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PlaceCity partners are using placemaking methods for urban regeneration. The results as well as the single placemaking activities are assembled together and made available in an open-source toolbox, which is based on the experiences of establishing sustainable business cases for placemaking in local contexts. Additionally, as a Eutropian tradition, we invite all placemakers, cities and neighbourhoods to experiment, test and implement with us.
Eutropian is dedicated to the support of real sustainability, which we believe is only possible through spatial justice. We strive for inclusion through use of space, and public space is no different. That’s why, when asked to be come on board and take on responsibility for the management of this project, as well as international communication and dissemination of project, we didn’t hesitate to come on board. We strongly believe, that we need to re-adapt our cities and regenerate them through human-centric point of view.
On the left side, you can see a google street view image of a street next to the conference center in Durban/South Africa. Even though it was a pleasure to present during the UCLG world conference the PlaceCity project, the excessive place-impact of car-roads in the country was a good reality check, what we are currently doing to our public space (reserving most valuable and biggest areas to car traffic). This is not a just-city in our terminology.
When researching suitable sites to implement placemaking tools, the two cities proposed two diverse sites. Gronland is quite unique, with specific social challenges such as high child poverty and highschool dropout rates as well as a host of other lingering problems such as unemployment and substance abuse issues among youth. The project decided to cooperate with Hersleb Upper Secondary School, located in the district. Hersleb has the highest drop out rate among schools in Oslo. With more than 6.000 square-meters of unused public space, the site has fantastic potential to contribute towards improving the living environment of the neighborhood while offering teenagers a safe place to assemble and spend time in.
Given that our offices are in Vienna, we felt that the Florisdorf district center, due to its location and potential, embodied the challenges faced by other decentralized spaces in (European) cities and made a good case study to implement placemaking tools in.
Conducting on-site surveys and interviewing local stake holders, we engaged with the locals. Our exchange with the Floridsdorf youth, local artists, shop owners and residents made it clear that Floridsdorf has unique needs that needed to be catered to. It was exciting to test and implement tools in the Floridsdorf center to help strengthen it, make it more accessible and inviting, empower local stakeholders and create a socially and ecologically sustainable future for the district.
We are aware, that with the acupuncture work in our case-cities we need to involve all placemakers and invite all communities to transform their cities to a more just place for all kind of citizens. By creating a toolbox full of good placemaking examples and creating stories which can inspire others to test and experiment with those placemaking tools is our way to reach out and connect with the current and future placemakers.
The website acts as an open library for placemaking and the comprehensive toolbox have detailed descriptions how to implement the tested placemaking-tools in your city. Feel free to discover and get in touch with the placemaker-community. Together we can transform our cities to be more just and appealing.
What happens after a funded project finishes? This was one of the central topics on which we worked in PlaceCity. We analised models for long term impact and value creation. We gathered concepts, tools and look at their responsiveness to challenges. We tested them in our project cities Oslo and Vienna. We pushed towards long-lasting impact by establishing sustainable business models for placemaking in the local contexts. We translated the local work in replicable solutions for other urban environments with similar barriers.
Do you want to create long-lasting solutions, empower your local community and advance their feeling of ownership over their built environment? Connect with us and discover your own path.
We value the local work of our placemaker-colleagues in the project cities. They are our heroes and our local work starts with listening to them and hearing them out. They do great work, each of them by they own, complementing the variety our cities need. Our PlaceCity builds up on their work and wants to create new opportunities to have a greater impact.
PlaceCity was a unique opportunity for the placemaking comunity in both cities to experiment and test out new approaches to improve places in our cities. We compiled a detailed publication on how we worked in both cities and what we achieved.
(c)Eutropian/David Schermann
…and show how to use the placemaking tools in specific contexts
Our experience in community building and support, inclusive urban processes, participation and promoting dialogue between groups makes PlaceCity a valuable project for us to be a part of.
Most importantly, PlaceCity is unique in that it takes a hands on approach and actively tests the application of methods and practices in the case study locations. While inviting other cities and communities to join and build up an experience track. The toolbox to arise out of these experiences will help other placemakers and give them access to a set of already tested and practiced concepts and applicable approaches.The transference of knowledge is something we’ve been keen on doing since the early days of Cooperative City, and we’re delighted to assist with the PlaceCity project in this regard as well.
Hosted by Bahanur Nasya/Eutropian, the first two days of the online symposium explored the potential of placemaking as a tool for urban regeneration, and was streamed live on the facebook page of cooperative city – the magazine. The third day was reserved for an exploratory walk through urban Vienna, guided by Roland Krebs/Superwien. View the symposium below.
Organised by the teams of Nabalogshager and Placemaking Europe the two days of the online symposium explored the impact of placemaking and opportunities for collaboration with young citizens. The conference was streamed live on the facebook page of . The first conference day was moderated by Adam Curtis/Nabolagshager and the second day by Bahanur Nasya/Eutropian. Have a look on the presentations and discussions here:
International exchange and joining forces is essential for our work in this project. With our partner EUKN, we created the spring 2021 episodes of Cooperative Urban Futures. The second episode “sustainable transition at street-level” featured international experts and PlaceCity members and gave the opportunity to think about necessary systemic change and where to start the work.
PlaceCity was a 30 month research programme, which started in February 2019 and was funded by JPI Urban Europe, Federal Ministry Republic of Austria: Transport, Innovation and Technology, The Research Council of Norway.
The partners of the project were: superwien urbanism OG, Magistratsabteilung 18 Stadtentwicklung und Stadtplanung, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien – social design, Eutropian GmbH, Gallis Miljø og Kommunikasjon – Nabolagshager, stipo, Oslo kommune, BIDs Belgium, Placemaking Europe .
For more information on the project, don’t be shy, reach out to project leader Bahanur Nasya
