The Italian SocKETs lab is taking a particular look on the circular economy landscape and how the use of advanced technology could transform the building and construction sectors as well as urban planning and regeneration.

During their first workshop, participants to the AIRI’s workshops had co-created two plausible scenarios in which innovation could support the transition towards a circular economy of the building and construction sector, which would both have an impact on different groups of the society:

  • innovation on buildings and cities, that will mainly impact on people’s everyday lives,
  • innovation of products and processes along the value chain, that will mainly impact on businesses and workers.

For their second workshop, held in March, which was open to a larger number and more varied group of stakeholders, AIRI’s team had the objective to validate and confirm these scenarios and ensure that they could integrate the perspective of each of the actors involved: Citizens and society at large, policymakers and professionals of the building and construction sectors.

Additionally, the goal of this session was to pinpoint concrete levers for the scenarios to be realisable, and identify in advance possible impacts, challenges and barriers.

The stakeholders involved provided many inputs on each scenario, for example:

  • In the scenario regarding buildings and cities, the theme of how to manage shared spaces emerges as a strong issue, and stakeholders expressed concerns on “who?” will take care (about both the spaces and the realization of this “possible future” itself);
  • In the scenario regarding the value chain, the major concern from all the stakeholders is about the large quantity of Small and Medium Enterprises and all the artisans working in the sector, which may experience enormous difficulties in the sector (technological and sustainable) transition and have high risks of being left out.

Some of the issues are common to both scenarios and emerged from all the different types of stakeholders, for example: the strong need of both information and formation about the sustainability aspects of buildings and built environment, but also the opportunities related to the use of emerging technologies.

Want to be involved in SocKETs?

If you want to join this societal engagement movement in Italy, reach Daniela, our Italian SocKETs lab leader!