Storiepossibili (possible stories): Measuring social networks and designing scenarios to address new urban questions

Storiepossibili was developed in a research frame with the aim of identifying a “new urban question”; that is to say, the emergence of new issues and problems of the contemporary urban; among them, social cohesion and sustainable development appear to be at risk and the focus of renewed attention. In such a framework, how can design help decision-makers and innovators to understand such unprecedented questions and react to support the potentiality of the new social settings? Storiepossibili is a “research within research” that answers this issue, developed by the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano. The Design discipline has often been used as a key lever in the transformation of urban places to respond to the rising needs of contemporary society. Our cities see the growing demand for places where people can cultivate a sense of wellbeing, share their daily life and get closer to other inhabitants. Storiepossibili is an open repository of positive social innovation practices, both in the micro and macro scale: stories of people, organizations and enterprises which trust in the chance of change as something possible, even viral.

on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in 20092 ; or the Better Life Initiative3 , launched by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).The first Italian Report on the Sustainable Wellness Fair (BES) was published in 2013: the survey, coordinated by ISTAT (Italian National Statistical Institute) and CNEL (Italian National Council of Economy and Labour), promoted a collection of data involving 134 indicators grouped into 12 domains that express an overall sense of wellbeing4 .The general objective of these operations calls for the identification of policies for improving the quality of the built environment: "The framework for regional and local wellbeing starts with the consideration that making better policies for better lives requires making where people live a better place" (OECD, 2010).Among other initiatives, it is important to note the United Nations working programme UN Habitat, whose aim is to focus on the quality of cities: "Its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and the achievement of adequate shelter for all" ( UN Habitat, 2012). 5ew and growing attention to "soft" and subjective values in the development of a framework of living together is observable within the transformational urban environment.The PRIN "Post-metropolitan territories" research project aims, therefore, to explore the new urban forms of contemporary Italy, studying the emergence of new "urban questions" and reflecting upon the capacities of these post-metropolitan territories and urban formations to cope innovatively and appropriately with the challenges produced by occurring transformations.
What makes the city a specific phenomenon that can be distinguished from other forms of social life?Size, density and heterogeneity were the distinctive characteristics of the urban (Wirth, 1938); in addition, the form of the contemporary city is also different from the past, being less dense and less heterogeneous (Dematteis and Lanza, 2011).Not only the size of the city but its nature and identity are becoming profoundly modified: the contemporary city appears, at the same time, fragmented and exploded.At the end of the day, these processes have been interpreted in terms of dispersion of the constituent characteristics of the central city, reproducing in this sense an interpretative model typical of the nineteenth century, opposing the centre to the periphery, concentration to dispersion, homogeneity to heterogeneity, proximity and distance.The same idea of a metropolitan area is -in this sensestill based on the idea of a clearly identifiable relationship between the central city and neighbouring territories and of the central city as an area of influence.Such interpreta-tion has been put into question by a number of authors who proposed, a decade from now, to think in terms of "post-metropolitan" (or "suburban"), looking at the unfolding processes of regional urbanisation.
According to these authors, the relationship between size, density and heterogeneity should be questioned because of the "emergence of a distinctive new urban form, the extensive polynucleated, densely networked, information-intensive and increasingly globalized city region […], to a polycentric network of urban agglomerations, where relatively high density are found throughout the urbanized region" (Soja, 2000, p. 684).
The first year of PRIN Post-metropolitan territories research was dedicated to the construction of an "Atlas of post-metropolitan territories".Seven urban areas were selected, in order to analyse and find the dynamics described in the international literature on urban contemporary processes in Italy.These areas have experienced, in different moments and ways, processes of "metropolization" or are considered -by the recent reform-as "metropolitan areas": Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo.A huge amount of quantitative data is available on a public Web platform (www.postmetropoli.it)that allows us to immediately map and interact with significant metrics related to each post-metropolitan city/area (including Milan) and, therefore, to grasp the spatial dimension of the evolution.
Among the effects, according to Soja, one can list: • The disappearance of significant differences in lifestyles between urban and suburban, with the emergence of different (sub) urban ways of life; • The mixing between forms of urban and suburban; • The combination of paradoxical forms of decentralisation and re-centralization, tied on the one hand to the expulsion of some urban functions in a periurban context, capable of generating new centres and to shape new geographies in the suburban and vice versa; • The emergence of a new urban form, that of the polynuclear, densely reticulated and with intensive information.

