Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Sustainable Cities and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs An empirical investigation of social innovation initiatives for sustainable urban development Margarita Angelidou a, ⁎ , Artemis Psaltoglou b a Post-doctoral researcher, School of Spatial Planning and Development, Urban and Regional Innovation Research (URENIO), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece b Doctoral researcher, School of Architectural Engineering, Urban and Regional Innovation Research (URENIO), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Cities Sustainability Environment Smart Technology Citizen profiles ABSTRACT Recent literature on social innovation highlights its conceptual ambiguity and emphasizes how technology has contributed to the renovation of this 200 year old practice, calling for more sector-specific research. Addressing this call, this paper examines how social innovation fits in the urban sustainability discourse and in what way it empowers urban citizens and their communities towards serving their interests. The findings with respect to 29 cases of social innovation initiatives for environmental sustainability across 9 domains suggest that a large spectrum of sustainability challenges and topics are addressed by existing initiatives, which in turn can refer to different urban spatialities. For each initiative we examine the social innovation process, focusing on the types of involved organizations, the underlying innovation mechanisms as well as the use of technology. In terms of citizen empowerment, we examine the empowerment mode, the main beneficiaries of the innovation, as well as the specific outcome of the initiative. Following this analysis, we arrive to the identification and description of four primary citizen profiles in social innovation for sustainable urban development. We close by calling for further research into the perception, behavior and needs that are associated with the identified citizen profiles and their communities. 1. Introduction In recent years, social innovation has been increasingly practiced by individuals and their communities, as well as the civil, public and pri- vate sector. Although it has practically existed for two hundred years now, 1 the pressing social, economic and environmental challenges that cities have recently come to face, together with proliferating advance- ments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have brought social innovation to the forefront of urban development prac- tice and policy. Social innovations are literally everywhere. They happen across and in-between sectors (public, private, civil), they span an extremely large variety of areas (economy, environment, social in- clusion, integrated development and others), and they transform urban life in unexpected ways. Social innovations are widely understood as new ideas that aim at meeting social goals (Manzini, 2014; Mulgan, 2006a, 2006b). They are so widespread and game-changing nowadays, that it is impossible to ignore them. The ‘smartest’ and most innovative governments and policy making authorities capitalize on this old but renovated concept by incorporating it in public policy agendas and providing funding, training and networking opportunities for social innovators and their communities. Social innovation has a central role in the European Union (EU)’s Europe2020 strategy towards smart, sustainable and in- clusive growth, 2 which includes the flagship initiative ‘Innovation Union’, whereby innovation is regarded not as merely industrial, but rather as a means to actualize society’s capacity to organize, act and respond on the persisting challenges of growth, and capitalize on the knowledge generation and transfer opportunities provided by new technology. The European Commission (EC) has in operation a host of different policy instruments to foster social innovation, ranging from networking platforms to financing tools for social innovation initiatives (European Commission - Directorate-General for Internal Market, 2016). Next to the institutional interest on social innovation, leading researchers on sustainability have underlined its importance in con- temporary societies due to the new and extraordinary possibilities it opens (Bawens, 2007; Manzini, 2014; Murray, 2009; Tapscott and Williams, 2007). Nevertheless, the all-encompassing idea of social innovation has http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2017.05.016 Received 13 December 2016; Received in revised form 20 April 2017; Accepted 17 May 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mangelidou@urenio.org (M. Angelidou). 1 For a historical perspective of social innovation, see Godin (2012). Social Innovation: Utopias of Innovation from c.1830 to the Present. Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation, Working Paper No. 11. 2 European Commission (2016), Europe 2020 in a nutshell. Available: http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/europe-2020-in-a-nutshell/index_en.htm (Access 10/03/2017). Sustainable Cities and Society 33 (2017) 113–125 Available online 30 May 2017 2210-6707/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK