The City of Turin was the first, in Italy, to develop an urban program to support social innovation. With Torino Social Innovation program, launched in 2012, the Municipality has taken on a facilitator role in fostering the creation of an open platform for public and private partners, who have supported the development of new business ideas with a social impact (FaciliTo Giovani initiative). He has been one of the promoters of the Torino Social Impact platform since its establishment (November 2017).
Over the years the City is engaged in a strategic redesign of its innovation approach to support the local development, aimed at strengthening the dissemination of new technologies creating social impact, offering new opportunities for citizens and companies.
The policies to support social innovation have been acquiring new tools, experiences and system networks. Within the Operational National Program for Metropolitan Cities (Pon Metro) and the Suburbs Plan (AxTO) new measures were launched to support projects promoted by the third sector, in order to include civil society and to trigger urban regeneration processes in suburban areas with a high socio-economic criticality. The services offered a range from technical and financial support for project development (Torino Social Factory, Pon Metro), financial grants for testing solutions in a real context (AxTo), to innovative financing actions such as the civic crowdfunding (Social Crowdfunding Academy, Pon Metro).
With Homes4All, an impact finance project to tackle the housing emergency in Turin, it obtained funding from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, from the Social Innovation Fund, to carry out a feasibility study for the project (2020).
The City is also launching several initiatives to facilitate the development of urban innovation projects including Torino City Lab, a coordinated system of actions to transform the entire city into an open-air “innovation” laboratory.
A further step is the participation in various European networks on the theme of social innovation (Asis Alpine Social Innovation Strategy, INTERREG programme) and on fighting urban poverty and social inclusion (Co-City and ToNite, UIA programne), and for Urbact programme: MyGeneration@Work, Boosting Social Innovation, Urbinclusion, Innovato-R).