Storiepossibili
Is it possible to protect and sustain relational networks in complex city-conurbations?How may citizens actively interact with civic rules and services, upgrading them (or part thereof -) to become user friendly?What "new" sorts of circular economies might be developed in city centres?
Within this mindset, the DESIS lab 6 and the DHOC research team 7 have been engaged in the wider analytic process of PRIN Post-metropolitan territories with the aim of assessing and describing qualitative patterns, able to illustrate and clarify how -in practice-social dynamics could take place and grow beyond the statistical data.In other words, starting from the "picture" of the Milanese post-metropolitan area as described by the PRIN research, design researchers selected and contacted real-life situations (SME, individual, informal groups of citizens, private services and so on) with the mission to discover and compare some issues and networking practices.The re-appropriation of cities' spaces and the establishment of new connections reveal inherent values in these spaces that are not only functional but an urban sociality manifested through the awakening of a collective creativity and a new demand for wellbeing and happiness.The aim of Storiepossbili is to build and envision a scenario of positive trends for future "post-metropolitan" cities, which could recommend the direction to be undertaken by policy-makers first, and then by active and creative citizens as the effective service thinkers and makers (Selloni, 2014).
The exploration of sustainable development scenarios has been undertaken through a sequence of phases using inductive methods: starting from a qualitative analysis of the cases, punctually collected in a given area, researchers built an interpretative framework of possible trends.The exploration of social innovation cases has been driven by a set of criteria on environmental and social sustainability (developed by Jegou and Manzini, 2008) and strictly connected with the Atlas indicators, developed by the research group of urban planners.Criteria deal with the topic of sustainability, the social and natural context, social improvement and learning processes.Cases tell stories of social innovation, innovative services and enterprises, reclaiming urban spaces and sharing, thanks to a diffused collective creativity and a new demand of wellness and quality of life.
As previously stated, the aim of the research is to tell stories of possible and promising sustainable lifestyles in the Milanese metropolitan region, the same area explored by the group of urban planners from the Architecture Department.In such a playing field, the designers' challenge was to translate, where possible, the Atlas indicators into true stories of real cases able to confirm or justify the Atlas information.
As the final outcome of the research, the aim of the designers' work was to envision a scenario for a future sustainable metropolitan region.To achieve these two milestones, researchers followed the process shown in the diagram shown in Figure 2.

(1a) Analysis -Desk research: Case history
Initially, designers pointed out a set of main issues collected in the Atlas of regions and started to create a range of specific subjects to work on, such as mobility, commuting, living, population migration fluxes, aging, energy, the built environment, working, etc.To guide the interpretation of the Atlas and to define what is "good and sustainable" as a delta for the case selection, a filter made up of 9 criteria on sustainability and innovation was used to look for cases in the region: • Promoting variety: protecting and developing diversity: biological, socio-cultural and technical.Respecting existing diversity and feeding new ones.• Optimising the existing (Walker and Giard, 2013): Reducing the need for new products.Empowering the existing before thinking of something new.• Creating relational contexts (Meroni and Manzini, 2007): Generating situations that facilitate open and positive relationships.• Proposing aspirational and pleasurable behaviours (Meroni and Manzini, 2007): imagining new lifestyles, being positive about the future.
• Give space to nature: protecting the natural environment, respecting the last natural areas and integrating natural elements into urban environments in an innovative way.Producing food in a natural way and shoring up the agri-food chain.Developing advanced systems to produce organic food.• Bring people and items closer (SPREAD 2050(SPREAD , 2011)): reducing the demand of transportation, developing low intensity transport system, producing and delivering in a fair and sustainable way.• Empower people (Jegou and Manzini, 2008): Increasing participation and democratising systems.
Developing enabling systems to empower people skills and capabilities.• Developing networks: promoting flexible and decentred organizations, developing responsive systems.• Zero waste production: promoting industrial ecology forms, closing the material cycle.
As a result, designers built a catalogue of 50 cases from the Milan metropolitan region to fulfil the 9 criteria.At a glance, the catalogue reveals that each case fulfills the main related criterion, and brings some features that also lead to other criteria: the more criteria that could be led, the more the case would be promising and interesting in terms of innovation and sustainability.To view the cases, please visit www.storiepossibili.it

