Placemaking Week Europe 2024 - Rotterdam

This session explores  the role and potential of placemaking to drive social inclusion. We share insights of InclusiveCity, a DUT funded research project, exploring critical placemaking in 15 Minutes City transitions in 5 living labs across Europe  (Rotterdam, Oslo, Vienna, Rome and Budapest).  In a world with growing inequalities and urban challenges, it is necessary to dig into our daily practice as placemakers and review aspects of inclusion and trust, leaving no one behind. How can or cannot Placemaking be a tool to benefit local communities and create lasting social change?

InclusiveCity partners invite practitioners, academics, and decision makers to a collective discussion revising aspects of inclusion in public space design and placemaking projects. Concrete examples and tools will support the open dialogue, while the Theory of Change (ToC) framework will help to unpack the buzzwords of inclusion and participation.

What will you learn:
-Unpacking buzzwords by pinning placemaking to more complex community objectives
-Practical methods for bringing “invisible” voices and community assets into your work
-Critical reflections on placemaking and inclusion, to better distinguish “tokenism” vs real power redistribution towards the community and its needs.

Note: This session will use headphones for audio

Join us for an insightful panel on applying placemaking to kickstart long-term and large-scale city projects. This session will reveal how diverse collaborations can drive the success and sustainability of urban projects. Participants will gain valuable insights into how global expertise, academic involvement, local government, artists, and community engagement can come together to drive lasting change.

The session will present the implementation of a pilot project that shows how a long-term and large-scale plan developed by the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro can begin to be translated into meaningful interventions at the neighbourhood level through placemaking and collaboration - featuring experts from the City of Rio de Janeiro, C40 Cities, Superwien Urbanism and LabIT/PROURB UFRJ on a project also supported by IDB.
 
Additionally, the Centre for Central European Architecture (CCEA) project "Prague Magistrala: Unlocking Potential of Urban Highways" will showcase the revitalization of a 20th-century transport corridor into the vibrant New Prague Boulevard, illustrating how infrastructure repurposing can enhance public spaces and foster community-driven democracy. The project started as a bottom-up initiative and is advocating for a better liveable place for local communities.
 
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn practical strategies and innovative approaches for creating and sustaining vibrant urban spaces.

Note: This session will use headphones for audio

Panel discussion to mark the launch of the book 'Heart, Head, Hands: A Guide for City Makers – Four Steps to Culture-led Development'. The book highlights the importance of cultural and creative spaces to the identity of cities and proposes a strategy for uniting real estate, culture, and government through a Culture-led Development framework.

This session will spotlight the framework's key stages: Initiate, Organize, Finance, Consolidate. After a short interview with the author Rinske Brand and the introduction of the framework, three pioneers in culture-led development (also showcased in the book) will share their stories and take questions from the audience. Their focus will be on exploring the keys success factors, navigating pitfalls, and distilling invaluable lessons learned during these culture-led developments.

Note: This session will use headphones for audio

How does a mega-project, in term of architecture, offering and visitation create meaningful micro- connections on a community level? The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center is housing two of Greece’s most historical institutions, the Greek National Opera and the National Library of Greece alongside one of the city’s’ newest and most innovative green areas, the Stavros Niarchos Park. Boasting its Renzo Piano state of the art premises and having expanded the city’s cultural map beyond the metropolitan center of Athens the SNFCC is simultaneously considered by many an extension of their house’s yard. Practices, experiments, and challenges in creating a landmark that feels like a place for all.

This session digs into the dynamics between the public and private sectors in sustainable placemaking. By examining cases from throughout Europe, we will critically assess the business case for placemaking, and what strategic partnerships can do to elevate local initiatives and foster sustainable change without losing touch with grassroots communities.

The panel will discuss:
-What role do businesses play in sustainable social infrastructure and tactical urbanism?
-Who is responsible for placemaking and how should its use and impact be measured?
-Can strategic public-private partnerships create places for people and drive positive change?
-How can we achieve sustainable long-term collaborations at the local level?

Through an interactive session with participants, we will explore the benefits and challenges of public-private partnerships, their impacts on communities, and strategies for achieving lasting positive outcomes. This will include a debate focussed on concrete examples of placemaking practice, exploring whether placemaking is repackaging existing offers or establishing a new discipline that challenges the status quo and promotes people-focused urban development.  Participants will gain insights into concrete examples of public-private partnerships, effective organizational models, and how to continue to manage partnerships over the long term.

The climate, social and ecological challenges are urging us to make a major urban shift, therefore questioning collectively our practices and urban lifestyles. Through the cases of Nantes and Milan, we’ll explore how those two cities are facing those crucial stakes and how they are shifting their practices for more transversal, participative and sustainable urban policies.  

For more than 15 years, the Metropolis of Nantes has been a frontrunner in promoting and making citizen participation an integrated and systemic process within the design of its public policies and urban renewal projects. We’ll present how Nantes Metropolis implemented an unprecedented large-scale citizen debate on its urban fabric at the metropolitan level last year, and the challenges we are now facing.

In 2018, the City of Milan created a design team within AMAT (its Environmental, Territorial and Mobility Agency) with the ambition to revolutionize public spaces in Milan, with a human scale vision. We’ll discuss the approach and results but also the obstacles and lessons learned from this process. The secret of “Officina Urbana” is not to become archistars, but to create a team of archistreet(fighter)s and placemakers, to enable everyone to have an impact on the public sphere.