The bottom-up approach is teetering. When sustainability does not match public participation: The case of an urban re-greening project in small town in Northern Italy

Local sustainable development projects can be fostered by public participation involving citizens and local organizations as stakeholders. On one hand multi-stakeholder approaches can increase acceptability of a project guaranteeing long term benefits to local society. On the other hand, diverging interests and perceptions of different stakeholders (involved or not) can hinder implementation of sustainability projects. This paper analyzes a real case study of an innovative sustainability project in Northern Italy which fail in its participatory purposes. The project “Cantieri Rinverditi” has been a Re-Greening Vacant Urban Space project developed in San Rocco al Porto a small town in the Po valley in Lombardy, which is the highest region for soil loss due to urbanization in Italy. Through a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation I highlight the main difficulties and barriers which caused the lack of local citizens’ participation to the project.