Placemaking Week Europe 2024 - Rotterdam

This session aims to explore and develop innovative strategies for integrating green spaces into urban environments through placemaking. By sharing our insights from the European projects Regreeneration and Greendense, participants will comprehensively understand the challenges and opportunities related to greening dense urban areas. Specifically, the cities involved in the projects are 10: Paris (FR), Barcelona (ES), Alverca (PT), Bucharest (RO), Dordrecht (NL), Bruges (BE), Mechelen (BE), Bremen (DE), Cork (IE), Nantes Métropole (FR).

This session will foster a collaborative environment where participants can exchange ideas and develop new approaches to urban greening, ensuring lasting impact. By integrating cultural capital and green infrastructures, the session aligns with the theme of co-creating inclusive, resilient, and dynamic urban spaces. Participants will leave with practical strategies and a deeper appreciation for the power of greening in urban development.

In this session, participants will explore water-sensitive urban development challenges and strategies from UrbanShift Latin American cities, including San José, Belém, Florianópolis, Mar del Plata, Teresina, and Salta. These cities will demonstrate how they integrate local communities in planning urban spaces that address climate risks while promoting socio-economic benefits.

The session will feature an interactive panel discussion focused on three key scenarios: river basin management, waterfront and coastal development, and sustainable urban drainage. Each city will present its specific issues and approaches, with opportunities for the audience to engage through questions, reactions, and polls via a digital platform like Menti.

Participants will also participate in a hands-on exercise, collaborating with experts and city representatives. Divided into three groups, each addressing one of the scenarios, they will use maps and tools to co-create solutions. This exercise will emphasize balancing community needs and socio-economic benefits with building urban resilience.

The session will conclude with an open discussion on the groups' results, providing a platform for exchanging knowledge, testing tools, and showcasing best practices. This collaborative session will offer a unique opportunity for the Placemaking Week Europe participants to connect with Latin American experts and cities, fostering dialogue and future collaborations across regions.

Ever wondered what’s beneath your city streets? With more than half of the world's population living in urban areas, cities are getting creative with the limited land above ground. From bustling Latin American metropolises to sleek European capitals, urban spaces are growing upwards and downwards!

Join us as we venture into the underground wonders transforming our cities. Discover Seoul’s high-tech metro farm where robots are cultivating plants in once-abandoned subway spaces. Explore how Paris is reviving its forgotten quarries and tunnels, and how Singapore and Helsinki are leading the way in reimagining subterranean spaces.

In a world where Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo calls underground spaces an “incredible wealth,” and Hong Kong is digging deep for essential infrastructure, we’ll dive into the potential of these hidden realms.

This panel will cover:

1. What is Underground Urbanism? Uncover how utilizing these spaces can create sustainable, resilient, and equitable cities.
2. Effective Implementation: What makes underground development successful?
3. Future-Ready Planning: How can planners and city administrators harness subterranean spaces for disaster risk reduction and sustainable growth?

Get ready to dig into the future of urban living—because sometimes, the best solutions are right beneath our feet! 🌍🔍

Join us in this inspiring session where we will present the Native Learning Garden project, a transformative initiative that has been implemented over the past three years in 10 rural schools in southern Chile. This project revitalized empty and neglected spaces within the schools, turning them into active learning environments that foster a deep connection with nature. Through hands-on activities, students are encouraged to explore, collaborate, and engage with their surroundings in ways that enhance their territorial identity and develop essential 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork. Participants in this session will gain insight into the impact of these gardens on rural education and how they serve as living laboratories for students to connect with their natural heritage while fostering curiosity and a lifelong passion for learning. Come discover how nature can be a powerful tool for education and help inspire the next generation of learners!

Note: This session will use headphones for audio

Capacity: 20 people

Starting Point: New Lab @ HBS - Front Entrance


Discover how we’re transforming the Oude Westen into a climate-proof neighborhood. Through community-driven projects, we’ve turned paved areas into green, rain-absorbing spaces. With gardens, green roofs, and water storage systems, we’re building resilience against climate change.

Together with the Municipality, Aktiegroep Oude Westen, Wolbert van Dijk, and the local residents, we’ve completed nine projects over the past seven years. By tapping into the talents and enthusiasm of the community, we’re not just greening the neighborhood—we’re bringing people together.

Join us to see how these efforts come to life, as featured in the book Climates.

In a rapidly changing world, it is crucial to empower communities and public administrations with a comprehensive understanding of collaborative climate adaptation efforts. This session delves into grassroots initiatives, institutional strategies, and technology integration to offer participants insights into diverse approaches to addressing climate change and fostering community resilience.

