A Systemic Design-Led Participatory Process to Address Meaningful Impact Pathways for Netzero Cities

This work explores the role of design in supporting public administrations to set up local-based NetZero city strategies. In particular the paper presents the design-led participatory process designed and led by the Service Design Lab team (authors) to support the Municipality of Prato in preparing the baseline for the Climate City Contract. Based on four pillars (energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, circular economy, agriculture and land use, urban forestry), the process aimed at spotting systemic barriers and laying the groundwork to co-design a portfolio of actions aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by the year 2030. The strategy supporting the process was based on two main phases (understanding the system and co-designing a portfolio) connected by an inter-mediary bridging phase, and another cross-cutting level of inquiry itself consisting of two stages: the front-end (the local-based facilitation process) and the back-end (the systemic interconnectedness process). Lastly we highlight the limita-tions of the process and the key takeaways of participatory infrastructuring actions, and specifically the benefits for the Municipality in establishing meaningful and context-based impact pathways.