Hamlet plans to test and consolidate the business model of a multi-sided public digital platform for the creation of outreach services addressed to local authorities, associations, informal groups, existing and new economic operators, community and citizen cooperatives.
Hamlet aims to reinforce participation and social fabric, build economic and cultural value, counter anonymity to generate a feeling of community, and encourage human relationships.
A Hamlet is a small grouping of residents and retailers that develops out of new technologies of communication and digital sales that exploit proximity. For example, being able to talk to a downstairs shopkeeper allows a non self-sufficient elderly person to maintain neighbourly personal relations and sustains local commerce. The shopkeeper can use shared sales and payment systems to liberate them from the distribution models of e-commerce and delivery platforms. The total effect is to strengthen the social fabric and redefine the logistics/distributive potential of underused physical urban spaces.
The platform integrates information, participation, services, and exploitation of cultural heritage, with special attention to privacy and data security.
In order to allow each Hamlet to take this opportunity, the service is offered as a shared civic platform and in the form of a Socially Orientated Innovative Startup.
Hamlet for Reggio Emilia
Over the last two years the Local Council of Reggio Emilia ran an experimental phase of the Hamlet project that concluded successfully. Today Hamlet is operative in every suburb and available to all citizens, and is used as a main channel connecting the public administration, territorial actors, retailers, and all citizens.
