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Second edition of the international educational programme on service design for urban innovation

The Right to the Future Intensive School represents the culmination of a long and inspiring process undertaken by PUSH in 2015 with the initiative City as a Service, whose results contributed to the drafting of the New Urban Agenda, the UN action-oriented document on the future of urban policies.

Right to the Future is the initiative launched by PUSH to translate the global principle of the New Urban Agenda into concrete local policies and interventions.
In order to succeed in this ambitious mission, PUSH has thus proposed two events: an Urban Thinkers Campus promoted by the United Nations, followed by the second edition of the Intensive School, educational programme on service design for urban innovation.

The Right to the Future Intensive School aims to translate the inputs emerged during the debate and the workshops of the Urban Thinkers Campus into concrete proposals for the city of Palermo. Palermo was thus used as a case study to propose to the international students an innovative methodology for service design, applicable in any other urban context.

The School, sponsored by Fondazione CRT, Confcooperative Sicilia, LUCA School of Arts and Link Campus University, was attended by 17 international students of different age, geographical origins and academic and professional background. During a five-day full immersion, guided by service designers from PUSH and Commonground, the participants worked together to elaborate, prototype and validate concrete proposals for the city of Palermo. The four projects they developed – on food and traditions, reactivation of public spaces, tourism and game dynamics for urban contexts – were presented to the audience during the Street Food Fest in Piazza Sant’Anna.

One more time the initiative, already implemented in Erice in 2015, proved to have all the characteristics to engage young professionals with different backgrounds interested in service design. The format can be thus replicated in any other urban context offering new inputs and benefits for the local economy.