## **SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology** PoliMI SpringerBriefs

**Sabrina Bresciani · Francesca Rizzo · Francesco Mureddu**

# **Assessment Framework for People-Centred Solutions to Carbon Neutrality**

A Comprehensive List of Case Studies and Social Innovation Indicators at Urban Level

### SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology

## **PoliMI SpringerBriefs**

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Sabrina Bresciani · Francesca Rizzo · Francesco Mureddu

# Assessment Framework for People-Centred Solutions to Carbon Neutrality

A Comprehensive List of Case Studies and Social Innovation Indicators at Urban Level

Sabrina Bresciani Department of Design Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy

Francesco Mureddu Department of Design Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy

The Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal Brussels, Belgium

Francesca Rizzo Department of Design Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy

ISSN 2191-530X ISSN 2191-5318 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology ISSN 2282-2577 ISSN 2282-2585 (electronic) PoliMI SpringerBriefs ISBN 978-3-031-53110-1 ISBN 978-3-031-53111-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53111-8

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### **Preface**

All cities are facing the urgent need to reach climate neutrality: technological solutions should be complemented with people-centred perspectives to make projects sustainable and scalable. Social innovations are human-centred collaborative solutions that can provide an important lever towards net zero. Cities can design environments that foster the emergence and scaling of innovative social practices for sustainability. Based on the work developed within the EU-funded project NetZeroCities, the book presents a framework for categorization of social innovation solutions for climate neutrality at city level, and a clustered catalogue of indicators, which can be utilized by cities' public administrators to monitor and evaluate social innovation action plans to support people-centred, collaborative or co-designed solutions to lower carbon emissions. The framework is derived by merging top-down academic knowledge with bottom-up pragmatic case studies. It is relevant for scholars in the field of policy-making and design, as well as cities' transition teams, policymakers and consultants.

This research was funded the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 101036519 NetZeroCities.

Milan, Italy Milan, Italy Milan, Italy\Brussels, Belgium

Sabrina Bresciani Francesca Rizzo Francesco Mureddu

### **Contents**




### **Acronyms**


## **Chapter 1 Social Innovation and Co-design for Climate Neutrality: The NetZeroCities Project**

The complex and urgent challenge of reaching carbon neutrality requires systemic changes of our current systems. Starting from the acknowledgment that technological solutions alone are not enough to reach climate neutrality at the required speed, social innovation becomes a crucial lever for accelerating systemic transformation. Several projects and scientific evidence outline the benefits of a people-centred and co-design approaches to transitions. Yet, public administrators, policy makers and urban transition teams have limited guidance on how to embed social innovations in their cities' action plans, and on how to assess the progresses, outcomes and impacts of social innovation initiatives at urban level. Based on the work developed within the EU-funded project NetZeroCities, the book presents a framework for categorization of social innovation solutions for climate neutrality at city level, and a clustered catalogue of indicators, which can be utilized by cities' public administrators to monitor and evaluate social innovation action plans to support people-centred, collaborative solutions to lower carbon emissions.

#### **1.1 The NetZeroCities Project**

The NetZeroCities EU-funded project1 is the biggest climate neutrality experiment on earth, aiming to support European cities to drastically cut down greenhouse gas emissions through climate action to achieve *climate neutrality*, one of the biggest challenges our societies face today. NetZeroCities (NZC) recognises the need for cities to develop specific strategies that are tailored to suit local and regional contexts, supporting them with coaching and by developing and promoting new and existing tools, resources, and expertise into a One-Stop-Shop platform accessible to all cities through an online portal. Specific objectives of the NetZeroCities project are the

<sup>1</sup> https://netzerocities.eu/

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2024

S. Bresciani et al., *Assessment Framework for People-Centred Solutions to Carbon Neutrality*, PoliMI SpringerBriefs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53111-8\_1

following: (1) Develop an approach to support climate-neutral transformation in cities; (2) Help cities build capabilities and ways of working to advance systemic change using innovation; (3) Forge a platform for cities to use for all services and expertise critical to climate neutrality; (4) Facilitate a pipeline of cities accelerating towards climate neutrality,

A core element of reaching climate neutrality lies in the elaboration of Climateneutral City Contracts. To this end, it is crucial to be able to assess the progress made on path to climate neutrality, analyse achievements and enable learning for all local stakeholders as well as for other cities, by mean of monitoring and evaluating performance. Specifically, it is important to design and develop an evaluation framework for the social innovation components of the Climate-neutral City Contracts, and the stemming social innovation initiatives. To provide cities' transition teams' and public administrators with a comprehensive set of social innovation actions and related indicators, in this book we describe a social innovation impact assessment framework at urban level, which is currently utilized by within the NetZeroCities project.

Within the book, the following key questions are discussed:


#### **1.2 Methodology**

With the purpose to develop an impact assessment framework of social innovation for supporting climate neutrality at city level, a triangulation methodology is deployed, combining bottom-up knowledge derived from case studies of social innovation initiatives and policies that lead to reduce GHG, with a systematic analysis of scientific literature, frameworks and funded-project on the topic of social innovation for decarbonization. The knowledge gained from these complementary approaches is combined to derive categories, and resulted in ten categories, according to which intervention logics for social innovation are derived and presented in Chap. 2. Specific indicators for each of the 10 categories will be presented in Chap. 3. Finally, we provide a core set of indicators based on NZC pilot cities' feedback. These selected indicators are integrated into the NZC comprehensive indicators set,2 which includes GHG emissions indicators, economic indicators, co-benefits and other levels of change including democracy and participation.