(1b) Analysis -Field research: In-depth analysis of case history and interviews
To better understand the reasons and the ways some cases emerged and flourished, researchers led an in-depth investigation on 12 of the 50 collected cases.This analysis was carried out through face-to-face interviews and onsite visits, that helped researchers to better perceive the context's influence, capture some non-verbal features in terms of personal fulfillment, and to collect comprehensive and high-quality evidence.As in this research, Design often borrows methods and tools from other disciplines, such as social psychology and ethnography.Social psychology helps in understanding the way the communities work in terms of motivation, commitment and participation.Ethnography, then, is useful in organizing the relationship and the understanding of the contexts during connection, observation and interaction activities with people (Wolcott, 1999).
The 12 cases were also selected in order to cover the larger range of urban services families: mobility, health, education, food, working, housing, energy, etc.
For each case, the researcher ran interviews with the promoters according to a six-chapter format that investigate the solution: • The solution: aims, key innovation and how it works; • The context: where the solution was conceived and why there, the promoter's motivations, a brief story and innovation of the concept; • The region: where the solution impacts, the system's actors;

(2a) Modelisation
At the end of the desk and field research activity, the designers understood the need to organise and normalise the amount of information collected in this phase.The main issue for researchers was to figure out models to compare the 12 in-depth analysed cases in order to address the new "urban questions" from the Milanese metropolitan region: how the region is changing toward sustainability, how and why the region and solution affect each other to flourish, the impact of certain kinds of solutions on a given area, how the solution could be replicated or scaled elsewhere, etc.
To address such an issue, the designers used social network analysis (SNA) by adapting its tools to describe the system of relations of each case.
During the mapping and in-depth analysis phase, regular focus-group and sharing meetings were set up with the other groups involved in the research Postmetropoli.

(2b) SNA tool
People and individuals live in more or less complex daily relational structures, ranging from family networks to professional networks, from the community of practice to the learning and interest community.Networks, both in analogical and digital forms, have a significant impact on people's lives and society.
It is arguable that social innovation expresses itself in new forms of relationships and the collaboration of the actors in a social system.We can assume that, within a selected case study of innovative welfare develop-ment, practices are implied relational models -reticular systems between the different organisations/individuals engaged -actors that can support the structuring processes of virtuous social practices.To describe the specific characteristics of each mapped practice, the research team chose an instrument that is able to "photograph" relational systems and organizational streams where, in order to identify and document possible models, one can scale or replicate it to other systems.The premise is the concept of network, which becomes a category of phenomenological scope: social networking (SN) is formed together by the actors involved in a specific phenomenon and with the peculiar relational dynamics in which they engage.SNA is a tool used in sociological research that introduces a technical view of these kinds of configurations, characterised by qualitative descriptors related to the measurability of sizes, weights and intensity of the relational structure that could be analysed (Salvini, 2007(Salvini, , 2005)).
Innovation in welfare policy is now often described in terms of the evolution of relational welfare, in community welfare and alternative forms of capital circulation (including social capital).Recent studies place increasing attention on the relationship between network practices and theories, methods and models in which one tries to study and investigate the potential convergences between the SNA and practices aimed at generating social resources for the whole community.In the Storiepossibili project, we have integrated the aforementioned research methodology of qualitative interviews and design services with a specific contribution inspired by the SNA and the assumptions that the SNA proposes.
SNA focuses on data describing the relationship that the person/organisation has with other parties, thus highlighting the importance of assessing the interdependence between the entities and the relevance of the relational structure within the observed phenomenon.For each collected case study, we reconstructed an "adjacency matrix" (inspired by the motivation matrix, a typical Service Design tool - Manzini et al., 2004, p. 114-116) that has allowed us to describe the involved actors and to objectify their acting in a series of "Roles".The motivation matrix evolves into a grid of "roles" in which they are compared with each other's, identifying the existence (or the absence) of a relationship (one to one) and even describing its quality.Researchers identified eight Roles (promoter, supporter, funder/funding resources, supplier, manager, enabled user, served user, partner) and, moving from them, drew a circular reference diagram (Figure 3).Data were re-arranged in a binary matrix, to be processed with several software dedicated to the development and SNA display.The quantitative and qualitative data, organised in matrices, were represented in the form of graphs, based on "sociogram" studies (Moreno, 1980).Roles became nodes on a map of concentric circles, with a position also in the vertical axis and lines that illustrate the relationships (edges) among the Roles.The data processing software is enabled to extract different descriptive metrics of one social system; in this analysis, researchers identified two parameters as being particularly representative of the networks: density and centrality, that is, the betweeness of Roles (the ability of each actor to be numerically dominant in active relational exchanges and as an indicator of "a player" crucial to the system, its mechanism and potential glue, in some cases).On the other hand, density represents the degree of cohesion between the network's roles.While centrality (betweeness) indicates the most strategic Subject for the network.Through the density observation, it is possible to see how they also distribute other nodes to more actively support the most central player.
Starting from the phenomenological observation of the graphs (related to the most significant 12 case studies), different relational models emerged: each with specific relational features, which implies a different innovation model for the organisation of roles and for the relationships between actors in the same system.The following sorting of the graphs, based on common features, was the ground for the description of 3 polarities to give shape to a new scenario for the next city.
(3) Scenario building By comparing the graphs with each other, looking at the main actor who is in the centre of the graph and who has the highest number out of all the possible relationships among the actors, and by following a deductive process, three clusters of cases were found and described, moving from the cases' features.Afterwards, these features were generalised through an inductive process to find an overall description of the scenario: an imaginary city comprised of three main "districts" (coming out from the clusterisation), which are the macro-trends towards which the city of the future is headed, and where the cases and the innovation take their place according to the most suitable trend.

