Urban Trojan: Urban social innovations in Egypt between the hands of researchers, the community and public authorities

This paper introduces a new perspective to recognize the urban social innovation executed by researchers and initiators as "Urban Trojan" in the urban system. It analyses different approaches taken by researchers/initiators to overcome barriers between the public authorities, the community, and the initiators/researchers themselves to execute urban solutions to societal problems. The analysis adopts three approaches to deal with the public authorities presented by Jessy Marsh, the editor of the “Citizen-Driven Innovation” guidebook of good practice on open and participatory approaches to bring citizen-driven innovation to policy makers. This paper metaphorically titles Marsh’s approaches as: working in shadow, depending on a hero, and infiltrating through cracks.