<sup>2</sup> https://netzerocities.eu/results-publications/

#### **1.3 Structure of the Book**

The book provides firstly the rationale of deploying social innovation to support urban transitions (Chap. 2), followed by the impact framework (Chap. 3) and related indicators that cities can utilize for monitoring their effort. Implications for theory and practice, and discussion of future developments, conclude the book (Chap. 4). In more details, an overview of the content of each chapter is provided below.


The general intervention logic—a first step in setting up an impact assessment framework—is described, followed by the specific intervention logics for each category, which link actions to impact. By defining the project objectives and inputs with respect to the expected results in terms of outputs, outcomes and impacts, the intervention logics form the basis with regards to what the impact assessment methodology aims to measure.


of the framework and of the indicators are outlined, in particular for supporting evidence-based design. In terms of practical implications, policy makers, designers, politicians, and civil servants can utilize the presented assessment framework and select indicators for the assessment of cities' social innovation action plans for supporting climate neutrality.

#### **1.4 The Relevance of Social Innovation**

Social innovation is defined by the European Union as "new ideas (products, services and processes) which simultaneously satisfy social needs more efficiently than existing ones and create new and long-lasting social relationships and collaborations (Rizzo et al., 2020). Not only are these innovations good for society, but they also improve its ability to act." (Hubert et al., 2014). In addition, social innovation is characterized by "prototyping and quick experimentation to produce new products, services or production models that generate both social and economic value, improving community wellbeing and prosperity" (Lumbreras et al., 2022, p. 6). Social innovation practices can become levers of change toward system innovation to generate holistic solutions to societal challenges and create responsive ecosystems for social change (see NetZeroCities Quick Read3 for a more detailed explanation and examples). Such systemic changes are developed through inclusive and collaborative processes for generating people-centred projects and solutions to lower GHG emissions. Cities that supporting the emergence and strengthening of social innovation initiatives in cities, build citizens' and stakeholder capacity to address decarbonisation challenges, such as through the creation of new business models or novel cross-sector partnerships, creating engagement platforms for multiple actors to co-design and co-produce solutions contributing to decarbonisation, and supporting positive behavioural changes by responding to specific local needs and acting within cultural contexts (Lumbreras et al., 2022).

According to scientific literature there are multiple reasons for considering social innovation a relevant lever for decarbonization, which can be grouped in five progressive categories: from the most basic and necessary levels of (a) acceptance and (b) behaviour change, to (c) the systemic changes of socio-technical systems and (d) empowerment, which (e) influence wellbeing (Bresciani et al., 2023).

At the most basic level, the literature shows that if there is no acceptance by local governments, citizens, organizations and the various actors, energy transitions will fail (Gregg et al., 2020; Nakano et al., 2018). Social innovations can provide a relevant contribution for climate neutrality by initiating and fostering *behavioural change* toward more sustainable practices (Grottera et al., 2020; Loyarte-López et al., 2020; Mukai et al., 2022; Schanes et al., 2016). Schanes et al., (2016, p. 1033) report that "[t]he mitigation report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that behaviour, lifestyle, and culture have a considerable influence on

<sup>3</sup> https://netzerocities.app/QR-Social.

energy use and associated emissions and that stabilizing or lowering consumption, transitioning towards a sharing economy and adopting other behavioural changes have a high mitigation potential" (Edenhofer et al., 2014, p. 20).

Thirdly, a relevant number of scientific articles discussed how socio-technical systems can be disrupted by niche innovations that can reconfigure the system. In fact, "[s]uch transitions not only entail new technologies, but also changes in markets, user practices, policy and cultural discourses, and governing institutions" (Geels et al., 2008, p. 521). In a highly cited paper published on Science, Geels et al. (2017) discuss socio-technical transitions for decarbonization, offering an overall framework which takes into account technical and social aspects, including people behaviour and the relevance of framing the discourse, based on the case reported by Rosenbloom et al. (2016, p. 1275) that discuss and analyse solar electricity in Ontario through a "discursive approach to understanding multi-dimensional interactions within sociotechnical transitions" with a new analytic approach that connects discourses and storylines to transitions.

The most discussed reason for paying attention to social innovation when addressing carbon neutrality seems to be found in its ability of supporting actors' *empowerment* to take actions to tackle climate issues. Diepenmaat et al. (2020) published a theoretical paper with the eloquent tile "Why sustainable development requires societal innovation and cannot be achieved without this" in which they describe the business perspective on transitions and discusses societal innovation as a distinctive innovation type, by proposing an "innovation cube" and discussing the "need for broader partnerships for societal innovation based on multiple value creation" (p. 1270). They outline that sustainable development needs collective action for creating new systems, which in turn requires social innovation. Citizens need to take up a new role for finding and sustaining new business models for a circular economy (Diepenmaat et al., 2020). Wuebben et al., (2020, p. 567) conducted a systematic review of "Citizen Science and Citizen Energy Communities" for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and call for citizen science to supplement typical citizen participation formats in energy communities, as it engages citizens in research and increases their literacy regarding energy systems. Proving concrete examples through the case of Scotland's journey to decarbonization, Ostfeld and Reiner (2020) report on the effects of citizens' juries and focus groups. Agarwal et al. (2012), based on an analysis of climate adaptation policies in 47 least developed countries, provide key lessons for adapting such plans to local needs, such as increasing local autonomy, creating "mechanisms for information sharing among decision makers across sectors and levels of decision making; and (4) improve accountability of local decision makers to their constituents" (p. 565).

