Those who live in the city, reading this interview, will find themselves in John's words. A young entrepreneur who wanted to believe in a dream: to bring to rebirth the neighborhood in which he was born. A story that I will tell you through his words and that seems to really hope for a happy ending.
This week, we travel back up the Boot to stop in Rome, where our cicerone is Sara Duranti, who in this interview tells us about Balduina's gamble to revitalize Rome's neighborhood.
Revitalizing neighborhoods with business networks
In Rome's 14th municipality, there is an area called "Balduina" with as many as 42,000 inhabitants (almost as many as a town like Frosinone or a city like Campobasso) and a little more than 3km2 .
Here, on the initiative of some residents and with the promotion of Giovanni Tufani of Seedble, a path of neighborhood revival, a Smart Neighborood, has been undertaken. I'm going to let them tell me what it's all about.
Hi John, very interesting the Smart Neighborood project that I have been reading about lately on the social channels of Seedble, the company of which you are one of the founders and of Spremute Digitali - Online Magazine with which you collaborate. What is it all about, can you tell us more about it?
Hi Sara, first of all thank you for this interview, with Seedble we are carrying out a project that wants to redevelop the Balduina neighborhood that covers more than 3 square kilometers and with a population of more than 45000 inhabitants (NDR if it were a city it would be about 150th in Italy by population) making it a smart neighborhood and increasing its welfare at an economic and social level.
The project is named Balduina's, where the s of the Saxon genitive takes the meaning of Social, Shopping and Service.
Are there any particular reasons why you chose the Balduina neighborhood over other areas or municipalities?
To answer this question, I will have to take the risk of going against an old Latin proverb that states "Nemo Propheta in patria (his)." In fact, for me Balduina is more than just a neighborhood in Rome, it is the neighborhood where I was born, where I went to school, and where I started two businesses, one a restaurant business and another a business services business (ed. Seedble).
But beyond the emotional aspect, what made me choose this area was definitely the evolution that the neighborhood has undergone in recent years. Despite the fact that it is in fact 5 minutes from the center (you can easily get to San Pietro on foot) and is an affluent neighborhood, Balduina has some criticalities that with our project we want to solve; by way of not entirely exhaustive we can point out a scarce presence of a commercial and entrepreneurial fabric, an absence of places and activities of aggregation, a malfunctioning mobility (poor connections with public transport, traffic, absence of parking lots) and a degradation of green spaces.
Help us a little better understand specifically what you plan to start with.
First as a good advisor before we begin we must proceed with an in-depth analysis of what the current status quo is. Superficially we know what the problems are, but we do not know for some of them, what are the causes from which they arise. In this regard first, we will invest time and resources to carry out a survey of the population and businesses to thoroughly understand their dynamics, and to understand what the real needs and desires are.
At the end of this survey we will go on to construct a quality of life index based on quantitative and qualitative parameters, which we will use to monitor the progress and results that our activities will have on objective and subjective parameters.
Once we have done this analysis and studied the results what will be the next steps?
We have many ideas and initiatives that we want to put in place, and if I were to recount them all in this interview it would not be enough hours. However, I can tell you that we will break down the initiatives by target "client," meaning that we will carry out activities for companies and activities for citizens at the same time.
On the companies side, we are going to set up a network of companies, which will support
entrepreneurs to face without succumbing to the digital transformation process that is investing the way of doing business. Citizen side, we will try to provide a real response to their needs by trying to bring efficiency where unfortunately there is none.
From this last sentence of yours it seems to me that you are referring to those areas in which the public fails to perform, right?
Yes Sara, you hit the point perfectly, when it comes to mobility, safety, urban decency and sociality the public should generate value and not inefficiency, we with our activity try to fit in where the public does not reach. This is not to say that we want to replace ourselves, on the contrary; we hope that our activity will be an example to the public and spur them to improve and perhaps work alongside us.
Excuse me if I am a bit provocative, but from what you have told me your initiative sounds like a laudable initiative, but does it not deviate much from what might be an electoral program of some political party or the activities of some civic association? What does the word Smart have to do with it? How does your project relate to technology?
No provocation indeed thank you for this question.
Technology is for us the basis of the whole project. The real value of Balduina's will be to collect, analyze and organize so-called Big Data in order to be able to make choices and actions that are driven not by an idea, but by data. We are studying a unique identity system (to understand it a bit like SPID) with which citizens and businesses will be able to access the services we will make available. We will also carry out, during the survey period, a monitoring of mobility through the use of some state-of-the-art sensors connected to a software system that quantifies and translates into data everything that happens (passage of people, cars, mopeds, bicycles, buses etc..)Also always remaining on the subject of technology, we would like to make Balduina's a startup friendly neighborhood, and we will be fully available to make all the information and users available for possible validation and market testing phases.
How do you plan to fund these activities?
Well begun is half done... Balduina's project was presented to the Lazio region a few months ago, and was the winner of the call for proposals on business networks and will be eligible for a grant of 100k that will be used to give the initial boost. After that, any other resources that will be needed will be found through ad hoc crowdfunding campaigns, and by involving companies and investors who want to believe in the project and bet with us. In addition, Balduina's will provide businesses and citizens with competitively priced services with which revenue can be used to finance growth and development.
Anyone who wants more information about the project can follow us on our website www.Balduina.org or contact me at my e-mail giovanni.tufani@seedble.com.
Ilenia Dalmasso