We will explore case studies from:
- Italy, where we will reflect on how active community participation can influence, from the bottom up and in a collaborative manner, the effective achievement of the administration's objectives;
- France, where we will focus on how through community-driven actions you can tackle intersectional struggles: climate adaptation and gender sensitive public space.
- Romania, where we will share models and best practices of multi-stakeholder involvement in the lives of local communities from different perspectives (tight-knit communities, communities with a lot of seniors, communities with a lot of tenants, etc).

The final part of the session will present results from a recent study on citizen-led urban greening initiatives, discussing priorities and sustainable practices. We will highlight technological innovations crucial to smart city development, including IoT, AI, and big data analytics, demonstrating their application in urban planning. Participants will gain an understanding of how these technologies enhance city functionality and help mitigate neighborhood inequalities in combating climate risks.

Dark Matter Labs is a not-for-profit multidisciplinary group focused on exploring and developing the institutional infrastructure necessary for the civic economy of the 21st century. Our initiative, 'Trees-as-Infrastructure' [Trees-AI], reimagines urban trees and green spaces as fundamental components of urban infrastructure.

Nature-infrastructures are recognised crucial to enhance resilience and support communities in adapting to climate change, yet investment in nature-based solutions are still falling short. Through a blend of technology, and innovative regulatory and accounting practices, Trees-AI aims to create actionable paths to enable diverse stakeholders to come together to find these critical initiatives, thus ensuring their long-term viability and sustainability, and contributing to make urban space more liveable, and foster stronger and healthier communities.  

As we prepare our cities for the future, facing ongoing crises like climate change, social inequalities, population growth, and resource scarcity, we must also consider the needs of the other beings who we share our urban spaces with. Although urban planners and designers have developed tools to accommodate biodiversity, we still don’t fully understand the needs, desires, habits, and fears of the more-than-human worlds that surround us.

In this workshop, we will explore new ways to connect and strengthen the bond between urban communities and the non-human species that inhabit our cities through design. We will imagine what it’s like to scavenge canals for nest-building materials, navigate between glass towers at high-speed using sonar waves, stretch a lichen body in ultra-slow motion towards a moist crack, or search for food scraps in dark alley garbage bins. Together, we will practice shifting our perspectives, attuning to the more-than-human world, and uncovering the intricate web of entanglements that binds us.

These experiences will be documented and shared through drawing and collaging, and the insights gained will not only deepen our empathy for the more-than-human world but also inform and inspire future designs, guiding urban planners and designers in creating cities that are more inclusive, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of all species.

Unlock the power of green rooftops in our dynamic session, "Green Roofs: Unlock the Impact", where you will learn the practical tools how to estimate the transformative potential of green rooftops in enhancing urban climate resilience. This dynamic workshop invites urban planners, architects, policymakers, and sustainability enthusiasts to explore the practical applications of green infrastructure through hands-on modelling exercises and collaborative learning.

Participants will be divided into groups to evaluate green rooftops using three distinct tools: stormwater management models, energy performance simulations, and urban heat island mitigation models. Through these activities, you will gain practical insights into how green rooftops can reduce stormwater runoff, improve energy efficiency, and mitigate urban heat islands.

Working with real-world data, you will analyse different scenarios and compare results to understand the multifaceted benefits of green rooftops. By the end of the session, you’ll walk away with tools to advocate for and implement green rooftops in your projects and communities.

This session is your gateway to understanding and leveraging the full potential of green rooftops. Don’t miss this opportunity to network with like-minded professionals, share ideas, and contribute to creating sustainable, livable, and resilient cities. Let’s elevate our urban landscapes and unlock the impact of green roofs together!

This session will demonstrate the core principles of regenerative placemaking, giving several concrete examples of (un)successful interventions. Regenerative development is increasingly considered a possible way forward in the current era of poly-crises, enabling capacity building to be meaningful, place specific and adaptable to all places and people is critical.

A living lab setting often makes multi-year placemaking trajectories possible. It is a place-based collaboration in which residents, universities (research and education), municipalities, (social) entrepreneurs, activists, visitors, Nature and other stakeholders are given a voice. This is achieved via a set of co-design processes aimed at supporting the time and conversation needed for the activities to be planned, implemented, tested, adapted, learned from and shared.

We will share the story of over 20 projects and how they all resulted in the potential of this according. Tools will be shared such as starting from values, how to engage community and how to hold space through conflict – sharing one of our favorite tools how to see anger as caring loudly.