Finally, three recent papers focus on wellbeing, since it is (or should be) the final goal of all social and technological innovations. Engelbrecht (2018) highlights the need to consider wellbeing when assessing technological and social innovations because we cannot assume that innovations are desirable per se. We should rather keep focused on the final desired societal outcome. Hoppe and De Vries (2019) focus their work on wellbeing, arguing that "[i]n the context of energy transition social innovation can be defined as empowerment and social goals pertaining to the general wellbeing of communities" (p. 141). Creutzig et al. (2022) demonstrate that demand-side solutions for climate change mitigation are not only useful to support decarbonization but also to increase levels of well-being. Specifically, they propose a classification of three "mitigation potential of demand-side options: avoid, shift, improve" (p. 36) which seem relevant for classifying social innovations, in particular for the context of the circular economy.

A systematic literature review on the topic has been conducted by the authors (Bresciani et al., 2023), in which the reviewed papers are clustered and visualized and into a comprehensive map, utilizing the well-established logic model (Knowlton & Phillips, 2012) as the underpinning structure, with the newest labelling adopted by the European Commission for Horizon projects: results, output and impacts. The systemic literature review on the topic of social innovation for climate neutrality provides a complex and multi-faceted overview of the topic and surfaced the diversity of levels and perspectives adopted by researches in different fields. The framework provides guidance to be aware of the many levels of complexity, and the potential impact of deliberately designing the emergence and scaling of social innovations in cities for the wellbeing of communities (Hoppe & De Vries, 2019) and provides the scientific bases for the assessment framework developed in the next chapters.

#### **1.5 Social Innovation Case Studies**

In this section we provide an overview of 37 case studies that show how social innovation projects can foster climate neutrality, developed and analysed within the NetZeroCities project (Deliverable 9.1,4 Lumbreras et al., 2022). We present a brief explanation of each case and links to the related page on the NetZeroCities platform where further information for each case can be found. These cases provide the grounding for the bottom-up clustering of social innovation categories to build the evaluation framework, presented in the following chapters.

#### **Citizens Engagement**


<sup>4</sup> https://netzerocities.eu/results-publications/

barriers posed a challenge to engage with citizens for energy transition efforts. The city lab includes mobile participation opportunities, specific apps for a gamification approach. It explored measures for the neighbourhood such as energy role model flats and a neighbourhood fund (crowdfunding) for energy efficiency measures.

*Link*: https://netzerocities.app/resource-2758

#### *Project:* **PentaHelix**

*Location:* Zagreb, Croatia


#### *Project:* **Better Reykjavik**

*Location:* Reykjavik, Island


In practice, it is a platform for crowdsourcing solutions to urban challenges. It fullfils multiple democratic functions: agenda setting, participatory budgeting and policymaking. The platform incorporates several innovations: a debating system, a crowd-sourcing function, the submission of multimedia content and extensive use of AI to improve the user experience and submitted content. Better Reykjavik is an umbrella for several programs, including the city's participatory budgeting platform called "My Neighborhood" and the City Council's participatory lawmaking project "Your Voice". The platform is used by over 20% of city population (with over 27,000 registered users, primarily for participatory budgeting).


8 1 Social Innovation and Co-design for Climate Neutrality: The …


*Location:* Helmond, the Netherlands.

*Key concept:* Participatory building of a smart city district with 8 programs lines aimed at improving the quality of life.

*Abstract:* Brainport Smart District is a smart city district in the city of Helmond, the Netherlands. The mixed-use district, set on 380 acres, makes use of technology to create an environmentally and socially sustainable community. It has eight different program lines: Circular district, Participation, Social and safe district, Healthy district, Digital district, Mobile district, District with Energy and District with water. The district will be developed in response to the needs and habits of its 4,500 future residents and what is learned along the way through a living lab. Data sharing can improve residents' quality of life. For example, energy and food consumption habits can be tracked, leading to adjustments in supply and disposable income savings.

*Link:* https://netzerocities.app/resource-3887



#### **Energy**


*Abstract:* The energy cooperative KLIK (Križevci Climate Innovation Laboratory), was established in 2020 to help make Križevci an energy selfsufficient city, but above all to engage citizens in energy transition. KLIK works on identifying the needs of the local community, implementing technology in the social environment, empowering the local community through cooperation, joint creation and capacity building. *Link*: https://netzerocities.app/resource-2619

#### *Project:* **Valencia Local Energy Communities**

*Location:* Valencia, Spain

*Key concept:* Valencia promotes Local Energy Communities.

*Abstract:* The Valencia City Council promotes local energy communities by giving legal advice to citizens and communities and providing different private and public experiments guarantee the inclusive access.

> Local energy communities promoted by the City Council guarantee the energy access to the most vulnerable people working together with Social Services of the City. It provides template of legal form and facilitation workshops to create energy communities.

