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Co-creative temporary use in public spaces: The process is everything

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Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Recommendations by

JPI Urban Europe’s AGORA

Edited by Johannes Riegler and Jonas Bylund

UNFOLDING

DILEMMAS

OF URBAN

PUBLIC SPACES

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Policy Paper:

Unfolding Dilemmas

of Urban Public Spaces

Recommendations by

JPI Urban Europe’s AGORA

www.jpi-urbaneurope.eu

EDITORS

Johannes Riegler / JPI Urban Europe (johannes.riegler@jpi-urbaneurope.eu)

Jonas Bylund / JPI Urban Europe (jonas.bylund@jpi-urbaneurope.eu)

WRITING TEAM

Aksel Ersoy / Delft University of Technology

Caroline Wrangsten / JPI Urban Europe

Chelina Odbert / Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)

Christoph Gollner / Positive Energy Districts Programme

Dahae Lee / TU Dortmund

Emma Hill / University of Edinburgh

Florian Lorenz / Smarter Than Car

Joe Mulligan / Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)

Johannes Riegler / JPI Urban Europe

Josh Gringsby / University of Vienna

Karin Peters / Wageningen University

Maria Angeli / Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies

Ruth Yeoman / University of Oxford and Northumbria University

Sandra Guinand / University of Vienna

Yvonne Franz / University of Vienna

Zala Velkavrh / prostoRož Cultural Association

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Johannes Riegler / JPI Urban Europe

DESIGN AND LAY OUT

Chris Versteeg, Projekt C

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

CONTRIBUTORS AND WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

Ingrid Bakker (Windesheim Universtity of Applied Sciences; Zwolle, the Netherlands); Sverre Bjerkeset (Oslo

School of Architecture and Design; Oslo, Norway); M’Lisa Colbert (The Nature of Cities; Montreal, Canada);

Nataša Čolić (Institute of Architecture and Urban & Spatial Planning of Serbia; Belgrade, Serbia); Nele

Descheemaeker (City of Ghent; Ghent, Belgium); Manten Devriendt (Sampling / Urbanizing in Place; Riga,

Latvia); Floridea Di Ciommo (cambiaMO s.coop.mad.; Madrid, Spain); Stéphane Durand (Grenoble-Alpes

Métropole; Grenoble, France); Evelyn Echeverria (Project Management Juelich; Berlin, Germany); Johan

Geldorf (City of Ghent; Ghent, Belgium) Astrid Hendriksen (Wageningen University; Wageninger, the Neth-

erlands); Luiza Hoxhaj (Center for European Policy Studies on Regional and Local Development; Tirana, Alba-

nia); Ineke Hulshof (Hulshof Architecten bv; Delft, Netherlands), Kaspars Karolis (Ministry of Education and

Science of Latvia; Riga, Latvia); Eric Koomen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Amsterdam, the Netherlands);

Alisa Korolova (Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture; Riga, Latvia); Petr Kratochvíl (Institute

of Art History; Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic); Karlis Kreslins (Ventspils University

of Applied Sciences; Ventspils, Latvia); Velta Lubkina (Rezekne Academy of Technologies; Rezekne, Latvia);

Marijke Maes (City of Ghent; Ghent, Belgium); Don Mitchell (Formas/Uppsala University; Uppsala, Sweden);

Adrian Moredia Valek (ReGreen; Rotterdam, the Netherlands); Ana Nikovic (Institute of Architecture and

Urban & Spatial Planning of Serbia (IAUS); Belgrade, Serbia); Nathalie Noupadja (Council of European Mu-

nicipalities and Regions (CEMR); Brussels, Belgium); Natalia Onesciuc (URBASOFIA; Bucharest, Roma-

nia); Nicolás Palacios (Independent; Stockholm, Sweden); Frederic Saliez (UN-Habitat; Brussels, Belgium);

Eugene Sauren (City of De Hague; De Hague, the Netherlands) Mihails Potihonins (Urban Planning and

Management at Aalborg University; Aalborg, Denmark); Tamara Schwarzmayr (NGO Samstag in der Stadt,

