IFe

IFe Civic Lab is an experimental urban platform based in Milan’s Municipio 9, fostering collaborative urban practices through citizen engagement, academic research, and institutional partnerships. Publicly initiated in 2023, it is the outcome of a long-term action-research process born in the Dergano-Bovisa neighbourhood, where the CALL team has activated multiple collaborations over time. Today, it functions as a territorial interface where inhabitants, local associations, and students collectively reflect on everyday urban challenges, particularly concerning public spaces and mobility infrastructures. The Lab acts as a dynamic arena for creative processes and dialogues through hybrid participatory practices that combine digital mapping, face-to-face co-design, and deliberative formats.

At the heart of the initiative is the metaphor of fungi “ife” and mycelia, an urban mycelium where associations, informal groups, and local stakeholders act as connective tissue, nurturing a resilient ecosystem of situated knowledge and micro-transformations.

Thanks to international collaborations, such as the Horizon Europe ORBIS project co-conducted by the CALL team, IFe Civic Lab contributes to testing how grassroots civic initiatives can be integrated into urban decision-making ecosystems. Its activities advance slow mobility policies by aligning bottom-up needs with formal municipal strategies, using participatory tools capable of scaling deliberative practices within public policy frameworks. This ongoing collaboration underscores the relevance of intermediary structures capable of translating diffused civic knowledge into operational proposals. The project is currently engaged in an international research collaboration with the University of Aveiro, Portugal, Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences (Prof. José Carlos Mota), which is developing similar forms of theorisation and co-design.

The research dimension is also supported by CRAFT ‒ the Antifragility Lab at DAStU Politecnico di Milano, which provides a framework to investigate how collaborative practices enhance antifragility, reflecting on governance, innovation, and democratic experimentation in contemporary city-making.