*Link*: https://netzerocities.app/resource-3110


*Key concept:* Crowdfunding to collectively raise capital to install energy efficiency measures in local community buildings engaging building managers. *Abstract:* Bristol City Council, for the SONNET City Lab, deployed crowdfunding as an investment activity to collectively raise capital to install energy efficiency measures in local community buildings. The Bristol municipality engaged building managers, working with the Bristol Energy Network, to assess the costs and energy-related savings associated with energy efficiency works in community buildings. They


#### **Behavioral Change**



#### *Project:* **Play!UC (Playing with Urban Complexity)**


#### *Project:* **Children ride sharing service**

*Location:* Helsinki, Finland


#### **Training and Education**




#### **Platforms**





#### **Systemic Urban Planning Approaches**



*Key concept:* Co-building of an ecovillage for ecological, economic and social

#### **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 2 Impact Logic: Social Innovation Categories for Cities' Action Plans**

How can cities' public administrators, policy makers or transition teams be supported in selecting and monitoring social innovation actions that support people-centred systemic solutions to reduce carbon emissions? Including social innovation in cities' climate city contracts and action plans, requires decision makers to consider the impact logic and impact pathways: which social innovation initiatives could lead to expected outcomes? In order to develop such impact logic, it is necessary to define categories of social innovations that can be implemented in urban or reginal action plans, for then identifying indicators for each category.

To develop such social innovation categories for the cities' action plan, we analysed existing social innovation action plans developed worldwide, and complemented this knowledge with theory of change theoretical models (Cooksy et al., 2001; Knowlton & Phillips, 2012; McLaughlin & Jordan, 2015; Shove, 2010; Treasury, 2007) and the overall theory of change and impact pathways of the NetZeroCities project (Chaudary et al., 2022) and related indicators' framework. Insight from case studies and scientific literature presented in the previous chapter, are mapped to the intervention categories for their further refinements from this bottom-up and top-down knowledge.

#### **2.1 Exemplary Cases of Social Innovation Action Plans**

Very few social innovation action plans have been developed and implemented by cities or regions worldwide. The following examples have been identified and analysed: Taiwan (Fig. 2.1), Montreal (Figs. 2.2 and 2.3) and British Columbia (Fig. 2.4).

**Fig. 2.1** Taiwan social innovation action plan<sup>1</sup>

#### **2.2 NetZeroCities Theory of Change and Impact Pathways**

In order to evaluate initiatives of cities' action plans related to social innovation for climate neutrality, the intervention categories have to be aligned not only with social innovation typical categories, but also with climate city contracts and action plans' categories aimed at reducing emissions. The NetZeroCities project's theory of change (Chaudary et al., 2022), provides the grounding of the intervention logic adopted in this book. In more details, the Theory of change of urban's transition toward climate neutrality (developed within the project) depicted in Fig. 2.5, identifies six emission domains (energy systems, mobility and transport, circular economy, nature-based solutions, green industry and built environment) and 6 levers of systemic change, which include (1) social innovation in addition to (2) technology and infrastructure, (3) governance and policy, (4) democracy and participation, (5) finance and funding, and (6) learning and capability. Tackling emission domains through the systemic levers of change, will create changes that can be measured with indicators (to assess specific outcomes), which will lead to long term impacts both in terms of direct GHG emission reductions, as well as co-benefits in terms of health and wellbeing, social impact, resource efficiency, economic impact, biodiversity and climate change adaptation (Fig. 2.6 based on Neuman et al., 2022).

<sup>1</sup>*Source* https://english.ey.gov.tw/News3/9E5540D592A5FECD/0b040d2e-170f-4dc8-9cc9-44a d9d9f3ba6.


**Fig. 2.2** Montreal action plan/1<sup>2</sup>

Within the NetZeroCities' Theory of Change work (Chaudary et al., 2022), impact pathways specific to social innovation are co-developed as presented in Fig. 2.7 and described in detail in Fig. 2.8 (for an extended explanation see: Chaudary et al., 2022).

<sup>2</sup>*Source* https://montreal.ca/en/articles/action-plan-social-innovation-13851.


**Fig. 2.3** Montreal action plan/2

**Fig. 2.4** British Columbia Social Innovation Action Plan<sup>3</sup>

<sup>3</sup>*Source* https://lillooet.bc.libraries.coop/files/2020/01/BC-Soical-Innovation-Council.pdf.

**Fig. 2.5** NZC theory of change—overall structure and its essential elements (developed in: Chaudary et al., 2022)

**Fig. 2.6** WP2 overall framework (developed in Neuman et al., 2022)

**Fig. 2.7** NZC social innovation impact pathways (developed in: Chaudary et al., 2022)


**Fig. 2.8** NZC theory of change for interventions in social innovation (developed in: Chaudary et al., 2022)

#### **2.3 Social Innovation Categories of a City's Action Plan**

Based on the aforementioned work, specifically the insights from social innovation action plans, the NetZeroCities' theory of change, cases studies and scientific literature, a set of ten social innovation categories of action plan are derived:


A detailed description of each category is provided in Table 2.1.

The case studies presented in this chapter are mapped to the Social Innovation Categories of the action plan in order to refine the categories and to ensure that they cover all the most relevant facets (Table 2.2).

#### **2.4 Relation to NetZeroCities Climate Transition Map**

In order to ensure consistency with the NetZeroCities project activities, the devised categories are mapped with respect to the NZC climate transition maps elaborated by the partners Dark Matters Lab and ICLEI Europe (Fig. 2.9) and available on the project platform as a guiding framework for the entire project.4

#### **2.5 Social Innovation Intervention Logic**

For each category of the (social innovation component of the) action plan, the definition of the intervention logics needs to be outlined. The intervention logic defines the project objectives and inputs with respect to the expected results in terms of outputs, outcomes, and impacts (Knowlton & Phillips, 2012; Treasury, 2007).

