This study aims to show how social innovation offers viable solutions to urban development, by foregrounding community empowerment and transformative impact on urban policy, in the context of municipal–community partnerships.
This study draws on empirical research in four municipalities in the metropolitan areas of Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece, and examples of municipal–community partnerships, which are illustrative of the prospects and challenges for social innovation to introduce novel means for multiactor cooperation at the local level.
Considering the weak capacity of Greek cities to deploy community-based forms of social innovation toward solution-based approaches to urban issues, municipal–community partnerships are able to bolster bottom-linked social innovations and contribute to the processual creation of participatory policy frameworks, in cooperation with local communities and social economy actors.
This study conceptualizes the role of social innovation in urban development, through the lens of municipal–community partnerships. It contributes empirical insights into the forms that social innovation acquires in unfavorable contexts and the processes that drive urban policy toward new directions.
