CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB

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CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB

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CALL - Cities in Action for Learning Lab is an interdisciplinary Research Group at DAStU, POLIMI

CALL explores the multiple objects and dimensions of transition processes from urban and community perspectives. Research activities investigate mechanisms and dynamics affecting transformative innovation in multiple domains, ranging from bottom-up initiatives to policymaking. Current Projects:
MESOC - MEasuring the SOcial impacts of Culture - https://www.mesoc-project.eu/
DIGISER - Digital Innovation in Governance and Public Service Provision - https://www.espon.eu/DIGISER
EasyRights - Immigrant Services - https://www.easyrights.eu/
YAK AROUND - Il Teatro attraverso lo spazio fragile - https://www.karakorumteatro.it/yak-around/

Past Projects:
DESIGNSCAPES - Building Capacity for Design-enabled Innovation in Urban Environments - https://designscapes.eu/about/
POLIVISU - Policy & Data Results Hub - https://www.polivisu.eu/
Safari Njema - Supporting Sub-Saharan paratransit mobility policies through big data analysis - https://www.safari-njema.polimi.it/
Open4Citizens - Empowering Citizens to make meaningful use of open data - http://open4citizens.eu/

18/09/2026

When does a public service truly enable integration?

Is a public service accessible simply because it exists online? What happens when accessing education requires navigating unfamiliar administrative language, digital identity systems, complex procedures and fragmented information? And who fills the gap when public institutions become difficult to navigate? 🔍

These questions are at the heart of Enabling Immigrant Integration: The Role of Public Services, the new open-access volume edited by Maryam Karimi and Grazia Concilio and published by Springer Nature.

Drawing on research developed through the in Milan’s San Siro neighbourhood, the book examines school-related services as a critical gateway through which immigrant families encounter public institutions and exercise their rights.

At the centre of the volume is , a user-centred framework for examining the enabling capacity of public services through three interconnected dimensions: language accessibility · information adequacy · actualisation of rights.

The book brings together field research with immigrant families, interviews with service providers and intermediaries, participatory evaluation and co-design, and analysis of digital public-service infrastructures. Together, the contributions invite us to shift the integration debate: from focusing primarily on migrants’ ability to navigate institutions towards questioning institutions’ capacity to enable people.

With contributions from Grazia Concilio, Giada Casarin, Laura Galluzzo, Nour Bergaoui, Mathyas Giudici and Marco Brambilla.

📖 The volume is fully Open Access, you can read it via the link in our bio.

We'd love to hear what you think of it !

14/07/2026

🌍 CALL lab at the 6th World Planning Schools Congress in Helsinki: Peripheral Visions, Rethinking Planning.

We had the pleasure of participating in five different sessions over the course of the week, spanning governance, digital co-creation, science-policy dialogue, sustainability experimentation, and the future of AI in cities !

🔹 Valeria Fedeli & Daniele Viarengo presented their work in the conference “Territorial cohesion: between policy frameworks, needs and local-regional institutional capacity”, taking a look at a decade of Cohesion Policy and pandemic-era funding in Lombardy, and whether resources reached the municipalities that needed them or not.

🔹 A special session was dedicated to "ORBIS Deliberative Pathways" on digital and transdisciplinary co-creation for planning and governance. It was presented by Anna Moro, Grazia Concilio & Anna De Liddo.

🔹The next day, Valeria Fedeli, Anna Moro, Ilaria Tosoni & Daniele Viarengo showcased their work during a conference titled “City Science Exchange: how to reinforce a dialogue among cities and science”, examining how cities and science can build better dialogue, with a special focus on CRAFT DaStU, Politecnico di Milano'scompetence center.

🔹Irene Bianchi, Grazia Concilio & Maria Vitaller del Olmo shared findings from and how art-science prototyping was used to "hack" urban sustainability practices in Jerez de la Frontera, Milan and Łódź, in “Hacking Practices for Urban Sustainability Transition: Insights from Prototype-Based Experimentations".