It is typically depicted in form of a process diagram. Establishing the intervention logic is the first step in setting up an impact assessment framework (Fig. 2.10).

The general intervention logic is based on NZC's aim to put in place a set of initiatives at city level aimed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all the while ensuring decarbonisation efforts are equitable and contribute to the well-being of European communities. It contains five evaluation stages, as defined below:


In that regard, the general intervention logic for the initiatives of the action plan related to social innovation is as follows (Fig. 2.11).

<sup>4</sup> https://netzerocities.app/ClimateTransitionMap.


**Table 2.1** Social innovation categories of the action plan


**Table 2.1** (continued)


**Table 2.1** (continued)

After the definition of the general intervention logic, an intervention logic for each of the ten aforementioned categories, based on exemplary social innovation cases, is provided.

#### **Category 1 Intervention Logic: SI Capacity Building of Public Officials and Policy Makers**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Social innovation capacity building of public officials, and policy makers" is depicted (Fig. 2.12). An exemplary case for this category is the PentaHelix project described in Chap. 1.

#### **Category 2 Intervention Logic: Social Innovation Skills of Citizens and Urban Stakeholders**

The specific intervention logic for the category "SI skills of citizens and urban stakeholders" is depicted in Fig. 2.13. Exemplary cases for this category are the projects Play!UC and Ecohouse Antwerp.

#### 2.5 Social Innovation Intervention Logic 31


**Table 2.2** Mapping of case studies


**Table 2.2** (continued)

#### **Category 3 Intervention Logic: Co-design of Policies with Social Innovators and Urban Stakeholders**

Here is depicted the specific intervention logic for the category "Co-design of policies with social innovators and urban stakeholders" (Fig. 2.14). An exemplary case for this category is Bologna's Citizen Collaboration Pacts.

**Fig. 2.9** The ten social innovation categories mapped on the NZC Climate Transition Map. Adapted from https://netzerocities.app/ClimateTransitionMap

**Fig. 2.10** Basic intervention logic

#### **Category 4 Intervention Logic: Co-creation of Social Innovation Initiatives with Citizens and Urban Stakeholders**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Co-creation of social innovation initiatives with citizens and urban stakeholders" is depicted in Fig. 2.15. Exemplary cases for this category are SONNET Mannheim City Lab and Bologna's Citizen Collaboration Pacts.

#### **Category 5 Intervention Logic: Funding/Supporting Community-Led Initiatives and Small-Scale Pilots/Experimentations**

Here is depicted the specific intervention logic for the category "Funding/supporting community-led initiatives and small-scale pilots/experimentations" (Fig. 2.16). An exemplary case for this category is You Decide.

**Fig. 2.11** General intervention logic

**Fig. 2.12** Intervention logic for the category "Social innovation capacity building of public officials and policy makers"

**Fig. 2.13** Intervention logic for the category "Social innovation skills of citizens and urban stakeholders"

**Fig. 2.14** Intervention logic for the category "Co-design of policies with social innovators and urban stakeholders"

**Fig. 2.15** Intervention logic for the category "Co-creation of social innovation initiatives with citizens and urban stakeholders"

**Fig. 2.16** Intervention logic for the category "Funding/supporting community-led initiatives and small-scale pilots/experimentations"

**Fig. 2.17** Intervention logic for the category "Enabling/supporting social innovation initiatives scale-up beyond pilots"

#### **Category 6 Intervention Logic: Enabling/Supporting Social Innovation Initiatives Scale-Up Beyond Pilots**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Enabling/supporting social innovation initiatives scale-up beyond pilots" is outlined in Fig. 2.17. An exemplary case for this category is Clean Cities ClimAccelerator.

#### **Category 7 Intervention Logic: Testing and Prototyping New Funding Mechanisms**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Testing and prototyping new funding mechanisms" is provided in Fig. 2.18. An exemplary case for this category is SONNET—The Bristol City Lab.

#### **Category 8 Intervention Logic: Public Procurement of Social Innovation Services for Sustainability**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Public procurement of social innovation services for sustainability" is depicted in Fig. 2.19. An exemplary case for this category is Oslo public procurement.

**Fig. 2.18** Intervention logic for the category "Testing and prototyping new funding mechanisms"

**Fig. 2.19** Intervention logic for the category "Public procurement of social innovation services for sustainability"

**Fig. 2.20** Intervention logic for the category "Urban planning for systemic social innovation"

#### **Category 9 Intervention Logic: Urban Planning for Systemic Social Innovation**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Urban planning for systemic social innovation" is outlined in Fig. 2.20. Exemplary cases are Paris: 15-min city, Superblocks and Climate Quarter Project.

#### **Category 10 Intervention Logic: Systemic Resource Circularity**

The specific intervention logic for the category "Systemic resource circularity" is provided in Fig. 2.21. An exemplary case for this category is the project Applause.

**Fig. 2.21** Intervention logic for the category "Systemic resource circularity"

#### **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 3 Indicators of Social Innovation for Cities' Action Plans Evaluation**

For each of the ten categories of the social innovation component of an action plan (SIAP), a set of indicators is developed which can be utilized by the public administration to monitor implementation and outcome of social innovation actions at urban level.