Vienna, Austria); Carlos Smaniotto (Universidade Lusófona; Lisbon, Portugal); Jiri Vlcek (Ministry of Regional

Development CZ; Prague, Czech Republic), Aldona Wiktorska-Święcka (UERA / University of Wroclaw;

Wroclaw, Poland), Kateryna Zuieva (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; Kiev, Ukraine);

Special thanks to Uldis Berkis (State Development Agency of the Republic of Latvia) and Arnis Kokorevics

(Latvian Council of Science) for hosting the AGORA Thematic Dialogue “Unfolding Dilemmas of Public

Spaces” in Riga in November 2019 which was a key event in the development of this policy paper.

The workshops leading to this publication were organised in the scope of the EXPAND II

project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and

innovation programme under grant agreement No 857160.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

FOREWORD 11

Johannes Riegler & Jonas Bylund

ABOUT THIS POLICY PAPER 19

Johannes Riegler

RECONFIGURATION OF PUBLIC SPACES

VIA NATUREBASED SOLUTIONS 25

Aksel Ersoy & Ruth Yeoman

ENSURING INCLUSIVE AND ACCESSIBLE

PUBLIC SPACES IN AN AUSTERITY CONTEXT 31

Karin Peters & Dahme Lee

TACKLING GENDER INEQUALITY IN PUBLIC SPACE:

SUSTAINABILITY IN GOVERNANCE AND DESIGN 37

Caroline Wrangsten, Chelina Odbert, Joe Mulligan, Emma Hill & Maria Angeli

INCLUSIVE DESIGN/PUBLIC SPACES

FOR SAFE NEIGHBOURHOODS 45

Ruth Yeoman & Karin Peters

COCREATIVE TEMPORARY USE IN PUBLIC SPACES:

THE PROCESS IS EVERYTHING 55

Sandra Guinand, Yvonne Franz, Johannes Riegler, Zala Velkavrh

RETHINKING URBAN PUBLIC SPACES:

HOW TO UNLOCK THE POTENTIALS OF STREET SPACES

TO IMPROVE SUSTAINABILITY AND LIVEABILITY 63

Florian Lorenz & Joshua Grigsby

ENERGY TRANSITION AND THE MEANINGFUL CITY 75

Christoph Gollner & Ruth Yeoman

CONTENT

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Johannes Riegler

Jonas Bylund

One might see the eects of the rapid COVID-19

outbreak on urban areas as a real-time stress test

to shocks, as an analysis how cities are vulnerable to

disruption and through what means city and other

authorities are prepared to take actions to ensure

the wellbeing and safety. The pandemic shows which

infrastructures and practices are the most vulner-

able, but also of highest importance to ensure the

necessary services and responses in times of a health

crisis that aects vast areas of life.

At the same, the major disruptions caused let

observe positive and eects resulting from the

decrease of global footprint of Western urbanism.

Examples include an increase in air quality (Mahato

et al., 2020), decreasing of noise levels (Andrews,

2020). COVID-19 restrictions and the therewith

connected change in urban practices which “oer

a glimpse of what the city could be like without so

much congestion (Hu, 2020).

The accessibility to safe urban public spaces has been

widely identiﬁed as an essential service functions for

urban populations in times of the pandemic. With

human distancing measures in place, the pressure on

spaces in cities increased.

From the ﬁrst weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in

Europe, the fundamental role of accessible, inclusive

and safe public urban spaces for tackling further

spread of the disease and to tackle trade-os caused

by measures which aim at slowing down the speed

of infections (ﬂatten the curve), such as increased

risks of mental health issues (Wessel, 2020) became

evident. Providing safe public spaces which allows for

sucient human distancing, yet provide the infra-

structures and features to exercise, cycle and walk,

as well as, take a break from being at home in (semi-)

lockdowns and became a key priority for ensuring

public (mental) health.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe just about when the writing team of the

AGORA Policy Paper on Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces established and

started working on the publication in February/March 2020. Far reaching

measures to counter the exponential rise of the cases led countries to announce

a state of emergency worldwide. In urban areas, the COVID-19 pandemic

caused major disruptions, challenged many aspects of urbanity and caused in

(temporary) transformative shifts. And, by the time of writing this, it is not over

yet! For that reason, the editors decided to reﬂect upon the current (July 2020)

situation and the experiences of the last months in this foreword.