🔹 CALL's final contribution was "The AI shake: opportunity or threat for urban systems?" moderated by Grazia Concilio and Maryam Karimi, with the participation of Valeria Fedeli, Oren Yiftachel, Anna De Liddo, Camilla Perrone, Dino Borri, Claudio Rossi and Michelangelo Secchi. It was organised around two complementary perspectives, the ethical and cultural implications of AI for planning, citizenship, and democracy; and the operational challenges and opportunities of using AI in complex urban systems and public governance.

02/07/2026

📍 Three days of dialogue on imagining new urban futures, with six contributions presented by CALL!

From 10 to 12 June 2026, CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB joined the 28th SIU National Urban Planning Conference in Palermo titled « Future Places. Learning together to imagine our living ».

The team contributed across a variety of themes:

🤖 Data centre siting strategies and the digital transition
🏢 City science and urban innovation in Amsterdam
♻️ Climate-neutral urban planning
🧑‍🎨 Co-creative sustainable landscapes
🌍 Civic ecologies and environmental infrastructure in Milan
🫶 A new collaboration with Casa dei Diritti Sociali in Palermo on inclusive public services for migrants

Presented by our research group: Elena Acerbi, Matteo Giacomelli, Maryam Karimi, Irene Bianchi and Valeria Fedeli, alongside colleagues from CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB.

Read the full recap in bio 👉

Stay tuned, the full papers will be published in the conference proceedings over the coming months on Planum Editore website!

Climaborough

02/07/2026

📍 Three days of dialogue on imagining new urban futures, with six contributions presented by CALL!

From 10 to 12 June 2026, CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB joined the 28th SIU National Urban Planning Conference in Palermo titled « Future Places. Learning together to imagine our living ».

The team contributed across a variety of themes:

🤖 Data centre siting strategies and the digital transition
🏢 City science and urban innovation in Amsterdam
♻️ Climate-neutral urban planning
🧑‍🎨 Co-creative sustainable landscapes
🌍 Civic ecologies and environmental infrastructure in Milan
🫶 A new collaboration with Casa dei Diritti Sociali in Palermo on inclusive public services for migrants

Presented by our research group: Elena Acerbi, Matteo Giacomelli, Maryam Karimi, Irene Bianchi and Valeria Fedeli, alongside colleagues from CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB.

Read the full recap 👉 https://lnkd.in/emnSs45p

Stay tuned, the full papers will be published in the conference proceedings over the coming months on Planum Editore website!

ESPON Programme, CLIMABOROUGH, PALIMPSEST

30/06/2026

The new TWINVERSE project officially kicked off in Turin ! 🥳

With a two-day kick-off meeting bringing together all 26 consortium partners and representatives from European cities, the event marked the transition from proposal to practice for this Horizon Europe Innovation Action.

TWINVERSE develops AI-enhanced Local Digital Twins to support cities on their path toward climate neutrality. The project will run until 2029 across five european mission cities: Milan, Cork, Kalamata, Lappeenranta, and Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Matteo Giacomelli, represented CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB during the kickoff, alongside partners from Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Belgium, and Serbia.

🔗 Find out more about the kickoff and the TWINVERSE project in our bio!

CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB is proud to join the consortium to build AI-enhanced climate-neutral cities 🦾

—-
Politecnico di Milano Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani - Polimi RINA Fondazione Piemonte Innova

23/06/2026

What does co-creation look like at European scale? The answer might lie in NEBULE! 🌍

NEBULE is a cluster of 10 Horizon Research & Innovation projects, including , coordinated by Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani - Polimi at Politecnico di Milano. The cluster brings together a remarkable diversity of voices: social sciences and humanities, arts and technology, cultural and creative industries, academia, public institutions and civic associations; all working toward more sustainable, inclusive and meaningful futures.

At the New European Bauhaus Fair 2026, that dialogue was on full display. 🏛️
Grazia Concilio had the opportunity to present ’s vision and achievements to EU Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva (responsible for Start-ups, Research and Innovation) and to Enrico Giovannini, scientific director of ASviS (the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development) and former Italian Minisiter.

A recognition that transdisciplinary research, when rooted in real places and real communities, reaches the right rooms. ✨

05/05/2026

💫 Landscapes in Trouble, Landscapes in Action by Francesca Berni and Irene Bianchi , published by - the conversation continues.

📖Swipe to explore selected excerpts: fragments drawn from the authors’ essays, offering a first glimpse into the volume.

