Architecture of participation is a powerful line of thought that is normally defined and used in relation to spatial practices and theories to work towards more democratic and collective habitats. In this field of thinking, reflective actions established in top-down planning are normally seen as a reductor of the freedom that is stated, and reflexive actions or theories of bottom-up approaches are keen to be seen as processes that lead to more precise and transformative architectural works. The conflict between reflective and reflexive planning actions has always been present in the quotidian regeneration of our built environment. It can be an important phenomenon in the understanding of how we can rethink our own models and how we can organize an urban space that comprehends heterogenous identities and promotes inclusive lifestyles and healthy communities. So, this session will focus on the revaluation of the concept of citizen participation on the transformation of public space, from the perspective of the spatial planner or thinker.
URBiNAT is encouraging a co-creation process of nature-based solutions in the urban projects that it is implementing in social housing neighbourhoods. In this sense, rather than seeing people’s engagement in the processes and the existing realities as a screen or a resource, researchers and practitioners are seeing them as an important part of the architectural operation, bound to it in a transparent, dynamic and symbiotic process. The creation of these apparently new dialogues, and new knowledge on this theme, always brings along the old debates about the authorship, tools, methods, and regulations for effective co-creation. In fact, old questions arise when it comes to participation such as: Who chooses? Who decides? Who creates?
This session aims to bring together both new and old matters, inviting architects, urban planners, landscape architects, social scientists and all thinkers on spatial matters to debate about the contribution that participation can have on architectural processes on three levels - strategy, process and design - and to share practices and theories that are using proximity procedures and open methodologies to achieve more objective, inclusive and emancipatory transformations.
The global crisis caused by the COVID 19 health emergency represented a crucial moment of reflection on living habits. The pandemic restricted and interdicted public space, relegating inhabitants to their private areas. Citizens’ psychophysical wellbeing had to be based solely on the quality of domestic space, which in many cases, especially for poorer households, is of low quality. In this sense, the pandemic crisis can be interpreted as an opportunity to rethink the role and importance of public spaces, green areas and alternative mobility in the city as democratic spaces for social inclusion. The correlation between people’s psycho-physical well-being and the availability of equipped public spaces represents one of the new urban egalitarian paradigms for post-pandemic cities. Health and well-being are crucial objectives integrated within the notion of a sustainable city. For this reason, the configuration of urban space plays a decisive role in defining lifestyles and can contribute to improving the welfare of citizens. Many of today’s diseases are caused by a sedentary lifestyle, it is essential, therefore, to centre prevention on the promotion of physical well-being encouraging an active lifestyle, which can be eased by changing the urban structure.
With the aim of bringing about sustainable and healthy lifestyles, streets are in vogue. Streets are meeting and experimental places, theatres of everyday life and settings for cultural events. They provide crucial urban space for people and, in terms of urban studies, offer intellectual research nourishment to reflect on this fundamental element of the structure of the city. Out of the concept of sustainability, we can recognize new and more cutting-edge ways of planning and designing territories. A different approach to the enhancement of urban areas aims to consider heritage as part of a sustainable integrated system. In Rome, the overabundant presence of archaeology, always in symbiosis with vegetation, plays an important role for the image of the city and has helped maintaining the alternation of voids and solids in the urban fabric. Through a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective, we will discuss three case studies as possible ways in which landscape design and actions of citizens’ appropriation of space can co-create the preservation of natural and heritage environments, as well as contribute to the development of healthier lifestyles, strengthening the local culture for the communities that dwell therein.
The minimalist lifestyle, which has been very popular in the last decade, especially in developed countries, mostly emerged as a reaction to the phenomena such as the increase in consumption habits and mass consumption. Similarly, in the face of negative consequences such as urban areas produced by the influence of neoliberal policies, rapid consumption of resources, the emphasis on the investment value of land in recent years, a minimal/simple perspective and understanding is needed in urban planning and the approaches that shape the space. Minimalist philosophy has always been seen in most of the belief systems and societies in different terminologies such as Zen, Wabi, Sufism, etc. It is an intentional downsizing the possessions in order to live a meaningful life. Therefore, minimalists may voluntarily choose consuming, recycling, and reusing sustainably, or looking for smaller-scale life forms (Vannini and Taggart, 2013). Minimalism often related with individual possessions. However, from the moral aspect of minimalist philosophy, public spaces as publicly owned lands are the central subject of this study. The property systems prevailing in pre-capitalist societies were often based on the understanding that the public was essential to use the land. Especially after the Industrial Revolution, with the intense development of high technology and mass urbanization trends and intentions, the philosophy of producing the built environment has started to leave that understanding.