FOREWORD

The enhanced demand for high functional public

spaces in times of the pandemic has resulted in

actions around the world such. The shocks which the

pandemic caused urban public administrations to act

quickly and show ﬂexibility to implement (tempo-

rary) measures.

Adaptations which in pre-pandemic times might

have taken months to years to design, build and

implement were realised almost overnight. To name

a few: The City of Bogotá, capital of Columbia,

opened 76km of temporary and 22km of new bike

lanes to reduce crowding (Wray, 2020), Oakland

(USA) restricted cars on almost 120km of streets

(Rasmus & Fernandez, 2020), London tool similar

measures (Mayor of London, 2020), Bucharest

closed streets on weekends (Romania-Insider

Newsroom, 2020). In New Zealand, the govern-

ment announced plans to fund extra wide sidewalks

(Orsman, 2020) and in New South Wales, Australia

parks and streets are reshaped to meet the require-

ments (Stokes, 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic underlined the role of

public spaces in shaping urban robustness (From

Urban Resilience to Robustness is one of JPI Urban

Europe’s priority areas. For more see JPI Urban

Europe (2019:21) Strategic Research and Innovation

Agenda 2.0). Accessible, inclusive, well designed

public spaces provide essential services to mitigate

shocks and eects of crisis to those living in a city.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is a truly disruptive

crisis, it is likely only one of many in the increasingly

turbulent world of the Anthropocene. However, due

to the rapidity of the spread of the virus and subse-

quent measures to break down chains of infections,

the eects of the crisis were evident and could be

felt immediately. In contrast, the climate change cri-

sis truly has disruptive eects around the world such

as weather extremes, rising sea levels, droughts, etc..

However, its impact is slowly but steadily emerging

whose results may aect a habituation in society:

humans are unfortunately quite good at getting used

to longer term piecemeal worsening situations. While

COVID-19 disrupted urban life within days, climate

change, if not addressed signiﬁcantly by cutting

emissions and appropriate adaptation and mitigation

actions, will result in a gradual worsening on local,

regional and global level towards the inhabitability of

vast regions around the world and a dramatic loss in

biodiversity (see e.g.: Union of Concerned Scien-

tists (n.D.); European Commission (n.D.); Falk, J.

& Ganey, O. (2019); National Geographic (n.D.);

Bradford, A. & Pappas, S. (2017))

A phenomenon which has been coined as the “trag-

edy of the time horizon” Elliott, L. (2015). In regard

to urbanism, one of the main questions for the way

forward will be what can be learned from the current

COVID-19 crisis to create more robust urban areas

and societies?

The science ﬁction writer Kim Stanley Robinson

(2020) recently points in the New Yorker Magazine:

“The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations.

What felt impossible has become thinkable. The

spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how

quickly, we can change as a civilization.“ Robinson

further argues that the measures to condemn the

outbreak of COVID-19 is what is required to sub-

stantially address the climate crisis: act quickly even

if measures are painful in the short run to prevent

even larger disasters at a later point in time. In the

case of COVID-19, in many countries and cities,

measures have been taken at a tremendous speed,

disrupting almost every aspect of life, with one aim in

sight: to ﬂatten the curve.

Robinson’s point is very well adaptable to robust

urbanism. Currently, the term “resilience” is widely

used in connection with the eects of COVID-19

on urban areas. While it is understandable that many

people are longing for “going back to the old nor-

mal”, what is too often conveyed by this use of the

term ‘resilience’ misses out on a sound recovery that

is truly sustainable.’

