Cities become the places where challenges on climate change (clean energy and mobility), digitalization of the public administration and artificial intelligence for smart cities, sustainable growth and cohesion through a Circular Urban Economy model as well as social inclusion and the fight against poverty take on a European dimension. These issues enter all areas of European Union studies and bring new input to their methodology and teaching. SO_CITIES aims to build the idea of City as a vector to promote active citizenship and to spread (new) European common values in Europe and beyond, through:
- high-quality research based on a new legal paradigm that moves from the ‘local government law’ (typically state concept) to the ‘right to the city’, (a concept that overcomes state barriers), as recently stated in Europe;
- a set of teaching activities designed to develop a circular and integrated system of teaching activities;
- concrete support to local administrators and public civil servants for the implementation of a new model of administration (the so-called ‘shared administration’ that is spreading from Italy to other European countries), with a clear mission of the project: “from the Academic world to Civil society”
- a dissemination and exploitation strategy to share common European values among some European cities and to promote them in non-European countries, through the knowledge of the “Right to the European cities”.
Main outputs: 3 International Academic Conferences, open to students of Political and Social Sciences, Arts, Architecture, Interpretation and Translation, students from other universities and the general public; Individual and collective peer-reviewed publications; Website; 3 International Lectures for Latin American students and civil servants; new and update courses in different levels of education: from primary schools to Master’s students. N° of students reached 220-250 peer year; 3 Workshops with local administrators/public officers.