WILCO - Welfare innovations at the local level in favour of cohesion,

Politecnico di Milano

(POLIMI), Italy

The Politecnico di Milano is the leading Italian University in the fields of engineering, architecture and planning. The Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione (Architecture and Planning, DiAP) is the second largest Department in the Politecnico di Milano and the largest in the field of Architecture. The multidisciplinary approach is a particular characteristic of the department, that is able to offer expertise and products to meet emerging demands from processes of physical and social change. DiAP is active in many fields of research and consultancy, such as territorial analysis, analysis and design of planning processes, local policies, strategic planning, environmental planning, social planning, architectural and urban projects. The Diap promotes many international activities, including teaching staff mobility, international workshops, intensive programmes in cooperation with European partners, an international lecture series. The Social Policy Lab in the Diap specifically studies the relationship between sociological analysis and social policy and contributes through its research activities to the knowledge and evaluation of the policies and social intervention programmes.

The objective of the Social Policy Lab is to provide tools for comprehension and guidance for those who make and carry out social policy. Thus the SPL engages in both theoretic and applicative research and study activities. In particular, the Lab seeks to shed light on the following:

• organizational, institutional, and cultural processes which define the content and method of social policy, and the social and political effects of its subsequent implementation;
• the social, territorial, and political processes and factors which contribute to social vulnerability and social risk, with a wide range view of problems of social cohesion, especially with regards to urban economic development dynamics;
• forms of third sector organization and political action, in addition to coordination between public actors, non-profit organizations and private actors, and citizen involvement in the definition and implementation of social policy;
• problems of disability and dependence, strategies adopted by individuals and families to overcome such problems, and the social policies and reform programmes created to provide for the care of and assistance to disabled members of the society;
• poverty, urban policies and urban conflicts in global cities.

The team leader, Costanzo Ranci Ortigosa, is a full professor of Economic Sociology at the Polytechnic of Milan, Faculty of Architecture and Society. Prof. Dr. Ranci is one of Italy’s internationally known experts on welfare policy. He is the scientific director of the Master program “Social planning. Design, management and evaluation of Social Policies”, promoted by Polytechnic of Milan, in cooperation with the Institute for Social Research. Since 2005 he is a member of the ASP Board, Alta Scuola Politecnica (Master of Science in Engineering and Architecture) founded by Polytechnic of Milano and Polytechnic of Torino. He has published numerous articles and books on social policy and the welfare state, the third sector and voluntary organizations, social exclusion and social risks, as well as social movements. These include Dilemmas of the Welfare Mix: The New Structure of Welfare in an Era of Privatization (2002); Italy: Observatory for the Development of Social Services (2003); E. Pavolini, C. Ranci (2008), Restructuring the welfare state: reforms in log-term care in Western European countries, Journal of European Social Policy, vol. 3; p. 246-259.

Contact information: Costanzo Ranci:

Other members

Giuliana Costa Is Assistant Professor of Sociology since 2008. Her main research interests are welfare policies and the relationship between space, economy and society. She works at DIAP- Politecnico di Milano since 1998. She is one of the founders of the "Laboratorio di Politiche Sociali" at the same University. After her graduation in Business at Università Bocconi and many years of professional activity in public and private organizations, she got a PhD in Sociology at the Università degli Studi di Milano.

Stefania Sabatinelli Is post-doc research fellow at the Department of Architecture and Planning of the Polytechnic of Milan, where she teaches compared Welfare Policies. Her research activities mainly deal with comparative analysis of welfare systems, with a focus on activation and care policies, and with particular attention about relations among different scales and sectors.