In this chapter, a comprehensive catalogue of over one thousand indicators is provided, according to the ten social innovation categories described in this chapter and cluster according to the five criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, replicability, scalability explained in the next section. Indicators are derived from scientific literature, existing projects or, when not available from existing sources, developed by the authors.

#### **3.1 Impact Measurement and Evaluation Approach**

In general terms the evaluation will take place at the level of the cities' action plan, and at the level of initiatives stemming from the single categories of the action plan. The evaluation approach is based on indicators, which build on the intervention logics in Chap. 2 and are integrated with indicators extracted from existing frameworks. The evaluation criteria for the plan are effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, replicability, and scalability (European Union, 2021). These criteria are applied to each city but tailored according to the respective objectives of each city.

• The **effectiveness** criterion refers to the capability of the plan to reach its intermediate and strategic objectives. The evaluation considers the quality of the plan proposed solutions, its community engagement, how the technical solution interacts within existing technical and dataset ecosystems, as well as how effectively it has improved urban sustainability;

**Fig. 3.1** Impact assessment metric development process


Figure 3.1 outlines the impact assessment metric development process. Firstly, overall project objectives and plan-specific objectives are defined and then evaluation criteria are established. Next, general evaluation questions are created, followed by specific evaluation questions. These questions are translated into indicators that will measure the project's and plan's achievements and success. Finally, the process includes consideration of the necessary sources where the indicator data is gathered from.

At the overall level of the city's action plan, all the evaluation criteria are considered. For each of the ten categories, the focus is on the criteria of effectiveness and efficiency. Finally, input, output and outcome indicators are developed, which will serve as a basis for the elaboration of the indicators related to the evaluation criteria:


The evaluation of the plan excludes the use of the Social return on investment (SROI): although SROI is an internationally recognized performance management


**Table 3.1** Sources of indicators

method, utilized by social enterprises to demonstrate the social, economic and environmental value they create, the method is not free of challenges for social enterprises and social innovation initiatives (Arvidson et al., 2010; Millar & Hall, 2013) and it is focused on assessing impact in economic terms, shifting the focus from the necessary systemic changes aimed for in the NZC project. While knowledge of the SROI performance measurement tool can be useful for social innovators and public officials, this performance assessment method is suggested only as an optional tool in evaluating the single initiatives stemming from the plan.

### **3.2 Existing Indicators**

Indicators are sourced from extant publications and catalogues of indicators related to social innovation from scientific literature and research projects (Table 3.1):

#### **RESINDEX**

The Regional Social Innovation Index (RESINDEX) Model (Unceta et al., 2016), is the result of a research project funded by Innobasque, the Basque Innovation Agency and comparing the potential capacity to the realized social innovation capacity. It comprises a series of indicators grouped in three indexes: (1) capacity for potential innovation—composed of (1a) capacity for knowledge, (1b) capacity for earning, (1c) capacity for socialization, (1d) capacity for development, (1e) capacity for Association; (2) realized capacity of social orientation index—composed of (2a) knowledge acquisition, (2b) development of social projects, (2c) impact of social projects, (2d) governance, and (3) realized capacity of social innovation index—composed of (3a) knowledge acquisition, (3b) development of innovative social projects, (3c) impact of innovative social projects and (3d) governance.

#### **SIMRA**

A comprehensive evaluation framework for evaluating social innovation has been developed by Secco et al. (2019a) and applied to a variety of contexts, from forestdependent rural communities (Secco et al., 2019a), to social farming, community energy, food cooperatives. The framework is the backbone of the EU-funded project SIMRA (Social Innovation for Marginalized Rural Areas) and has been utilized for the assessment of social innovations across Europe. It was developed based on a literature review of over hundreds of existing frameworks (Secco et al., 2019a) with the aim of developing a method and categories for evaluating social innovations. The resulting SIMRA framework builds in particular on the approach of the Theory of Change, detailing the causal mechanisms that led to changes, which is the base of any evaluation approach. The comprehensive SIMRA framework (Secco et al., 2017) includes an analysis of the context, and this takes into account 9 main elements: (1) the trigger (that is, individual and collective needs), (2) the perceived context at international, national, regional and local level, (3) the agents (ideas, values, willingness, reflexivity, capacity for change) which influence the context and the (4) preparatory actions for collective benefit, which in turns affect the (5a) reconfiguring of the system. The (5b) reconfigured systems (new networks, new government arrangements and new attitudes), lead to (6) project activities with specific procedures and practices. Such social innovation activities produce (7) outputs in the form of identifiable products and service, which in turns produce (8) outcomes and impacts (positive or negative) on economic, social, environmental and governance/ institutional aspects. Finally, (9) the learning processes provide feedback loops and multiplier effects, to inform the context and the social innovation activities. In practical terms these nine key aspects are assessed with a mixed quantitative–qualitative methodology (Secco et al., 2017) and a combination of expert and participatory-based evaluations (Secco et al., 2019a).

#### **EU POLIS**

The project EU POLIS is an EU-funded project aimed at developing an "Integrated NBS-based Urban Planning Methodology for Enhancing the Health and Well-Being of Citizens" (Zafeiropoulos et al., 2021). As part of the project, indicators are defined to assess the baseline status/challenges of the demonstration cities in five living categories: urban, social, environmental, economic, health and wellbeing (Bozovic et al., 2021).