The Oxford Dictionary provides two deﬁnitions of

the “resilience”:

• the ability of people or things to recover quickly after

something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

• the ability of a substance to return to its original

shape after it has been bent, stretched or pressed

The former deﬁnition implies that the recovery after

a shock does not necessarily mean to go back to the

state before the shock occurred. It describes the

ability to shake o something unpleasant quickly,

potentially coming out stronger. In contrary, the

second deﬁnition describes resilience as the ability to

go back to “the old normal”. Too often in (non-ac-

ademic) debates on urban resilience, the second

deﬁnition is applied.

In this regard, the term “urban robustness” might

provide a better suited meaning. Urban robustness

anticipates a challenge in how urban societies handle

increased and ‘deeper’ turbulence and crisis. In this

line of thinking, resilience is desirable but risks being

too weak: as it may purport a kind of ‘save what we

have’ which counters transformations and positive or

‘good’ disruptions. Robustness in this context is as a

driver to make city liveable and sustainable as far as

possible in the ﬁrst place: that is, to prioritise on how

will our future sustainable and liveable cities look like,

and then see, how to make them resilient. With this

The two editors out and about in public space in Stockholm in early March, just before the big outbreak / lock down.

Picture by Caroline Wrangsten.“

understanding of resilience there are way more as-

pects of urban complexity included. For example, in

terms of societal cohesion and public health; it limits

the risks of understanding resilience as a defence in

the ﬁrst place.

With COVID-19, people around the world are at an

increased reﬂexive moment in time. With obvious

exceptions such as the Black Lives Matter move-

ment and related actions in the USA, which were

practically forced out on the streets and squares –

during lockdown! – to step up the game demanding

equality for exactly the same reasons of shaping

change! As Robinson pointed out, the measures to

prevent the disease to spread and to “ﬂatten the

curve” has rewritten imaginations on transforma-

tive change. We are seeing a sudden opportunity

to have a hard look at urban and societal practices.

It is where the “collective scale of events highlights

the irrelevance of individuals” (Melandri, 2020)

Further, the COVID-19 pandemic showed that

“there are no “quick technological ﬁxes” to grand

societal challenges that can ignore societal values”

(Novitzky, 2020). The momentum might ease the

political tasks of sorting out what practices seem

reasonable to keep on doing and what we could – or

should – do very well without. For example, Mariana

Mazzucato (2020), in her Opinion in the Guardian

saw the chance in the current crisis to transform to

do capitalism dierently as it strengthens the roles

of governments to levels unwitnessed in the 40-50

years.

Now, in July 2020, it is too early to say what kind

of long-term transformations the COVID-19 crisis

has in terms of sustainable development. However,

an honest view of the lessons to be learnt for driving

urban transitions is called for. Otherwise, the experi-

ences made in the past months may be in vain unless

harnessed to build urban systems which are robust

to immediate shocks while transforming towards

sustainable practices in the longer run. While the

current crisis, as pointed out, oers opportunities to

learn collectively, draw conclusions and get real tran-

sitions towards sustainability going, one must not fall

in the trap of thinking that reﬂection and learning will

come undisputed. There will be enormous pressure

due to interests to go back into a pre-COVID-19

without any substantial lessons learned implemented

on a larger scale.

The chapters of the AGORA Policy Paper do not

address consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak

directly. However, all chapters provide angles on

speciﬁc dilemmas and synergies in public spaces

which, if addressed and implemented, contribute to

robust urban areas which are prepared to mitigate

shocks and provide services needed in terms of a

global pandemic.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Andrews, R. G. (2020, April 8). Coronavirus

Turns Urban Life’s Roar to Whisper on World’s

Seismographs. New York Times. https://

www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/

seismographs-lockdown-coronavirus.html

Bradford, A. & Pappas, S. (2017, August 12). Eects

of Global Warming. Live Science. https://www.

livescience.com/37057-global-warming-eects.

html.

Elliott, L. (2015, September 29). Carney warns of

risks from climate change ‘tragedy of the horizon’.

The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/

environment/2015/sep/29/carney-warns-of-

risks-from-climate-change-tragedy-of-the-

horizon

European Commission (n.d.). Climate Change

Consequences. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/

change/consequences_en, accessed 2020-07-

06.

