Station for Transformation: Co-Design Strategy

This document lays out the co-design strategy used in the design and implementation of the EU-funded project Station for Transformation unfolding in Rovereto (Italian Alps) between 2024 and 2027. The methodology is closely aligned with the New European Bauhaus approach and focuses on enhancing the local community’s capacities to transformatively engage with the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss.

The project Station for Transformation emerged from a collaboration that the Municipality of Rovereto, the citizen group La Foresta and Brave New Alps have been undertaking since 2017. Since then, they have experimented with the activation of a horizontally-led community academy at a 150m2 space at the train station of Rovereto. This experimentation was already supported by the Italian Railway Network (Rete Ferroviaria Italiana) and Europe Consulting, who lead the network of help center across 24 Italian railway stations.

It was this experimentation that led through a first co-design iteration to the joint plan to transform the whole train station into a public-civic hub that aims to enhance the local community’s capacities to mitigate and adapt to climate change (and its intertwined twin challenge biodiversity loss).

The project is funded by the European Urban Initiative.