Co-design as disruptive innovation at Amsterdam City Labs: locating the lived experiences of addressing overtourism through stakeholder engagement with citizens and policymakers TBC

Last month saw Prof. Guido Stompff and me and take the train through the Alps for the latest consortium meeting on the SMARTDEST project in Torino, Italy. Bringing together partners from across Europe and the Mediterranean for the first time since the project began in early 2020.  The meeting was an opportunity to compare progress in the City Labs phase of each case study – which includes the establishment of a set of field labs to support citizen engagement, and co-design of service innovation and policy solutions. One of the concluding stages of the research process, City Labs invites identified stakeholders in each city to take part in a participatory process, "aiming at elaborating solutions in the face of social exclusionary processes produced by tourism motilities, scaling up small-scale coping tactics to social and policy innovation" (SMARTDEST, 2022). Centering the lived experience of citizens allows for the collective imagination of, "models that are inclusive, gendered, just, and accomplish a shift towards cities that are more socially resilient in the face of the interventions of tourism mobilities". Each case study has shaped their own engagement process for SMARTDEST - situating the discussion in the local context - ensuring that policies and propositions are bottom-up, human-centred solutions could be sustainable and produce shared value for the whole destination ecosystem.