“Digital.Labor” – Co-Creation for the Digital City of Tomorrow

In order to design and develop urban solutions successfully, the need to include a wide and diverse range of stakeholders is becoming evermore apparent. These tasks must be recognized as a societal task and perceived jointly, and provide a platform for bringing together several actors to colaborate effectively. Digitization is providing new orrprtunities to integrate a large number of (local) actors into decision-making and implementation processes, relevant to urban development through both conventional and innovative participation methods (HANZL;2007). But, how might such new integrated approaches look? How is it ensured that the impulses of a heterogeneous stakeholder landscape are equally taken into account? Moreover, how is it guaranteed that cities integrate the results of open idea processes into traditional urban planning? One such emergent approach is that of co-creation (ALVES;2013), which focuses on the collaboration of transdisciplinary actors who jointly address challenges in a "process of creation” to develop new and successful solutions to existing problems. Practical experience are combined with expertise knowledge and specialized skills and solutions are developed “on the ground”, regardless of professional background. In such a co-creation process, all backgrounds and approaches are recognized as equally valuable and accompany all stages of the process, from the initial idea to (prototype) implementation. Thereby suchapproaches promise the creation of holistic and sustainable (systems ́) solutions with a high innovation potential. They offer a new format for stakeholder participation in urban processes, given the wide variety of urban challenges we are currently facing. The Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, in cooperation with the Institute of Human Factors and Technology Management IAT of the University of Stuttgart, has launched the Municipal Innovation Center (Kommunale InnovationsCenter (KIC@bw)). The focus is on creating experimental spaces and new innovation partnerships between administration, business, science and civil society. The goal is to develop and implement innovative solutions for cities, towns, counties and regions. The Municipal Innovation Center is funded by the Ministry of the Interior, Digitization and Migration Baden-Württemberg as part of thedigitization strategy of the state government of Baden-Württemberg digital@bw. To test the possibilities of digitization for cities, the Fraunhofer IAO has developed a process for prototyping. Central is the "Makeathon" (from "to make" and "Marathon") as a format in which local actors from the city administration, politics, civil society, business and the creative sector are brought together in a limited period of time. In the process, which is moderated by Fraunhofer IAO and Tinkertank, not only ideas are developed and conceptualized, but also implemented as prototypes. The format can be individually adapted and enables almost all questions relating to urban digitization to be tackled jointly. In total, eight of these digital laboratories, in cities and municipalities, will be completed by mid-2020