Falk, J. & Ganey, O. (2019). Exponential

Roadmap: Scaling 36 Solutions to Halve

Emissions by 2030. https://exponentialroadmap.

org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/

ExponentialRoadmap_1.5.1_216x279_08_AW_

Download_Singles_Small.pdf

Hu, W. (2020, April 9). N.Y.’s Changed Streets: In

One Spot, Trac Speeds Are Up 288%. New York

Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/

nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-empty-streets.html

JPI Urban Europe (2019). Strategic Research and

Innovation Agenda 2.0. https://jpi-urbaneurope.

eu/app/uploads/2019/02/SRIA2.0.pdf

Mahato, S., Pal, S., & Ghosh, K. G. (2020). Eect

of lockdown amid COVID-19 pandemic on air

quality of the megacity Delhi, India. Science of The

Total Environment, 730, 139086. doi:10.1016/j.

scitotenv.2020.139086

Mayor of London (2020, May 15). Car-free zones

in London as Congestion Charge and ULEZ

reinstated. https://www.london.gov.uk/press-

releases/mayoral/car-free-zones-in-london-

as-cc-and-ulez-reinstated?clid=IwAR1K

MgV595zKuBnlPbt-IZKYQPMB5HnfY-E1_

ZjcHrim1Nx1SjifRI5glRM, accessed 2020-07-

06.

Mazzucato, M. (2020, March 9). The COVID-19

crisis is a chance to do capitalism dierently.

The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/

commentisfree/2020/mar/18/the-covid-19-

crisis-is-a-chance-to-do-capitalism-dierently

Melandri, F. (2020, July 4). Letter from Italy:

this pandemic is showing us who we really are.

The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/

books/2020/jul/04/letter-from-italy-this-

pandemic-is-showing-us-who-we-really-are

BIBLIOGRAPHY

National Geographic (n.d.). Eects of global

warming. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/

environment/global-warming/global-warming-

eects/, accessed 2020-07-06.

Novitzky, P. (2020, July 9). Needed: tougher ethics

policies in EU research projects. Science Business.

https://sciencebusiness.net/framework-

programmes/viewpoint/needed-tougher-ethics-

policies-eu-research-projects

Orsman, B. (2020, April 12). COVID-19 coronavirus:

Government to fund extra wide footpaths to

maintain 2m distancing. NZ Herald. https://

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_

id=1&objectid=12324256

Rasmus, A.; Fernandez, L. (2020, April 10). Oakland

to restrict cars on 74 miles of streets, paving way for

pedestrians and bicyclists. KTVU Fox 2. https://

www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-to-restrict-cars-

on-74-miles-of-streets-paving-way-for-

pedestrians-and-bicyclists

Robinson, K. S. (2020, May 1). The Coronavirus Is

Rewriting Our Imaginations. New Yorker. https://

www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/

the-coronavirus-and-our-future

Romania-Insider Newsroom (2020, May 15).

Several streets in downtown Bucharest will be closed

to cars on weekends. Romania Insider. https://

www.romania-insider.com/downtown-bucharest-

streets-closed-cars

Stokes, R. (2020, May 7). How the coronavirus is

already reshaping the design of parks and streets

in New South Wales. The Guardian. https://www.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/

how-the-coronavirus-is-already-reshaping-the-

design-of-parks-and-streets-in-new-south-

wales

Union of Concerned Scientists (n.d.). Climate

Impacts. https://www.ucsusa.org/climate/impacts

Wessel, M. (2020, April 8). COVID-19 Strengthens

Case for Public Space and Better Air Quality.

Urban Futures Global Conference. https://

www.urban-future.org/2020/04/08/covid-19-

strengthens-case-for-public-space/

Wray, S. (2020, March 18). Bogotá expands

bike lanes to curb coronavirus spread.

