Placemaking Week Europe 2024 - Rotterdam

This dynamic session features city mayors from across the continent in a roundtable discussion that will spotlight mayoral perspectives on the role of placemaking in urban governance and approaches to public space policy. Mayors and municipal representatives from cities across Europe will share their insights on fostering community-centric cities, integrating placemaking into policy, and the ways in which leadership in transforming urban landscapes can help to create better cities for everyone. This is a fantastic chance to hear from top municipal leaders who are on the front lines of creating liveable, resilient cities through innovative and sustainable placemaking strategies.

Note: This session will use headphones for audio

This session will focus on community-driven co-creation processes that engage youth in urban transformation. Our interdisciplinary panel will discuss different approaches to youth engagement drawing from three international case studies, Learning Scapes/Co-Design Studio, Youth-centered Participatory Action (YoPA), and Four+ architects youth projects.

Facilitating an open and inclusive discussion we will delve into youth involvement of different age groups, participatory approaches, challenges, and methodologies for empowering youth in spatial transformation. Our panel will compare differences in approaches while situating the discussion in real-world engagement. Interactive in scope, questions will touch on what connects us, what disconnects us, what we can learn from one another, and how we may expand youth engagement and empowerment in our future work. Focusing on how (rather than why) we engage with youth, this panel will establish the groundwork for a subsequent workshop which will expand on our discussion through hands-on ideation and collaborative system mapping.

Why are private and public entities investing in spaces and places for children and families?  Two case studies will be presented by teams from Dublin and Madrid.  They will demonstrate different approaches while highlighting shared themes such as – the effectiveness of listening to children and caregivers;  the economic and social benefits of supporting families to spend time together; the wider impact of child-centric design on neighbourhood improvement. Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion and interactive workshop to further unpack themes with expertise and insights drawn from the panel members and the audience.   

This session aims to encourage dialogue and knowledge sharing among practitioners, enhancing our understanding of placemaking's impact on a regional scale. We will examine how to expand placemaking efforts to achieve broader regional effects.

Through interactive discussions with PlacemakingX and placemakers from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark, we will explore how these countries, individually and collectively, can address challenges such as policies and regulations, harsh weather conditions, and community engagement. Additionally, we will discuss steps toward fostering regional collaboration among the Nordic countries.

Learn from global placemaking network leaders and emerging networks, and discuss strategies for growing the collective learning, advocacy and impact for national and agenda placemaking networks and campaigns.

The PlacemakingX Global Placemaking Summit recently convened 150 of the world's placemaking leaders in Mexico City to set the course for the global placemaking movement and supporting the 30+ regional placemaking networks with emerging cross-cutting global agendas.

This moment represents a major evolution point for placemaking, since we launched the movement over10 years ago from Project for Public Spaces. We started PlacemakingX in 2019, almost 5 years ago, with the goal of further decentralizing and networking the movement globally, and have since seen strong self-organization around the very adaptive and nimble regional and national networks.

Informed by, and looking to support, these networks, the next evolution of placemaking movement will include cross-cutting agendas that are being formed with similar structures and process to the regional networks. As with the national networks, each agenda has leaders that have emerged to form each agenda network. While continuing to be open to additional leadership, these leaders are helping to take responsibility for guiding and growing the learning, advocacy and action of the network.

We invite placemaking leaders to join these regional and agenda networks to help them realize their potential. These networks and agendas are all designed to keep each-other supported, challenged and inspired.

Each part of the world is leading the placemaking conversation from different strengths.
Whether from a dominant discipline, sector, or demographic, every strength has much to offer, teach the rest of the world.

The role of mobility to enable great places for people often doesn't get enough attention. This session will explore the role of the kerbside as a flexible, welcoming space that enables great places. We'll also explore the role of transportation more broadly as the key for unlocking access for all with global examples.