Multiple narratives for multiple visions: engaging citizens in building future scenarios for their city through participatory design and storytelling

The paper presents a context-based and cross-disciplinary research, reflecting on how a participatory design (PD)-driven approach, embedded with narrative structures, could stimulate citizens’ ability to envision plural understandings of their own city. The project is focused on the city of Ivrea, recently named for its industrial past in the UNESCO World Heritage List as "Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century", influenced mainly by Olivetti’s transformative action. The applied methodology demonstrates how the hybridization of PD processes with storytelling can trigger civic engagement and resilience within local communities, aimed at overcoming latent conflicts related to their past through PD-led activities. The co-creation of a common narrative dimension, shifting between real and fictional worlds and intended as an exploratory process, could engage citizens in envisioning future scenarios for their city, triggering their capability of analyzing and reframing past(s) and present(s) towards possible futures.