Placemaking Week Europe 2024 - Rotterdam

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.

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.

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.

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.

Recently, there has been a lot of fuss around co-creation as a way to tackle big urban challenges. However, talking about experimental approaches seems to be much easier than planning and implementing them in existing (governance) structures, let alone, making experimenting part of full urban development processes. This training sessions allows participants to playfully lay out the cornerstones for experimental approaches and to discuss: Where to start? how to plan? What methods / tools to use?

If we want to create meaningful impact in the field of climate change mitigation, public participation and sustainable and circular urban development there is an urgent need to bridge small scale civic initiatives (in placemaking) with larger infrastructure and area development initiatives and enable participation and civic development in these projects. While civil society initiatives are increasingly being recognised in the field of place-led development, civil society actors and initiatives in the area of infrastructure still receive too little acknowledgement and support. But what can we learn from these initiatives and what (regulatory) framework do they need?

In this session we will take a closer look at one of the most interesting area development projects in Rotterdam (Keilekwartier / Merwe-Vierhavens) and learn from international best-practice examples. We will investigate how civic infrastructure initiatives (e.g. energy communities) can foster resilient area development and create benefits and a just transition for the local community. How can these large scale developments still include citizen initiatives in a meaningful and just way? Can we develop good overarching frameworks for these developments?

The participants work in teams to redesign an existing neighbourhood in Rotterdam in a 3D game. New houses need to be built, but the neighbourhood also needs to be adapted to the changing climate. Which team will create the best design?

The participants are kindly requested to bring their own laptops to the session (not a table or phone). A mouse is handy, but not required.