Moral suasion > Community efforts> Changes.
Thanx @Alberto and @Noemi, your posts combined make sense of what is happening here at l’Isola District.
Last Wednesday we had a Kick off meeting to share the idea behind Open rampette to a crowd of local businesses, people with limited mobility, makers, associations, activists together with City of Milan civil servants as well as civil servants coming from neighboring cities.
Putting together these people, with a purpose, in the iconic La Stecca 3.0 community center created a favorable atmosphere, as such. The way the meeting was managed made also a difference. In fact City of Milan started “admitting” that the law (see above) was created without enough stakeholders’ engagements and it resulted in limited compliances. The meeting was the occasion to amend the situation by experimenting a talk at a different level based more on moral suasion than power games.
When @Rossana introduced the Open care approach and @Costantino talked about the co-design method, people were interested as well as suddenly engaged. It seems it worked. Since we announced we’d organize a couple of co-design sessions, we’ll see how many people will actively engage.
In her introductory speech, the City councilor Cristina Tajani said that helping enforcing this law isn’t just fair and mandatory, but it may also turn economically profitable for local businesses. Implying that more accessible businesses might have more clients among disabled and caregivers, but also among people that favors living in an equal opportunity neighborhood. This is the point to me. I have the feeling that this initiative is going to be successful here (a track of what’s going on will be provided as it happens) because of the nature of this area.
This place, even if it’s recently gentrified, succeeded in keeping its original community spirit. There are plenty of small independent shops, recreational spaces, associations and spontaneous groups. People who cares. In other words it doesn’t take a single specific reason to wish shops and restaurants to be accessible for all. People, at times, might just follow their sense of community and contribute.