Bergamo ID is a concept that explores how a city might stay healthy while supporting the needs of both residents and visitors, by shifting tourist behaviour from purely consuming and extractive to genuinely contributing.
The project began by looking at nature for models of trust and cooperation between different parties sharing the same space. Two examples stood out: pied flycatchers, whose willingness to reciprocate strengthens future exchanges, and chameleons, whose signals are verified through both visual display of their behavior and confirmation from their community. Both point to the same idea: sustainable relationships between different people in a community depend on visible and mutually reinforced trust, and on proactive contribution.
Bergamo ID translates this into a reward system for visitors. On arrival, a visitor completes a short registration and receives a profile with a trust score. As they move through the city, locals can rate their behaviour, positively for respectful interactions and actions, negatively for the opposite. A higher rating unlocks access to more local places, special events, and small perks, such as a free coffee from an independent café; a lower rating restricts access to certain places or events in the city. Visitors who stay long enough can eventually unlock "local" status altogether.
The intention is to shift the relationship between locals and tourists from transactional and anonymous to something more reciprocal: tourists become more self-aware and informed, contributing to the community rather than only extracting from it, while locals feel a greater sense of trust and agency over how their city is shared.
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