The society produces the city and at the same time the city influences the society, vice versa. As stated by many urban planning theorists such as Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, Matthew Carmona, the physical environment affects human behaviour and lifestyle. But “before deciding what kind of physical environment to build, it should be determined what kind of world and what kind of life is desired” (Sim, 2019, p.293). In this context, the study focuses on looking at the urban space from a minimalist perspective with the aim of describing the urban codes and property relations that minimalism as a sociological phenomenon will reveal on the public space. Within the scope of this minimalist approach, qualitative and quantitative analyses were made by determining minimalist parameters on streets and public spaces, which are among the main urban coding topics (Marshall, 2011). Pedestrian activities, urban furniture, trees and green spaces, the relationships between road width and building height, open space dimensions, width of pedestrian crossings-arcades, simplicity of buildings have been examined in different public spaces. Results show that urban coding systems of public spaces differ according to the governance of cities. Property policies that are emphasizing the usage value of land are more likely to provide minimalist parameters for public spaces than the policies that put first the investment value of land. The parameters that emerge as a result of the comparisons are noteworthy for obtaining innovative policies of governance by institutions or societies that attach importance to minimalism.
References:
Marshall, S. (Ed.) (2011). Urban coding and planning. Londres: Routledge.
Sim, D. (2019). Soft City – Building Density for Everyday Life. Island Press.
Vannini, P., Taggart, J. (2013). Voluntary simplicity, involuntary complexities, and the pull of remove: The radical ruralities of off-grid lifestyles. Environment and Planning, 45, p.295–311.
The pandemic situation has been impacting the EU-funded CLEVER Cities project (H2020 grant agreement no.776604) since the beginning of the Covid-19 appearance, putting particularly pressure on physical co-creation activities. In this project, the Urban Living Lab 1, namely CLEVER Action Lab1 (hereafter CAL1) of the front-runner city Milan, has been promoting and implementing Nature-based Solutions (hereafter NbS) - green roofs and walls. One of the four selected pilot projects of CAL1, the subject of this paper, consists in building four green roofs in terraces of social housing buildings named “Villaggio Barona” situated southwest of Milan. Different vulnerable groups of people live in each of the buildings, amongst the elderly, people with HIV/AIDS, and people with psychiatric illnesses, while one of the buildings is open for public use.
The paper presents the empirical knowledge acquired by putting into practice the “Co-design pathway” developed in CAL1 to engage citizens and local stakeholders in implementing green roofs and walls (Mahmoud et.al., 2021). It builds on the process established in the CLEVER Co-Creation Guidance (Mahmoud et. al., 2018), and has tested various tools and digital participation instruments as all co-design activities were held online. In addition to the co-design meetings, it will illustrate the completed co-creation pathway of “Villaggio Barona” which comprises all the elements that impacted the various phases, the co-design, the co-implementation, and the co-monitoring of NbS. Furthermore, it will introduce the upcoming phases, the co-maintenance and the co-development of green roofs.
The aim of this paper is manifold. By in-depth narrating the co-creation activities of NbS in “Villaggio Barona”, the paper will show all the impacts that have challenged the implementation of green roofs. In order to critically discuss the role of the participants and the tools employed throughout all the phases of co-creation, the paper revolves around the question of accessibility, inclusion, and social innovation (MacCallum et.al.,2009). It will provide insights on how the elderly were engaged during the online co-design activities which served in bridging the “digital gap” that primarily affects this group of people (Van Dijk, 2019). Lastly, it will also provide some recommendations and reflections on obstacles and overcomes on the issue of inclusive engagement of the most vulnerable groups and how the latter play a crucial role to yield an effective co-creation pathway.
References:
Mahmoud Israa, Iliriana Sejdullahu, E. M. (2021). Milan’s ULL co-design pathway to spread green roofs and walls throughout the city. Change the Future Together: Co-Creating Impact for More Inclusive, Sustainable & Healthier Cities and Communities, 288–295.
Mahmoud, I., & Morello, E. (2018). Co-Creation Pathway as a catalyst for implementing Nature-based Solution in Urban Regeneration Strategies Learning from CLEVER Cities framework and Milano as test-bed. Urbanistica Informazioni., 278 (Special issue), 204–210. https://re.public.polimi.it/retrieve/handle/11311/1079106/348151/2018_Mahmoud-Morello_XI INU_sessione n3.pdf
Jan, V. D. (2019). The Digital Divide. Polity Press.
MacCallum Diana, Frank Moulaert, Jean Hillier, S. V. H. (Ed.). (2009). Social Innovation and Territorial Development. Ashgate Publishing.
