‘The climate crisis is also a crisis of the imagination,’ writes Amitav Ghosh. Ferla has responded by learning to imagine together. From February 2025 to May 2026, as part of the European URWAN project, SVI.MED. led an urban co-design process in partnership with the local council, based on the Start Park methodology: a cooperative serious game, developed by Codesign Toscana with the support of IRIDRA, which enables anyone – even without technical expertise – to contribute to the redesign of a public space.
The centrepiece of the process was the co-design workshop held on 21 and 22 March 2025, to mark World Water Day: first at school, where pupils from the ‘Valle dell’Anapo’ Comprehensive School reimagined Piazza Aldo Moro through drawings, images and new narratives; then at the Municipal Auditorium, where the community used the game cards – visions, activities, street furniture and Nature-based Solutions – to shape a new layout for the square, taking into account costs and maintenance.
In May 2025, the project was enhanced by co-creation workshops with the OCRA collective: the Green Wall was painted, the small square brought to life with painted games, ‘insect hotels’ were built and hung up, and the fields were sown with the children’s seed bombs. On 23 May 2026, the final event presented the results to the community: an open-air exhibition on best practices, a sustainability treasure hunt, and the Master Plan for Piazza Aldo Moro, consolidated thanks to the virtual twin created for Ferla, capable of measuring the impact of decisions on the town’s resilience indices. Seven teams of children and young people led the treasure hunt, becoming unexpected ambassadors for sustainability amongst the adults.
Those who take part in the design process become the first guardians of what is created: this is the legacy of Start Park in Ferla, now documented in a dossier in Italian, which can be downloaded here!