The City of Lugano, Switzerland, as conformed today, is the result of a challenging aggregation process between several Municipalities (18 different Municipalities / realities), held between 2004 and 2013. This courageous and innovative choice led the city to change drastically, both in terms of number of inhabitants (almost tripled from 28’675 to 67’201), and of territorial surface (multiplied by six times – from 11.6 km2 to 75.8 k2 – second for territorial extension of the 10 largest Swiss urban centers).

In essence, starting in 2013, we found ourselves managing a new city to all effects. This awareness has led local politics to reason according to new paradigms with respect to the past and to embrace an approach based on data (data driven decision making) and on result of innovative data analysis and interpretation approach that are really applicable, relevant, objective and credible towards the population, economy and institutions. A new city also means a new population, for this reason the participatory involvement and the active feedback of the population have been just as fundamental aspects as the innovative data approach, which has characterized in a very important way the activity of the administration of the City of Lugano.

2013 also coincided with an important financial crisis linked to the banking sector, the main generator of local tax revenue. This led the public administration to manage the projects in an agile and innovative way, experimenting with different forms of financing in private public partnership and thus consolidating strategic partnerships with other important stakeholders. From 2013 to today, a process has begun to involve the population and the territory for new choices linked to a new institutional reality. Over the years, it became clear that they had embraced the “Living Lab” principle spontaneously but also for concrete needs.

All this led the City of Lugano to decide during 2018 not to simply act concretely but also to declare and formalize the spirit embraced for some time within the strategic alliance with USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano Switzerland, created specifically to this end. It was therefore decided to formalize Lugano Living Lab (LLL) with the purpose of continuously testing and applying new technologies (with emphasis on Artificial Intelligence, AI) in real-life-setting to enable positive change and overcome everyday challenges, ultimately improving the quality of life and the competitiveness of the City and the region. In this framework we decided also to apply for joining ENoLL, above all in order to expose and adopt the best international standards and quality oriented practices in a professional and transparent way already at this early stage.

LLL projects are carried out in collaboration with key research players in the AI field and variety of stakeholders: citizens, businesses, tech-companies, researchers etc. to initiate a process of co-creation with mutual benefit for the involved actors. End users are involved in every step of the process. Four projects are already realized, the first module of our light house project “Traffic Management” is in the realization phase and several other projects are ongoing or in the pipeline.

With LLL the City of Lugano tackles city and regional development with an innovative, user-driven and co-creative approach, allowing the solution to challenges that would remain unsolved otherwise. The involvement of the society (citizens, local associations, cultural groups, academia, private economy etc.) in the innovation process is a crucial feature for the executives of the City.