The book originates within as a corpus of conversations, unfolding over three years through exchanges across disciplinary boundaries and fields of experimentation.

Across its pages, landscape is understood as a living, contested process. What unfolds is a plurality of voices, ways of observing, listening, and acting, a resonant collective effort to engage with complexity and change.

Contributions by:
João Nunes , Giacomo Borella (Studio Albori), Francesco Careri , Marta Cuscunà (Dialogues section)
Michael Jakob , Massimo Venturi Ferriolo , Annalisa Metta , Sanna Lehtinen , Irene Bianchi , Giambattista Zaccariotto , Matteo Vianello (Perspectives section)
Luca Befera , Oriana Perisco , Natalia Agati .sse, Sergio Rodríguez Estévez , María Salas Mendoza Muro , Francisco José Pazos García , Estelle Jullian (Experiments section)

Scientific Committee: Daniela Colafranceschi, Katerina Gkoltsiou , Pier Luigi Sacco .sacco21, Ilaria Valente

📖 The volume is open access and available, link in bio!

28/04/2026

🙋‍♀️ What does it mean to plan for reconstruction in the midst of a conflict? To what extent can planning serve as a compass in conditions of radical uncertainty and help us « strategically navigate » in the face of evolving conflict dynamics? How is the relationship between long-term perspectives and operational needs discussed and continuously (re)defined?

These are just some of the questions we had the pleasure of discussing last week with Marharyta Borysova and Anastasiia Popovych from .ukrain, during a two-part event focused on dialogue and reflection on the challenges of recovery planning in the Ukrainian context.

In the morning, our guests delivered a lecture titled “Planning under High Uncertainty: The Ukraine Experience” as part of the course “Fragility and Anti-Fragility in the Spatial Realm,” by Valeria Fedeli within the Master’s program Urban Planning and Policy Design. 💡

In the afternoon, Marharyta and Anastasiia led a seminar on « Envisioning Recovery » as part of the seminar series “Transformative Agencies in/for Contested Spaces,” curated by Irene Bianchi, Maryam Karimi, and Alice Buoli under the umbrella of the OPEN FORUM initiatives by .dastu.polimi.

🩵 A special thank you to Viktoria Baltser (Municipality of Voznesensk) and Kateryna Pisotska (Municipality of Vinnytsia) - who joined online - for sharing their on-the-ground experience.

Thanks to Barbara Piga, Nicola Colaninno, Anna Hoblyk and Arxhenda Lipovica - from .dastu.polimi for participating in the discussion!

👉 Read the full article! Link in bio

22/04/2026

Seminar 🟡 Transformative Agencies in/for Contested Spaces #2 Envisioning Recovery

📍Spazio CRAFT, Building 11B - Campus Leonardo, Politecnico di Milano
💻 Online (link in bio)

The seminar explores recovery planning and presents the strategic and operative challenges of urban planning “compressed in time.” In contexts affected by large-scale destruction, particular significance is placed on the effort to (re)imagine future cities and territories amidst total uncertainty and the continuous evolution of conflict dynamics.

🤔 What should be preserved, and what should be rebuilt or “reinvented”? Which needs should be considered and prioritized? Whose knowledge should be included to support anti-fragile action? Which tools could be activated to mobilize resources and rebuild local (physical and relational) networks?

The seminar will reflect on these interrogatives, starting from the experience of the Ukrainian research and professional collective .ukraine.

Special guests: Marharyta Borysova and Anastasiia Popovych from .ukraine
In dialogue with: Valeria Fedeli, Barbara Piga, Nicola Colaninno, Alice Buoli, Maryam Karimi, Arxhenda Lipovica from .dastu.polimi.

👉 The event is part of the seminar series “Transformative Agencies in/for Contested Spaces”, curated by Maryam Karimi, Alice Buoli and me, and funded by .dastu.polimi

☀️ In the morning (9:30-11:00, Building 16B1.1) our guests will give a class to the students of the course « Fragility and antifragility in the spatial realm », hosted by Valeria Fedeli (slide 2)

Indirizzo

Milan
20133

Telefono

+390223995473

Sito Web

https://www.call-researchlab.polimi.it/

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