Results
As previously stated, the researchers' main goal was to build a scenario to envision a plausibile, good and sustainable future for the metropolitan region, moving from the most promising existing practices.
The clusterisation of the cases, after the SNA, pointed out three typologies of relational models that were as equally considered as the main trends -shortly called Cities -for the scenario-building phase.The three Cities are not alternative, nor do they describe finite systems; rather, they are a condensation of micro-stories, conditions, and prerequisites that make each of them a coherent canvas of a possible viable and virtuous development: • the Systemic city, the city that activates circular systems to move, work, live, eat, educate, nurture, etc.; • the City-as-common, the city where local institutions are open to innovation and embrace signals coming from the grassroots to transform them into policies; • the Pro-active city, the city where citizens are creative, pro-active and collaborative.
Each City is a group of cases that share some common circumstances that make them possible and prosperous in the given context.In other words, the three trends correspond to lists of pre-conditions that are related to the next fields: • Funds: Every innovation needs some kind of funds that should be adequate for the purpose and the scope of the initiative: each solution needs specific funding terms to start up; • Market: The market in the area must welcome innovation: similar initiatives may hinder innovation and the region must show possible market gaps; • Local actors: Local actors, such as Bodies and Institutions, must welcome innovation and collaborate with its promoter(s) for it to result in successful innovation for the region; • Promoter: The promoter(s) is strongly motivated and committed for different reasons depending on the initiative (personal, economic, social, self-fulfilment, institutional, political...).The region has to acknowledge the promoter with his/her own clear role; • Infrastructures: Infrastructures to support the initiative are required in terms of spaces, devices and "soft" tools; • Business model: The business model should be defined at the very beginning of the design phase.It must be inclusive and shared with stakeholders.
The focus is on citizens' behaviours and social attitudes, rather than formalised relational processes.The scenario addresses local decision-makers, designers and citizens to open a debate on how the cities could move towards better regional development.
Such trends are three extreme visions for the future region: they can be activated in different ways, according to the region's specific premises.Planning an area's future, for example through a design-orienting scenario8 (DOS) (Bertola and Manzini, 2007) could be a useful tool to better understand and envision where the region is heading, moving from the available resources and the inner capabilities of the involved actors.The scenario's overall structure conceptually consists of three layers: • Layer 1 -General requirements: those regional and environmental premises which are fundamental to the development of the conditions to set up the three different trends.• Layer 2 -The three trend descriptions: three different ways, emerging from the three relational models, which give shape to the possible future region.Each trend is described by the region-specific premises, adapted from level 1, and some featuring cases • Layer 3 -The three trend examples are exemplified by describing the highest featured cases in detail.
In this narrative, the scenario was visualised with its Cities_trends.Illustrations were built through a collage of pictures and keywords inspired by the analysed cases.
The trends' features, related to the mentioned areas, are described in Table 1.
Each case study has been filtered by these parameters (Table 1) to form part of a trend.
Particularly interesting is the comparability of the case studies' relational polygons that belong to the same trend.
It is arguable to state that services in the Systemic City need to have many "Roles" -with similar intensityengaged in the network, to share ideas and actions; participants are involved in terms of practical sharing (e.g. of things, knowledge or other kinds of "goods") and not really with their values and identities.This is underlined by the graph due to the peripheral position of the nodes (which stand for the corresponding values of density for each Role) and is a crucial difference if related to cases in the Pro-active City.In fact, the Ases example is a case that is "in the middle" of the trends: the Roles are deeply engaged, as can be seen from the close position of the nodes, and acts more with a cooperative relational attitude.
Not less important, these kinds of relational models clarify the benefit to have a strong manager -as a main player -who is able to maintain cohesion in the network and to balance individualism.This description recalls a more recent definition of platforms that is not only experienced here in the digital world.One can observe another recurrence: the promoter could easily be the "second player" within which to implement or share a service's direction.
Cases associated with the City-as-common are dominated by the Promoter role.Also in this group of relational models, nodes are quite peripheral due to the "light" motivational engagement required.In addition, as opposed to other trends, it is possible to observe that some Roles could be inactive or, in other words, absent in terms of relational dynamics.The Centro Medico Sant'Agostino case is this trend's "outsider" and allows for further reflection: its relational system is quite close to a more traditional SME business dynamic in which the Manager directly interacts with Funders and Suppliers.However, in the system, the Promoter and final Users are also present and have "a voice".This could be highlighted as the fundamental difference that potentially opens each system -even the most rigid -to collaborative horizons.Collaboration takes shape in a wide range of outcomes, from active-listening practices to the co-delivery of services.
The relational models belonging to the Pro-active City places the Manager in the centre as a dominant figure.He is not a lonely player: the relational game is effective only with an important and deeply participative presence of other Roles such as Suppliers, Promoters and Funders that, in some cases, are also co-deliverers of the service itself.This trend clearly illucidates the significance of the Users' role, in their potential of both a served and enabled presence.One can state that these pictures fulfil the variety of relational models as an expression of Cooperativism.High motivation and multiple management9 are common goals.One critical point emerged in the qualitative survey: These systems are often close to new members and are truly focused on an emic efficacy (generally based on an inner and subjective perspective, even if collective).Pro-active city: the city where citizens are creative, pro-active and collaborative.

