ENoLL at We Make Future 2026: Co-Design and the City of the Future

BolognaFiere, Padiglione 29, Stand C13-D14

What does it really take to build the cities of the future?

We tend to borrow our answers from fiction. Cloud City. Metropolis. Wakanda. Striking images, but they were built for screens, not for the people who will actually live in tomorrow’s neighbourhoods. Technology is only part of the answer. The real challenge is creating innovation with people, not just for people.

On 25 June, ENoLL joins the roundtable “Future Conscious Innovation” at WMF — We Make Future in Bologna, to explore how Living Labs help transform ambitious visions into solutions that can be tested, validated, and adopted in real life.

What is We Make Future?

We Make Future is one of Europe’s largest innovation festivals, held annually at BolognaFiere. It brings together researchers, public institutions, civil society, and technology leaders to explore how innovation can serve people and communities. Therefore, it is a natural setting for a conversation about citizen-centred approaches to urban development.

Who is on the panel?

Wim De Kinderen, Chairman of ENoLL and Programme Director European Affairs at Brainport Development, joins Gabriella Quaranta, our Head of Network, and Asia Guerreschi, researcher at the Open to Innovate Living Lab run by Clust-ER Innovate. The conversation is moderated by Alessandro Montanaro.

Between them, the panellists bring years of experience building Living Labs where citizens, not consultants, define what “smart” should mean. As a result, the discussion moves well beyond theory.

What will the conversation cover?

The session explores how co-creation methods translate abstract visions of the future into decisions that cities can actually make. Moreover, it examines what happens when futures studies, not science fiction, shape the smart societies we are building together.

This is not a panel about technology roadmaps. It is a conversation about process: who gets to define the city of the future, and how Living Labs create the conditions for that definition to emerge from the people who live and work there.

If you are interested in smart cities, digital transformation, open innovation, or the future of urban ecosystems, join us at WMF and discover how Living Labs are helping shape Europe’s future.