The bottom-up approach is teetering. When sustainability does not match public participation: The case of an urban re-greening project in a small town in Northern Italy

Abstract

Local sustainable development projects can be fostered by public participation involving citizens and local organizations as stakeholders. On one hand multi-stakeholder approaches can increase acceptability of a project guaranteeing long term benefits to local society. On the other hand, diverging interests and percep-tions of different stakeholders (involved or not) can hinder implementation of sus-tainability projects. This paper analyzes a real case study of an innovative sus-tainability project in Northern Italy which fail in its participatory purposes. The project "Cantieri Rinverditi" has been a Re-Greening Vacant Urban Space project developed in San Rocco al Porto a small town in the Po valley in Lombardy, which is the highest region for soil loss due to urbanization in Italy. Through a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation I high-light the main difficulties and barriers which caused the lack of local citizens' par-ticipation to the project.