Funds
Financing bodies, such as institutions and foundations, open calls to fund the start-up of big and onerous initiatives; Promoters invest in the initiative (if no high amount of capital is required).
Promoters, who often coincide with financial bodies, can access high amounts of capital.
Promoters can activate self-funding, crowd-funding, or source external funding.

Market
The region shows the presence of unique social categories whose needs are not fulfilled by existing services (e.g., womens' workplace, work-family aid services); The promoters see and intercept an unexpressed need by potential providers, who lack the ability and the possibility to activate themselves and to be involved in the service provision chain.
The region contains unfulfilled common goods, such as prevention, health, education, energy and food.The region does not offer similar initiatives that are economically affordable to citizens.
Promoters and users feel that there is no response to their personal needs in the area (material, economic, residential, food) and activate themselves to trigger the solution.

Local actors
In the region, there are actors keen to cross and transfer competences to promote the initiative in other sectors.
Local Institutions are open to dialogue with the promoters.
Users' territorial proximity.Higher institutions, universities and research centres have good relations with promoters Local bodies and local associations support the promotion of the initiative in the area.
The solution design involves the local community and the public administration from the early stages.There is a strong influence of social promotion and volunteering association in the area.There are different types of actors in the same area (public administration, craftsmen, associations and local networks) that can be partners: this guarantees the initiative's economic and temporal sustainability.

Promoter
Promoters are strongly and personally motivated by social and environmental reasons.Promoters/managers foster the dissemination of the innovation model through training and educational activities for new operators.
The promoter has a clear identity and a strong structure, so as to influence and make the service well recognizable by the users Promoters are highly motivated, mainly due to various economic reasons: direct, when the initiative has a short-term economic impact; indirect, if the initiative provides the basis for future savings and/or a long-term common benefit.
Promoters are driven by a strong interest in research and experimentation; Users are strongly and personally motivated for social and environmental reasons.

Infrastructures
The initiative's prototyping demonstrates and verifies the validity for further development and the recruitment of new actors.The establishment of a formal and legal Stakeholders' Association to encourage the promotion of values.
The area contains underexploited and undervalued, unoptimised and non-operational infrastructures (buildings and public spaces).

Business model
The business model reflects ethical values in coherence with the initiative's.Involved actors are inclined to sign alternative contractual forms.
The shortage of resources, besides the presence of underexploited ones, leads to the process' optimisation to maintain low cost in service delivery.
Initiative's non-profit nature as an essential requisite.
Table 1.Main description of the three trends into the scenario, according to distinctive elements.

Most clear case studies
Zafferanami: is a local small producer of organic saffron in the northern area of Milan.It bases its model on the short chain and de-intermediation.People working in Zafferanami are equally paid and often use alternative currency to pay workers, such as LETS.
Mercato della Terra (The Earth Market) is a 0 km farmers' market in Milan and the first market in Milan to bring farmers together in a logic of synergy and sharing of competence and infrastructures.
Modus Riciclandi ReMida: is a cooperative that gives a second life to industrial waste by producing objects and crafts.
Autostrade carpooling: is the first and (so far) the only carpooling platform managed by Autostrade s.p.a., the biggest Italian tollways provider and manager.
Feeding the changing city: is a project that aims to introduce new vegetable species at km 0, suitable for immigrants' diets.

