Can institutions learn? A conversation with Laura Lieto

aura Lieto is a planning theorist and an urban ethnographer. Her work is about urban informality, trans-national urbanism and planning regulation, with a socio-materialist orientation inspired by Actor Network theory and assemblage thinking. I met Laura when I had the occasion to invite her to the U-Rise Master at University Iuav of Venice. I had the chance to listen to an inspiring lecture on how local governments and institutions work. Her capacity to see the complexity of decision making processes is obviously given by her theoretical thinking, combined with the actual position she holds as vice-mayor in the City of Naples. But I’m sure this depends also on previous ethnographic work she conducted observing local institutions from within. This is the reason why we decided to interview Laura Lieto beside Kenneth Reardon. To convey how much local governments matter if we believe that communities really matter. In this conversation we mainly discuss the process of reciprocal learning between community based practices and local institutions. Can Institution Learn? is the title of a seminar I organized at University Iuav of Venice in 2018. After many years of field and action research, the question is still open. Or more precisely, the question is broaderer: we are interested in understanding weather and how the community based action-local institutions nexus can positively impact planning mechanisms and systems to enhance processes of public innovation.