#### **Evaluating the Impact of Nature-Based Solutions**

Finally, the Evaluating the Impact of Nature-based Solutions—Appendix of Methods (Dumitru & Wendling, 2021) published by the EU Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, is a 1077 page long catalogue of indicators related to Nature-Based Solutions, democratic participation, health and other outcome and impact measures, mostly based on EU-funded projects and scientific literature.


**Table 3.2** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) in the general cases

#### **3.3 Evaluation Questions and Indicators in the General Case**

Firstly, the evaluation questions and indicators for the general case are produced by the research team and mapped from existing frameworks, for all the five criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, replicability, scalability). Table 3.2 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.3 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.4 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.5 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Relevance (own elaboration).

Table 3.6 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Replicability (own elaboration).

Table 3.7 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Scalability (own elaboration).




**Table 3.4** Evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration) in the general cases


**Table 3.5** Evaluation questions and indicators of Relevance (own elaboration) in the general cases

#### **3.4 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 1: Social Innovation Capacity Building of Public Officials and Policy Makers**

Table 3.8 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.9 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.10 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.11 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.


**Table 3.6** Evaluation questions and indicators of Replicability (own elaboration) in the general cases




**Table 3.8** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 1: Social Innovation capacity building of public officials

#### **3.5 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 2: Social Innovation Skills of Citizens and Urban Stakeholders**

Table 3.12 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.13 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.14 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.15 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.

#### **3.6 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 3: Co-design of Policies with Social Innovators and Urban Stakeholders**

Table 3.16 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.17 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).




**Table 3.11** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 1: Social Innovation capacity building of public officials

**Table 3.12** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 2: Social Innovation skills of citizens and urban stakeholders






**Table 3.15** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 2: Social Innovation skills of citizens and urban stakeholders

Table 3.18 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.19 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.

#### **3.7 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 4: Co-creation of Social Innovation Initiatives with Citizens and Stakeholders**

Table 3.20 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.21 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.22 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.23 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.


**Table 3.16** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 3: Co-design of policies with social innovators and urban stakeholders

#### **3.8 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 5: Funding/Supporting Community-Led Initiatives and Small-Scale Pilots/Experimentations**

Table 3.24 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.25 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.26 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.27 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.





**Table 3.19** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 3: Co-design of policies with social innovators and urban stakeholders

#### **Table 3.19** (continued)


#### **3.9 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 6: Enabling Social Innovation/Entrepreneurship Initiatives Scale-Up Beyond Pilot Projects**

Table 3.28 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.29 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.30 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.31 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.


**Table 3.20** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 4: Co-creation of Social Innovation initiatives with citizens and stakeholders

#### **3.10 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 7: Testing and Prototyping New Funding Mechanisms**

Table 3.32 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.33 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.34 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.35 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.


3.10 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 7: Testing … 61





**Table 3.23** (continued)


**Table 3.24** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 5: Funding/supporting community-led initiatives and small-scale pilots/experimentations



**Table 3.27** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 5: Funding/supporting communityled initiatives and small-scale pilots/experimentations



**Table 3.28** Input/output/outcome Indicators (own elaboration) for category 6: Enabling Social Innovation/entrepreneurship initiatives scale-up beyond pilot projects

#### **3.11 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 8: Public Procurement of Social Innovation Services for Sustainability**

Table 3.36 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.37 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.38 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).





**Table 3.31** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 6: Enabling Social Innovation/ entrepreneurship initiatives scale-up beyond pilot projects

**Table 3.32** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 7: Testing and prototyping new funding mechanisms


Table 3.39 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.

#### **3.12 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 9: Urban Planning for Social Innovation**

Table 3.40 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.41 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).

Table 3.42 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.43 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.



**Table 3.35** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 7: Testing and prototyping new funding mechanisms


**Table 3.36** Input/Output/Outcome Indicators (own elaboration) for category 8: Public procurement of Social Innovation services for sustainability


#### **3.13 Evaluation Questions and Indicators for Category 10: Resource Circularity**

Table 3.44 shows the input/output/outcome indicators elaborated by the research team.

Table 3.45 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Effectiveness (own elaboration).





Table 3.46 depicts the evaluation questions and indicators of Efficiency (own elaboration).

Table 3.47 depicts the indicators from existing frameworks mapped to the category, and mostly related to effectiveness/impact.

#### **3.14 General Indicators**

This final subsection depicts a series of evaluation indicators for initiatives stemming in general from the plan and its categories of implementation (Table 3.48).

Finally, Table 3.49 provides a summary of the number of indicators per category, per criteria (effectiveness—EFFE, efficiency EFFI, sustainability—SU, replicability—RE, scalability—SC), ad distinguishing if own (O) or mapped (M) from an existing framework (Table 3.49).


**Table 3.40** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 9: Urban planning for Social Innovation





**Table 3.43** Indicators from existing frameworks for category 9: Urban planning for Social Innovation


**Table 3.44** Input/output/outcome indicators (own elaboration) for category 10: Resource circularity








#### **Table 3.48** (continued)



#### **Table 3.48** (continued)





#### **References**


European Union. (2021). Better Regulation Guidelines. Brussels


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 4 Applying the Indicators in Cities**

In the previous chapters, over one thousand indicators for assessing the social innovation component of cities action plans have been presented, according to defined categories. The practical and theoretical implications of such catalogue of indicators are discussed, firstly providing concrete steps and checklists for deploying indicators in city by publica administrators, policy makers and transition teams members. Secondly, a set of 40 process indicators is provided to equip cities with questions for progressive evaluation and reflexive learning. Finally, theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.

