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The Italian city of Reggio Emilia is the stage of a unique preschool experience in co-education : this experience is marked by the daily involvement of the whole city in the education of young children. The aim of this paper is to report on the actual functioning of this co-educational project, from its beginnings until today. The analysis focused on how the city has managed to maintain a real citizen-participation in its small Reggian schools. We studied, in a first phase, the actual functioning of the Reggian co-education project in order to highlight the plurality of actors that contribute to it. Then, we recount the origins and the development of this participation that was not self-evident in Reggio Emilia, recalling by here that political and civic determination was paramount. Finally we tried to understand what could be the issues raised by the Reggian co-education practices. As a conclusion, we propose the hypothesis that co-education is essential to the correct functioning of the Reggio Emilia pedagogy.