Care infrastructure

What infrastructure is needed for achieving caring cities and regions?

This stage opens up space for a wide range of contributions that convey the idea that there is a diversity of infrastructures, both soft and hard, that if promoted can contribute to more caring cities and regions.

● This includes hard infrastructures, like public spaces of certain characteristics, local buildings and offices like social or health centers, hard infrastructures like pipe networks for public service delivery, etc.

● It also entails soft infrastructures, including partnerships and institutional instruments, like policies, programs, concrete participatory mechanisms and, importantly, the financial infrastructure that is necessary to implement a care-related approach to local and regional development.

An approach based on infrastructures also places the focus on the agency of LRGs and the different roles and avenues they could take to promote these kinds of necessary infrastructures. In particular, the topic of how LRGs may leverage care to revisit the planning and delivery of local public services should emerge strongly, e.g. to advance the “new essential” public services; to review whether some services need to be expanded; to revisit how services are provided and spark debates about participatory service provision, etc.