Conclusions
In this analysis, researchers identified eight Roles as a generalisation of the functions.This result allows designers to shift real actors playing in different systems, into neutral nodes with unique positions in each network.The description of relations, in terms of density and betweenness as vectors and numerical values, may help designers to understand systems without losing qualities such as participants' engagement and frequency of presence in the relational exchanges of each system.The choice of SNA tool is a way to compare a diversity of relational situations so as to prove possible recurrences.Conversely, it is possible rate a critical point such as the possible strong (or even aleatory) operator's discretion in the identification of Roles that may influence the relationship between them in the final graph.
Therefore, this mode allows the picturing of relational systems and the comparability of networking models that are otherwise too distant from each other.It appears to strongly contribute towards directing attention to the relational nature of social practices, helps to describe the evolution -and potential power-of Roles in active playing and the importance of partnerships' innovation, in term of governance, in the complex scenario of relationships between entities in the current welfare revolution (Cottam, 2011).A typical example could be the role that the public administration has to play in the new models and how the public interest is distributed over a larger network of responsibilities involving the private organisation, profit and non-profit, or directly over the city in a less structured form.
The SNA tool gave researchers a series of 12 pictures that stand for a "here-and-now" representation of the 12 networks beyond the selected services.The more central player is the most strategic Role to improve, keeping the system active in terms of relational exchange.The nodes' relative closeness is a sort of motivational rate of the network, that is useful to balance endogenous and exogenous forces and resources.
The variety of pictures should describe, rather than a standard idea of efficacy and efficiency to be reached, the idea of each system's relative functionality that needs to be framed within the right relational interpretation to be driven toward its fruitful, as well as best-growing, perspective.
In these terms, our version of the SNA tool could be applied in evaluation processes concerning collaborative ser-vices, contributing to decision-making strategies and policies.The city of the near future will profit from services that engage people, reduce the consumption of goods and promote positive societal values.In line with the results of the Post-metropolitan territories research, better inhabitation, participative governance and sustainability will spring from radicating, rather than radical, citizens' behaviours.Based on SNA graph observations, the research team defined the Storiepossibili Design-Orienting Scenario with these new attitudes: a horizon of active citizenship with many levels and forms of engagement -moving from a sharing economy and circular systems (as in the Systemic city:) applied to energy balancing, and optimisation of fluxes and productions to a massive openness of Institutions (City-as-common) able to promote and welcome active citizenship and participatory mechanisms, in general; and, trying to experiment, in different contexts and enterprising markets, by applying cooperative principles (Pro-active city).
The use of the SNA tool is twofold: it could be a compass to orient the design process into a specific tendency of development in a changing context, or to shift innovation from one relational background to another, by changing the requirements or premises (e.g., changing the strategic Role or pushing certain actors more towards the middle of the system, engaging them in a new way, and even inviting new stakeholders).

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Diagram of the desk research phase as an indepth analysis of some of the Atlas' specific issues.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The overall two-year research process plan.

Figure 3 .
Figure3.The picture is referred to as an example of a motivation matrix with unique modifications introduced by the research team; on the right, the "clock of Roles", such as the new conceptual framework to visualise -in a graph -the system of relations.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Visual outcome of SNA: example of the "clock of Roles" applied to the Remida case study.The illustration shows the three main observed data: statement of network, values of closeness, betweeness impact.See more details at www.storie-possibili.it.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.The picture illustrates the complex scenario of the Storiepossibili city, a plausible and "desirable" city of the future; it visually includes the three trends that emerged of a proactive city, city-as-common and a systemic city.Source: illustration by Gaia Cairo.

Figure 5 .
Figure5.The phenomenological observation of collected case studies highlighted three typologies of relational models that can be considered as three networking "families"/models able to support forms of social innovation and service implementation.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7.The "clock of Roles" referred to the case studies belonging to TREND1/Systemic city.A key relational attitude of this trend is sharing (e.g. of interaction: platform).

Figure 8 .
Figure8.The "clock of Roles" referred to the case studies belonging to TREND2/City-as-common.The key relational attitude of this trend is to collaborate (e.g. of interaction: active listening;Sclavi, 2003) or forms of participative governance.

Table 2 .
Case studies cluster, based on the three trends of the future cities.
Centro Medico Santagostino (Healthcare centre): the first private medical centre that can compete with public health in terms of users' economic affordability.Cohousing "La Corte dei Girasoli": the first cohousing supported by a local administration (City of Vimercate, MI).People living in the building share certain infrastructures and deliver certain public services to the community in return for the municipality's support.