BolognaFiere, Padiglione 29, Stand C13-D14
When we picture the city of the future, we tend to borrow the image from fiction. Cloud City. Metropolis. Wakanda. These are striking visions, built for screens. However, they were never designed for the people who will actually live in tomorrow’s neighbourhoods.
On 25 June 2026, ENoLL takes to the Future Conscious Innovation stage at We Make Future (WMF) in Bologna to ask a harder question: what happens when co-design and futures studies, not science fiction, shape the smart societies we are building together?
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.
The roundtable features three voices with deep experience in Living Lab practice and urban innovation. Gabriella Quaranta, ENoLL’s Head of Network, joins Wim De Kinderen, Chairman of ENoLL and Programme Director European Affairs at Brainport Development. Researcher Asia Guerreschi from the O2I – Open to Innovate, run by Clust-ER Innovate, rounds out the panel. 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.
The session explores how co-creation methods translate abstract visions of the future into decisions that cities can actually implement. Moreover, it examines the role of futures studies in helping communities think beyond short-term planning cycles.
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 work in urban innovation, public policy, or participatory design, this is where theory meets practice.
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