Riverdo
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
Riverdo, collaborative digital service, master's thesis in Design by Chiara Rutigliano and Sofia Collacchioni, supports the development of new social transformations, emerged during Covid-19, giving rise to a healthy, sustainable and inclusive community. The project aims to promote urban wellness in the city of Prato and to establish a network of indirect relationships that solve the municipal needs of managing the spaces of the Bisenzio river park, regenerated through the Riversibility project.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Riverdo is a collaborative digital service that promotes urban wellness in the city of Prato and develops the creation of new dynamic flows starting from the use of Bisenzio river and its park, redeveloped with the municipal project Riversibility. The service creates relationships that solve the management needs of the park areas and encourages new sustainable practices in the community, promoting the well-being of the urban system through a process of engagement of different stakeholders involved, based on gamification. The project, circular and inclusive, produces gains for each of the involved actors. In detail, citizens enjoy the services offered into the park and provide useful feedback to the municipal administration, which intervenes in solving local problems. Professionals promote, through their services, activities planned by the association with which they collaborate. In addition, a serious game makes that virtuous activities for the health or the environment win symbolic "breaths" useful to buy products or services offered by local sustainable partners. The system represents a business opportunity for various activities severely affected by Covid-19. The synergies generated by the service give rise to a threefold profit: socio-healthy, since the visitors carry out activities for their own psycho-physical well-being and come closer to sustainability; economic, as new dynamics arise that implement of local associations and partners; managerial-administrative, because the relationship established between the municipality and associations simplifies an important organisational issue, allowing the management of the spaces and equipment provided by the project. Riverdo follows the goals of Agenda 2030, triggers a new type of sustainability that becomes concrete through man who, by taking care of his health, gives a breath to the environment!
Key objectives for sustainability
Connecting the urban environment with natural habitats, places where man can find his interiority, is a possible solution to restore the health of the whole ecosystem damaged by man's bad behaviour from the post-industrial period to today. The possibility of creating a fair exchange of breath is a good practice to regenerate urban areas of the future, which will be overloaded, densely built and with less green areas.
In this sense, Riverdo makes it possible to practice activities in the park with zero impact, thanks to the strategic help of a completely sustainable integrated management system.
Through the app, the park offers services for psycho-physical wellbeing - fitness areas, meditation areas, cultural gathering spaces, play and sports areas - that allow citizens to regain their balance.
By participating in the programmed activities, citizens collect "breaths" that they can give back to the environment by choosing the sustainable action to be carried out. For example, the "breaths" can be spent on planting tree species in the city, using shared mobility vehicles, on local activities based on the circular economy or on the purchase of 0 km products.
The service works by generating a sense of awareness in citizens who, by taking care of themselves and their bodies, become completely sustainable and change their daily habits unconsciously. The system is self-sustaining and the city becomes greener. Riverdo ensures a better quality of life by developing social sustainability, combats air and noise pollution by promoting environmental sustainability, increases the income of local businesses by improving the economic sustainability of the city.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Nature is an essential component of human life. In fact, it acts on the immunitary system, increasing energy levels, decreasing anxiety, depression and stress and thus restoring well-being to the human being. Wellness, as such, is no longer to be understood exclusively as the absence of disease, but rather as an overall system in which “feeling good” is guaranteed by a balance between physical and psychological health. Riverdo acts in this sense, recreating a condition of harmony for the entire ecosystem and, therefore, improving the quality of life in the city. Specifically, the service offers the citizen a twofold gain: on the one hand, he/she carries out activities for both body and mind in the river park, and on the other, he/she also approaches sustainability through a gamification system. This system, however, also produces a gain for the other stakeholders involved in the project, but first and foremost it produces a gain for the city which, through the system designed, manages to make itself healthy: to give breath and beauty.
The project also contains many elements relevant to the new needs related to the Covid-19 pandemic emergency, so it is proposed as a form of experimentation for citizens towards a greener way of experiencing the city's spaces and resources, for a sustainable change in the future!
The collaborative digital service will guide its users to enjoy, in complete safety, the well-being that the environment can offer and improve their quality of life!
Key objectives for inclusion
In the context of digital transformation, which invests urban environments, the use of technological tools drives social innovation and contributes to generating inclusive solutions. For this reason, service design, operating in complex systems, become an activating agent and transformer of new connections and collaborations. The service project is part of Design for the Collaborative City and Transformative Design, and uses technology as an enabler to support and stimulate the collaboration of different actors.
The service was structured by studying the needs and requirements of citizens, which emerged during the co-participatory process implemented by the Municipality of Prato for the design of the Riversibility River Park. In this way, we were able to identify all the stakeholders of the project - citizens, the Municipality and USL, associations, professionals and partners - to develop a service based on their real needs.
The service designed for the park is, therefore, accessible and inclusive and allows participation in all the activities provided to the entire community. This aspect opens up new possibilities for approaching the place based on free collaboration.
Innovative character
Within a new context, during Covid-19, in which the primordial aspect of man is to be recovered, it is appropriate to try not to make any more mistakes but guide the population to interact correctly with nature and thus create a new possibility for change. It is in this context that the new technological systems are particularly important, as a guiding element for the population in interacting with nature within the city.
Riverdo can be the tool that makes this possible and allows the citizen to contribute directly, but unconsciously, to bringing nature back into the city.
The innovative character of the project is found in its intangibility aspect: the technology creates the link between man and nature, transforming the city into a smart, connected but... green place!
