Cultural Welfare as a relational form of urban social innovation: evidence from the city of Bologna

Medium-sized European cities, often celebrated for their quality of life and civic culture, are increasingly experiencing subtle socio-economic and spatial pressures, such as demographic aging, housing strain, and commodification of urban centrality, that erode everyday proximity and social cohesion without surfacing as visible emergencies. Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews with third-sector and cultural organizations across Bologna, this article argues that Cultural Welfare represents a relational form of urban social innovation. Situated within the second-welfare framework, Cultural Welfare emerges as a relational infrastructure in which artistic practices generate shared meanings, recognition, encounters, and the capacity to aspire to alternative urban futures, producing proximity, relations of trust and care. The analysis identifies two interconnected mechanisms through which these initiatives contribute to addressing socio-spatial inequalities and promoting inclusion by widening access to symbolic and relational resources, and to culture-led urban regeneration that reframes safety and liveability as emergent properties of cultural presence rather than solutions supplied through control, surveillance, or market-led redevelopment. These effects, as reported by interviewed organizations, include reclaimed spaces, a greater sense of safety and belonging, and denser networks of mutual care and solidarity, operating at neighborhood and city scales to complement rather than substitute for structural policies. Reading these practices through relational approaches to urban social innovation, the article contends that the specific orientation of the social enacted by Cultural Welfare is the regeneration of the relational fabric eroded by contemporary individualization, extending scholarship on socio-ecological transitions toward a cultural and relational dimension that dominant strands have left under-theorized.