Co-designing the future of a public space and its related services. The case of the Reggio Emilia Ducal Palace and its park.

This paper describes an extensive co-design process conducted by the authors, a group of researchers of the Polimi DESIS Lab, to imagine the future of the Reggio Emilia Ducal Palace and its park, in Italy. As an effort to co-design urban commons, it implied two main challenges: the first one deals with how urban commons might be co-designed, being characterized by diversity of actors and interests; the second one is connected to exploring how urban commons can be complemented including (public) services as an integral part of them, and thus, how to deal with their ‘intangible’ facet, that is about the interaction that will take place. The paper concludes reflecting on the opportunity of including the expertise of service design in creating the social and infrastructural conditions to foster the development of urban commons and to make it a standard for any project, since it contributes defining the public interest activities that shape an important part of the commons