Topics discussed at the Placemaking Symposium
Session I: Placemaking for Social Change
Holistic planning, integrity and proximity in sustainable development of places and urban areas
Lisbeth Iversen is combining a holistic perspective, and proximity, in a penta helix co-creation context. She uses an institutional perspective to analyze how the municipal planning system is shaping and framing the interaction between different actors and groups in the processes, addressing both research-based, professional knowledge, and different types of local knowledge. Important is also a resource-based analytical perspective, ABCD, combining a traditional top-down perspective with a bottom-up approach. Through action research, she is analyzing the mobilization of people and cultural resources in planning and development projects, through a placemaking and peacemaking approach, looking at place- and community leadership and management, place-communication and place-innovation.
A child-friendly vision as an inclusive vision for our cities
The Rotterdam-based multi-disciplinary firm, Humankind, believes that we must create cities that are first and foremost human and kind to ourselves, others and our planet. Eva van Breugel will speak about the human-centered approach of Humankind, and especially her work engaging with children and teens to not only create child-friendly streets and public spaces, but to better understand how they envision the future of the city. Humankind partners with local citizens, public and private stakeholders, and community-based organizations, to make these visions a reality.
Session II: Reviving Neighbourhoods through Retail & Commercial Districts
Placemaking: From your Space to my Place
Expectations of customers in shopping destinations have massively changed over the last years and still do so. At the same time a huge challenge and great opportunity for ECE Projektmanagement GmbH, Europe’s leading Shopping Center operator. The placemaking presentation “From your space to my place” aims to determine how ECE is coping with the changes in the market in order to create inspiring places where people love spending their time. Showing successful placemaking examples where ECE was able to transform Shopping Centers, it also asks: how will current and future trends influence the development of this building typology in Germany? In summary, it can be said that placemaking approaches will always be specific to each center its overall location and role while focusing on the needs of that center’s visitors.
Temporary use as a strategy for revitalizing abandoned areas
Temporary use as a strategy for revitalizing abandoned areas - Stefanie Raab, head of coopolis planning office for cooperative urban development, shows her approach on integrated urban development in its entire range. With her interdisciplinary team, she develops and implements tools for commercial space activation, vacancy management, neighborhood development + settlement marketing, initiates and accompanies networks, advises companies, property management, municipal administrations, owners and freelancers on project development and funding options. Her approach on placemaking is to enable the investment of cultural and social capital equivalent to economic capital – the result is an attractive mix of cultural and social offers enriching the commercial desert of most inner cities today.
Session III: DIY Urbanism and Grassroots Initiatives
Placemaking – the new deal of city making?
City development is facing a strategic transformation from classical government towards urban governance. This is a result of the growing complexity of city development itself, the big issue of transformation, and in many cases as well a reaction towards politics of austerity. As consequence, reaching the future goals of city development implies the cooperation with a growing variety of non government actors: in the field of economy as well as in the field of civil society. This is a new deal of capacity building that is based on collaboration. In this context, the involvement of civil society actors is just now becoming more and more important. Is this the new deal of city making? Maybe. Many civil society actors promote bottom up projects, that are done by themselves (DIY) but also in collaboration with others. It’s a combination of “doing it yourself” and “doing it together”. Placemaking by civil society actors is one of the ways in which this development takes place. But it is framed in a broader context of urban governance. How can we describe this context? Why are civil society actors becoming more and more important? And in which direction will this transform the way city development takes place?
You never walk alone!
Walkability is the key to a city with high quality of everyday life, where people live because they want to. Rethinking the street, redesigning public space to meet the needs of especially families with young children, creating green and open spaces for people to stroll and enjoy outdoor life.
The new concept of urbanism and public space aims for a shift from the former prioritized fossil fuel traffic to an implementation of active mobility. However the distribution of public space is still not equivalent to the share of pedestrians, users of public transports, cyclists or scooter-drivers compared to the much smaller share of car-drivers within a city.
The non-profit-Association geht-doch.wien – is focusing on exactly this need for pedestrian-friendly urban traffic-planning and public spaces. With our public performances we try to rise bottom-up-processes within the citizens itself. We will give you some ideas of activities and explain the function of bottom-up-processes based on the socratic method of maeutic.