### **4.1 Operationalization of the Impact Measurement Tool**

The following table presents a checklist of the steps that city administrators have to follow in order to apply the indicators to their local case.





#### **4.2 Process Indicators and Questions for Reflexive Learning**

The large number of indicators identified and described in the previous chapter provides a comprehensive catalogue of indicators that cities can select based on their specific needs and aims. Based on the work developed in the NetZeroCities project, experts' opinion and cities' feedback, questions for progress evaluation are developed and included to provide cities with reflexive questions for qualitative indepth evaluations of progresses, related to specific actions, explained in detail in related publications and project deliverables (Bresciani et al., 2023a, b).

To support cities in the selection of indicators, a set of core indicators is presented in Table 4.1: the structured list can be utilized by transition teams and public administrators to monitor progresses of their efforts to leverage social innovation for supporting climate neutrality and it comprise both quantitative and qualitative answers, related to actions as defined in Bresciani et al. (2023b).

#### **4.3 Scientific Implications: Responding to the Need for Assessing People-Based Solutions for Sustainability and Climate Neutrality**

The focus on reflexive learning and quali-quantitative assessment is rooted in scientific evidence. In the scholarly article "Why sustainable development requires societal innovation and cannot be achieved without this", Diepenmaat et al. (2020) review multi-disciplinary perspectives related to societal innovation for sustainable development. The authors propose the need to acknowledge that "actors require each other in realizing their own needs and wishes and may help each other in this respect. Contextual aspects are embedded through the improvement perspectives (Diepenmaat et al., 2020). Their work presents a co-evolutionary understanding of innovation-based transformations, which is based on an iterative relationship between innovations, improvement perspectives and socio-economic transformations (Diepenmaat et al., 2020, p. 3). They specifically frame societal innovation as systemic type of innovation which requires design thinking and system building. The focus on design thinking finds justification in the ability of the method in facilitating the identification of configurations that are suitable for diverse types of actors. They base their argument on the work of Ceschin and Gaziulusoy (2016) who highlight how the focus of design has broadened to include socio-technical system innovation. Such sociotechnical transitions are required for deep decarbonization (Geels et al., 2017) and entails a shift in the way the transition to carbon neutrality is framed and communicated to the broader public (Rosenbloom et al., 2016). Terstriep et al. (2020) provided a framework for favourable social innovation ecosystems, while Engelbrecht (2018) outlined how the nexus between social innovation and perceived wellbeing can be assessed. According to Unceta et al., (2020, p. 908), social innovation "measurement


**Table 4.1** Selection of qualitative and quantitative indicators of social innovation


**Table 4.1** (continued)




**Table 4.1** (continued)


**Table 4.1** (continued)


**Table 4.1** (continued)


**Table 4.1** (continued)


**Table 4.1** (continued)


**Table 4.1** (continued)


and socioeconomic impact have been for a long time a required and challenging area of research inside SI studies, acknowledged by the research community, policymakers, social investment funds, practitioners, social entrepreneurs and social innovators themselves. However, there is still a lack of consensus on what are the major and determining methodological tools and indicators involved in its measurement and impact assessment. Despite this difficult task, there are three approaches that can be identified in the academic field which seek to build a system of indicators for SI measurement: 'the individualistic approach', 'the organizational approach' and 'the regional/national approach' (Unceta et al., 2016)."

The structured catalogue of indicators provided in this book offers a first answer to these calls to action for the context of carbon neutrality.

#### **4.4 Future Developments and Applications**

In this book we have provided indicators and assessment methods of the social innovation categories of cities' action plan. In order to assess the impact of social innovation, it is necessary to measure which activities lead to which outputs (direct result), outcomes (intermediate results) and impacts (long-term results). The developed methodology focuses on measuring the effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, replicability, and scalability of the social intervention in the future pilots devising ten categories of interventions ad produced a set of intervention logics and indicators for the general case and for each related category. Next, key indicators have been selected and adapted to cities' needs of progressive evaluation and reflexive learning: such selected core indicators are part of the NetZeroCities comprehensive indicators set.<sup>1</sup>

Over one thousand indicators have been proposed and clustered in this volume. This broad set of indicators can be utilized by cities to select indicators relevant for their specific local needs, according to their readiness level in terms of sustainability and social innovation. The core indicators are currently being utilized in the NetZeroCities project and refined through testing with cities, adapting them according to the feedback provided by the co-design of impact assessment framework with each pilot city of the project. From this pragmatic application, several important theoretical implications can be derived: the developed social innovation evaluation framework provides scholars with a solid and comprehensive assessment methodology. Results of assessments based on the framework, through the indicators, can support scholars testing hypotheses and theory of change models, in addition to providing evidence-based design guidelines for selecting people-centred solutions to reach climate neutrality in cities.

Policy makers, civil servants, public administrators, service designer and relevant stakeholders can be informed by the results of applying the social innovation assessment framework.

#### **References**


<sup>1</sup> Available at https://netzerocities.eu/results-publications/ under the WP2 category, as well as on the project Knowledge Repository and Portal.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.