Nowadays it is not so known about how the goals of social justice shape a strong long-term community organization that enables the realization of urban spatial alternatives and inclusive cities. We can find these alternatives in different cities around the world. The communities that inhabit these new spaces generally express concerns about health, relationships and care, dimensions that help launch projects such as the creation of urban gardens, Housing, and other forms of urban commons. Through an analysis of the neighborhood mobilization around the transformative projects of urban spaces located in the neighborhoods of El Ràval, Sants-Badal and Vallcarca i els Penitents, we can discover common patterns of activism aimed at rebuilding the community and politically resignifying the urban context, thus addressing the importance that the care relationship assumes within the community that struggles and resists. In particular, the relationship with alterity assumes a fundamental role because this occurs through self-organization and counter-hegemonic cultural practices in places where resistant marginalities intersect. The self-organization to which I refer is that of non-normative bodies that put life, care, affections and social reproduction relationships at the center before those of production.
I used the qualitative method for the field work research. In the neighborhoods I took in consideration I have done an observation work, observing and analyzing the common use spaces born from a reappropriation practice, starting from an observation positioned with a gender, race, class and age perspective. I used the Charmaz's (2006) constructivist grounded theory method that is a research tool that focuses on the fact that are the data itself, as well as memory and observation, to be the basis on which interpretations and concepts flourish. .
For each neighborhood I have selected a space that can be considered an everyday utopia - a place where the utopia meets the ordinary to carry out daily practices in an innovative and unexpected way; the fusion between the everyday, the routine and the disturbing force of counter-hegemonic activities, makes the everyday utopia a unique source of symbolic power and imaginative force. For the selection of this kind of space I have spoken with an informant for each neighborhood and drawn up a first personalized map of the neighborhood. For the interviews I have used the snowball method, that consists in that an informant is asked to speak with a friend in order to ask her if she wants and consents to be interviewed, in this way is built a trust atmosphere between the interviewer and the interviewee. The interviews are unstructured following conversations held with a previously established purpose. These interviews have fewer questions as they lean more towards normal conversation but with an implied theme.
The objective is to understand the transformative power of these everyday utopias that are born in public space, a space that carries with it the power to share social reproduction, in particular care.
Biography
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Bordelands / La frontera: the new mestiza. San Francisco : Aunt Lute.
Arxiu Municipal del Districte de Sants-Montjuïc (1990). Documento DL: B-44. 901/90. La gent, els barris, el futur. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona ed.
Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory. A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sagi publications.
Cooper, D., Utopie quotidiane. Il potere concettuale degli spazi sociali inventivi, Trad. Croce, M. de ‘Everyday Utopias. The conceptual life of promising spaces’, Edizioni ETS, Pisa 2016.
European commission, Franklin, P., Bambra, C., Albani, V. (2021). Gender equality and health in the EU. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
hook, b. (1998). Elogio del margine. Razza, sesso e mercato culturale. Milano: Feltrinelli.
Social and urban interventions in regeneration projects allow cities to focus more on disadvantaged areas and to urbanize differently. This allows for more intelligent use of urban spaces that consider the experiences of different groups instead of the traditional gender-neutral space. To achieve this, citizens must be involved in the development of the urban planning of their city, mainly based on equal opportunities for men and women. The participation of women guarantees the promotion of equal access to decision-making. Indeed, the diversity of problems to be solved in complex urban spaces requires the development of innovative and inclusive approaches, capable of mobilizing the relevant resources and actors. These approaches often require the establishment of meeting places where inhabitants (and users of the territory) and local actors (public, private, associations) can meet, exchange, and share their skills and knowledge in order to contribute to the development of the city. At this level, the Urban Living Lab approach is seen as a support for the transformation of urban and territorial governance tools and as an urban research tool for solving problems in socio-spatial planning, design, social inclusion, and/or urban policy.
In this essay, we focus on the importance of involving women in the process of co-creation and urban renewal. Women's participation is often neglected or poorly supported by planners. We will examine this issue in an exploratory walk organized in the context of an urban renewal project. The aim was to work with women who live in the neighborhood concerned and women who are not familiar with it at all. Together we tried to highlight the qualities, opportunities, and shortcomings of the area in question, and thus enrich the reflections on its improvement.
The results show that the women have not fully appropriated the newly built infrastructures and that they have not improved the social fabric, in addition to the fact that marginalized people are not always present in the public space. In addition, women feel a sense of insecurity in public spaces due to prejudice or the quality of the urban space. The results of this exploratory research confirm that the involvement of women in a process of planning and transformation of cities is essential to promote democracy and foster social capital while encouraging quality developments that truly meet the needs of gender and class diversity. It is, therefore, necessary to move beyond traditional approaches, where public space (and its facilities) has been designed and built by men for men.
Focusing on the inhabitant (and/or the end-user of the space) as the main actor allows for more relevant and reality-based solutions. As such, the involvement of women can have a significant impact on the way urban space is designed, as well as on its influence on the other gender, society, and the environment in general. In this sense, women not only participate in the innovation process but also contribute to the city's access to important data for the development and improvement of urban spaces and equipment.