The City of Bologna was awarded an inaugural Cities of Service Award by Bloomberg Philanthropies for this innovation.
In November 2015, LabGov hosted in Bologna the first international academic conference “The City as a Commons”, which brought together over 200 researchers, experts, and practitioners from around the world to share experiences with urban co-governance.
Following this conference and a convening of American and European city representatives at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio workshop, other LabGovs began to emerge and spread across several urban areas worldwide including in the United States, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo, and San Jose, Costa Rica. The Co-Bologna project laid the foundation of the Co-City protocol that was later tested in other Italian cities, including Battipaglia, Mantua, Reggio Emilia, and Rome. Other Co-Cities projects have since emerged in various cities, including New York City, Amsterdam, Turin, and Baton Rouge (Louisiana).
LabGov launched the Co-Cities Project which is designed to test, evaluate, and refine the Co-City approach that has been applied in different cities around the world. The methodology is supported by an international team of researchers that has been investigating, collecting data on, and mapping collaboratively created, community-led policies and projects in different kinds of communities and cities.
To date, the project has collected over 500 case studies, 95 of which have been closely analyzed, and mapped nearly 200 cities. Additional cities are being added and new case studies are underway.
The CoCity approach and several of the case studies are contained in Foster and Iaione’s award-winning book, Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities (MIT Press).
The Co-City approach draws from LabGov’s experience working in different cities and lessons learned from surveying hundreds of projects around the world as part of its Co-Cities project. LabGov designs and implements innovative institutional, legal, financial, and digital tools that enable communities to co-create and steward land, digital, and other resources with public and private partners.
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Sheila Foster founded LabGov-US and is co-author with Christian Iaione of the award-winning Co-Cities book. Foster is also a tenured professor who has taught at Rutgers University, Fordham University, and most recently at Georgetown University where she was the Scott K.
Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy with a joint appointment at the Law and Public Policy schools. Beginning in July 2024, Foster will be a Professor at Columbia University, with her primary appointment in the Climate School.
Foster is well known for her articles and books on urban policy, property and land use, state and local government, and environmental justice,
Foster has worked with government agencies and public officials on a range of urban, environmental, and climate issues. You can find out more about her at sheilarfoster.com -
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Manny Patole is a place-based urban sustainability expert. Currently he is the Co-City Fellow and Project Manager for Co-City Baton Rouge (CCBR), in partnership with LabGov-US and the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management.
He has been an Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Sustainable Urban Environments and Wagner's Urban Planning programs.
Beginning in Fall 2024, he will be an Industry Professorand Faculty Mentor at NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP).
He holds a Master of Urban Planning degree from NYU and an LLM/ME in Water Governance and Conflict Resolution from the University of Dundee & UNESCO. -
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Clayton Gillette is the former Director of the Marron Institute of Urban Management, an applied research unit at New York University, and the Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law at New York University School of Law.
Gillette's scholarship and teaching concentrates on local government law and commercial law.
Gillette has consulted on numerous issues of municipal governance, ranging from municipal finance to telecommunications regulation. -
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Christian Iaione is founder and co-director of LabGov.city, and co-author with Sheila Foster of the award-winning Co-Cities book.
Iaione is a Professor of Urban Law and Policy and of Law and Policy of Innovation and Sustainability at Luiss University in Rome, Italy,
He is an Affiliated Fellow of the Urban Law Center at Fordham University. -
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Elena De Nictolis has served as a Research Fellow and Director off the Co-Cities research project at LabGov.city.
She is also an Assistant Professor at Luiss University, Department of Law where she has taught climate justice; urban law and policy; and the governance of innovation and sustainability.
She has previously been a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University and NYU's Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy, and Land Use. She holds a BA and MA in Politics, and a PhD in Political Theory, Political Science and Political History from Luiss (Rome). -
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Dan Wu is an advisor to LabGov-US on strategy and marketing. He holds a JD and PhD from Harvard where his research focused on the organizational dynamics of urban innovation.
He was selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. You can find out more at Heyjoyful.com -
