10 February 2020
Berlin, Germany
The workshop had an inspiring mixture of discussions and the presentation of running projects, expertise and potentials by all participants, resulted in several decisions:
- WG2 should pay attention to projects/initiatives that go beyond participative place making and instead come to ‘digital activism’, i.e. (for instance) use digital tools to fight identity, past etc.
- Focus is on bottom-up initiatives, citizens’ empowerment, the use and digitization of citizens’ knowledge.
- WG2 should try to focus on vulnerable groups (youth, elderly, migrants, lower income groups, homeless etc.)
- WG2 creates interdisciplinary-geographically spread ‘subgroups’, based on what seemed the most logical/fruitful combination of themes and members.
The workshop also established a number of subgroups with specific focus:
1. Mapping topo-ambivalent places
Focus: safety; changing characters of space (day-night etc.); places of fear/danger; no-go zones; perceptions of space; image versus reality of space; increasing accessibility of green spaces for all kind of users; sustainable development of public greenery.
Disciplines/expertise: safety mapping, ambivalent space mapping, citizens’ participation in mapping practices, digitization as a tool for building public safety and for the empowering of local citizens; participatory budgeting in local communities; participatory (digital) mapping; mental mapping. Dutch cadaster initiatives in post-conflict Colombia; practices beyond Europe (Medellín, Nairobi).
Networks/partners: beyond Europe digitized participative mapping practices; safety mapping networks;
2. The neighborhood as a social catalyst.
Focus: urban form (neighborhood) as targeting (healthy) life-styles and place-bounding; neighborhoods as social hubs; multi-ethnicity; walkability; digital activism; urban theory as local knowledge; participative (sustainable) urban development; include vulnerable groups; neighborhood renewal beyond Europe; justice in contemporary spatial development by help of digital tools.
Disciplines/expertise: mapping related digital tools; the imagining/VR of cities/neighborhoods to connect with storytelling (local knowledge); post-war neighborhood (renewal); post-socialist public space; urban design as tool; citizens’ participation through digital projects; citizen participation in urban re/generation processes; mental mapping.
Networks/partners: Atlas of E-participation in Europe (2016); European Health Platform; research in- digitized - participative sustainable urban development; TUDelft digital mapping tools; Photostory Of our Neighborhood project (PON); www.human.cities.eu.
3. Contested and ambiguous public heritage sites
Focus: invisible/denied ‘monuments’; traumatized space; contested heritage; the ambiguity of heritage; industrial heritage; contested/contaminated urban space; borders/boundaries; changing roles of art, built artefacts in public space; public space as contested/shared/inherited space; tangible and intangible aspects of space and place-making; the dynamics of local knowledge production; (digital) tools of place-making (master plans, participatory processes); (digital) forms of representation; urban emancipation and public space; role of local knowledge in heritage making/visualization processes.
Disciplines/Expertise: art history analysis/urban history; architecture; urban heritage; forms of representation; the use of digital tools to visualize ambiguous (contested) heritage; waterfront renewal (Belgrade, Prague) and the loss of (urban) memory.
Networks/partners: ICOMOS (Historic cities and towns of South America/the Mediterranean); Place making agenda Jerusalem; Rome public space project (Heike); PON project; Post-socialist urban heritage issues; OSA and their Yellow Star House Project (Budapest), Kék (Budapest).
4. Digital ‘townscapes’ and cultural routes in European cities.
Focus: digitization of (lost/forgotten) heritage; link past and future; ‘toward a digital townscape’.
Disciplines/ Expertise: GIS-related tools for placemaking.
Networks/partners: Urban Worlds Lab (Gilles).