Livable Cities - London AMPS | City, University of London Page 221 SOCIAL INNOVATION Evolutionary design produced by humans is sustainable if we believe Currie et al. when they write that integrating evolutionary theory and research on socio-economical systems can lead to a better understanding of changes in those systems and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene.4 The aim to understand and interpret complex social phenomena and challenges is the rationale behind not only quantitative evolutionary design, but also social innovation, which addresses social challenges.5 Societal innovation is, for example, needed for sustainable development, in which environmental protection and societal value are internalized instead of externalized. Equality, justice, empowerment, poverty, resilience and conflicts are typical questions for social innovation.6 Combining the definitions by Encyclopedia of Social Innovation,7 OECD,8 and European Commission,9 ideas belonging to social innovation can increase such targets as efficiency and productivity in an organisation, advance social security, improve welfare, wellbeing and resilience of individuals and communities and enhance social relationships as well as support new collaborations. What is not social innovation is innovations without positive social change and social entrepreneurship, where specific positive societal effects have been articulated and the pathways to achieve these effects have been identified.10 Social innovation and architecture Social innovation in architecture can take place through, for example, creative spatial programming, settings enabling sustainable lifestyles, trans-disciplinary collaboration projects, urban regeneration, adaptive reuse, placemaking, and high-quality affordable housing. Examples of social innovation from the history of architecture include, amongst others, 1) Ancient Greek agoras, which were exemptions in the generic serial reproduction of the urban tissue, and where the social benefit was their ability to produce social cohesion, to support spirituality, religion, administration and orientation, 2) Ancient Roman cities, where life takes place on public spaces, 3) the medieval urban street layouts and piazzas dedicated to commerce and civic events, 4) ideal industrial communities such as Fourier’s 19th century Familestère, integrating housing and community services, 5) Team Ten’s 1960’s shift in urban design from functionalist separated uses to dynamic mixes and overlapping territories, urban webs and superblocks, emphasising human scale, networks, compactness and intimacy, 6) Archigram’s 1960’s combination of architecture and pop culture and the integration of urban happenings and new ways of living, 7) 1980’s and 90’s programmatic mix, and the striated city by Rem Koolhaas, enhancing pluralism, contrasts, experience and positive congestion, 8) 1990’s hybrid combinations of housing and community services, interdisciplinarity and openness by transparency, 9) 2000’s diagram-based design for condensing ideas about heterogeneity; liveability, walkability; the sustainable high-tech cities, mediatheques, urban ecosystems, fusions of building and landscape, urban regeneration concepts, strategies for non-programmed spaces, as well as designing degrees of informality in architecture and liveability. All these implemented concepts could be called examples of social innovations in the history of architecture. Social innovation in architecture could mean today, for example, tools for sustainable ways of living, adaptive reuse, or transdisciplinary collaborations to answer sustainable challenges.11 The social challenges which we examine in this scrutiny presented are related to community retrofit – how to improve existing urban places for better qualitative performance – making additive changes in an existing environment through an upgrade. A newly defined qualitative evolutionary method was used in this pursuit.
