The City as a Commons Approach and New Forms of Collaborative Governance Models: The Example of Bologna

This paper examines Bologna as an emblematic case to explore how the City as a Commons approach can support the implementation of the Climate City Contracts (CCCs) and advance a climate-neutral urban transition through collaborative governance and participatory urban regeneration. Bologna has a long-standing participation ecosystem resulting in the signing of over 800 collaborative pacts activated since 2014, and, from that time, the activation of the participation process of the citizens with the Municipality, defined as the “City as a Commons”, in collaboration with the University. These initiatives have been recently consolidated and integrated with the city’s CCC for the EU Cities Mission and its NetZeroCities platform in 2023, expanding citizens’ roles, engagement platforms, and enabling resources aligned with the 2030 climate-neutrality goal. Methodologically, the study combines a qualitative analysis of Bologna’s governance trajectory with an indicator-based reading of 17 participatory projects inspired by New European Bauhaus (NEB) collected within the three-year CrAFt (Creating Actionable Futures) project funded under the Horizon Europe Programme. As an interpretive and comparative tool, the CrAFt NEB Impact Model (NEB IM) is applied to identify patterns and gaps across governance, social, environmental, and economic dimensions, rather than to rank projects. Findings indicate that the governance and social participation dimensions are more developed than the environmental and economic implementation dimensions, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of commoning approaches in supporting CCC implementation and delivering balanced climate-neutral urban transformation.