ORTI GENERALI SRL - IMPRESA SOCIALE

Their core work

Orti Generali is a Turin-based social enterprise — "Impresa Sociale" is a recognized Italian legal form for mission-driven companies — that operates urban gardens and community-managed green spaces as working models of urban food production and land regeneration. Their real-world work centers on transforming neglected or post-industrial urban land into productive green infrastructure through community co-production: residents, local institutions, and practitioners design and manage these spaces together. In EU research projects they contribute as third-party practitioners, meaning they offer on-the-ground demonstration sites, community engagement know-how, and social entrepreneurship experience rather than laboratory or academic outputs. Their positioning sits at the crossroads of urban ecology, social enterprise, and food systems governance — they make abstract concepts like "urban commons" and "living labs" concrete through actual working gardens in a major post-industrial Italian city.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 engagement (proGIreg, 2018) was rooted in the physical and social transformation of post-industrial land: soil regeneration, urban forestry, co-produced commons, and social entrepreneurship in Eastern European city contexts. By their second project (FUSILLI, 2021), the emphasis had shifted upstream toward systemic food governance: urban food planning, policy maker engagement, urban-rural linkages, and the Food 2030 agenda. This trajectory suggests the organization moved from being a practitioner demonstrating green infrastructure on the ground to becoming a participant in the policy and knowledge infrastructure that shapes how cities plan and govern food systems.

Orti Generali is moving from hands-on urban agriculture demonstration toward food systems governance and policy influence — future collaborations would likely fit best in projects that need both a living lab site and community-embedded policy translation capacity.

How they like to work

Orti Generali participates exclusively as a third party in EU projects, meaning they function as associated contributors — demonstration sites, community partners, or sub-contracted practitioners — rather than as full consortium members with direct EC funding. Despite this peripheral formal role, they have accumulated 76 unique consortium partners across 17 countries through just two projects, both large Innovation Actions, indicating they are embedded in ambitious, multi-city European research programs. Working with them likely means gaining access to a functioning urban agriculture operation and community network in Turin, rather than a research or consultancy deliverable.

Through two Innovation Action projects they have been linked to 76 distinct consortium partners across 17 countries — an unusually broad European footprint for an organization of their size and role. Their network spans municipalities, research institutes, and civil society organizations focused on urban sustainability across Western and Eastern Europe.

What sets them apart

As a social enterprise running actual urban gardens in Turin — one of Italy's emblematic post-industrial cities — Orti Generali offers something most research consortia lack: a functioning, community-managed green space that can serve as a real demonstration site rather than a theoretical case study. Their "Impresa Sociale" status means they operate with a legal and cultural mandate to deliver social impact alongside economic activity, which makes them credible interlocutors with local communities, municipalities, and non-academic audiences. For a consortium needing Italian urban agriculture ground truth, community co-production expertise, or a living lab site in a post-industrial city context, they are a distinctive and hard-to-replicate partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• proGIreg
  A major Innovation Action running from 2018 to 2023 that tackled post-industrial urban regeneration through productive green infrastructure across multiple European cities, placing Orti Generali at the intersection of urban ecology, soil science, and social enterprise in one of Europe's longest H2020 urban sustainability programs.
• FUSILLI
  Directly tied to the EU Food 2030 agenda, this 2021–2024 project engaged Orti Generali in shaping how European cities plan and govern their food systems through living labs — marking a clear step from local practitioner toward European food policy participant.