Designing Systemic Change for Urban Ecosystems: A Framework for Assessing Social Innovation

Developing systemic changes for decarbonization and adaptation to climate change at urban level is a complex challenge which requires considering a systemic approach. Numerous cases, frameworks and theoretical models are described in the academic literature, starting to create a relevant body of evidence that designing social innovations at the urban level can change citizens’ mindsets and behaviours toward more sustainable practices, at both social and ecological level. Yet this rich and important body of knowledge is scattered across different fields and not yet systematized in a comprehensive framework that can provide actionable knowledge for social innovators, designers and policy makers aiming to design and assess social innovations. Based on a systematic multi-disciplinary literature review, we develop a framework for the design and evaluation of social innovations in climate ecosystems, which comprises the consideration of key main categories of indicators: context, input, social innovation actions (capacity building, SI top-down/bottom-up initiatives and scaling), and outputs (short term results, medium-term outcomes, long-term impacts). This framework has both theoretical and practical relevance as it can be utilized for managing complexity and for clustering social innovation initiatives and related indicators − which can be deployed for measuring the effectiveness of actions and policies in municipalities.