions simultaneously as a
physical space, a methodology toolkit, a governance framework, and a community ecosystem, all
woven into the fabric of municipal public policy through BragaHabit E.M., the city's housing public
company.
Recognised as an URBACT Good Practice in 2024, the HPH model has embarked on a new chapter. Six
European cities, Bologna, Espoo, Gdańsk, Kyiv, Leipzig, and Málaga, have come together alongside
Braga as the lead partner, under the HPH Europe URBACT IV Transfer Network to adapt, test, and
ultimately build their own versions of the Human Power Hub. The collective ambition goes well
beyond the 30-month URBACT project timeline: the network is working toward a new European
model for social innovation, a constellation of locally rooted Human Power Hubs, connected by
shared methodologies, common impact frameworks, and a culture of mutual learning.
