Empowering People to Envision Possible Social Innovations in the Proximity: The Case of the School of the Neighbourhoods in Milan

This paper moves from the case of a social innovation programme in the city of Milan to discuss the contribution of the design discipline in empowering people to ideate, develop and prototype innovative service solutions at a neighbourhood scale. It starts with a brief introduction about the interconnection between the notions of social innovation and proximity, useful to describe and classify some of the case studies emerged from the programme. Named precisely ‘The School of Neighbourhoods’, this programme was promoted by the Municipality of Milan and designed by a consortium of partners including the Polimi Desis Lab of Politecnico di Milano. Launched in 2018 and concluded in 2023, it was composed of 4 main cycles, each of them characterised by 3 phases: scouting, training, and prototyping, giving birth to 56 new social ventures. In this paper the authors introduce an interpretation of the cases under the lens of proximity linked to: i) natural ecosystem; ii) networks; iii) diversity. The paper concludes with a reflection about the possible contribution of design in such programmes: more than a technical contribution, it provides a form of cultural empowerment supporting people in developing a shared vision about the future of a place, actually providing a sense-making activity that may be intended as a form of design for placemaking.