Urban experiences and knowledge as resource
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).