SmartCitiesWorld. Smart Cities World. https://

www.smartcitiesworld.net/news/news/bogota-

expands-bike-lanes-overnight-to-curb-

coronavirus-spread-5127

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

INCLUSIVE PUBLIC SPACES

FOR URBAN LIVEABILITY

Urban public spaces fulﬁl important societal

functions and shape many of the characteristics of

cities and urban areas. However, there are several

dilemmas (competing goals, interests, strategies,

wicked issues, etc.) involved in their development

and maintenance. In simpler terms, addressing one

issue/challenge in an urban context might have

negative eects in another realm. Regarding urban

public spaces, for instance, typical crossings of con-

cerns relate to everyone’s right to the city, openness

to dierent societal groups, climate change actions

and how to cater for safety and security without

promoting increasingly exclusive spaces.

‘Inclusive Public Spaces for Urban Liveability’ is one

of the thematic priorities of JPI Urban Europe’s

Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2.0

(SRIA 2.0). In the SRIA 2.0, the four thematic

priorities are described as urban dilemmas. An urban

dilemma is deﬁned as “two or more competing goals,

such as stakeholder interests and related strategies

which potentially fail to achieve their aims as imple-

menting one strategy hampers or prevents the achieve-

ment of another” (JPI Urban Europe, 2019:14). a

dilemma driven approach allows urban actors to

address complex contexts of development, to shape

and provide knowledge and evidence that eorts to

minimise reductionism and increase the challenge

articulation by the problem owners, and opportuni-

ties to exchange on emerging urban transition path-

ways. Each dilemma addressed by JPI Urban Europe

illustrates the need for action by policy, research,

practitioners, and other stakeholders driving or being

aected by urban development.

The SRIA 2.0 dilemma of Inclusive Public Spaces for

Urban Liveability is understood in the following way:

“Public spaces are ideally attractive to all, these are

spaces for wellbeing and health (stimulating people

to move), increasingly green public and shared places

for people, where dierent groups and communities

meet, preconceived ideas of the Other are chal-

lenged, and where citizens control their streets and

shared spaces. Urban development can be used to

increase urban quality of life by design, public space

management e.g. walkability. Public spaces may

The objective of this policy brief is to provide an accessible text which breaks

down the complexity of the development and maintenance of public urban

spaces into ‘bite-sized chunks’: a selected number of dilemmas which is not

exhaustive of all issues and concerns. These chunks are to be seen as entry points

for urban policy makers, practitioners, civil society organisations, the research

community and all other urban actors. The report should inspire to look at

interrelated urban challenges through the lens of urban dilemmas.

ABOUT THIS POLICY PAPER

also retain and emerge as second living rooms (as

housing living areas get smaller). However, a dilemma

regarding every- one’s right to the city is that public

spaces are constantly inﬂuenced by power balances

and the needs of dierent groups and communities. A

speciﬁc concern is how to cater for safety and secu-

rity concerns without a widening of exclusive spaces.

Furthermore, strategies and pol- icy to progress

and enhance city status and attractiveness does not

always support urban liveability. The dilemma here,

then, foregrounds archetypal concerns with urban

public spaces around inclusion and security, mobility

and morphology, openness and integrity, urban green

and density – with the current aspects of e.g. the im-

pacts of increased concerns in digitalised public pro-

tection and control, autonomous vehicles, qualities of

design, green accessibility, urban demographics, and

increasing privatisation in the every- day settings and

use of public spaces” (JPI Urban Europe, 2019, p.27)

PURPOSE, SCOPE AND AUDIENCE OF

THE AGORA PAPER UNFOLDING THE

DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC SPACES

Urban public spaces are connected to a great

number of urban issues at the centre of various

disciplines, interests and strategies. The paper at

hand aims at highlighting a selected number of these

interrelations. The dilemmas and potential synergies

discussed in this report are not to be understood as

comprehensive and exhaustively reﬂecting all wicked

issues (cf. Rittel & Webber, 1973) attached to urban

public spaces. The topics addressed were identiﬁed

and co-created by a multi-stakeholder group of

urban actors. Each chapter reﬂects one (group of)

dilemma(s) or synergy(-ies), trade-os and connec-

tions between dierent perspectives of urban public

spaces.

The paper aims wraps up the main topics of discus-

sions of the AGORA Workshops on Dilemmas of

Public Spaces and combining dierent perspec-

tives, expertise, knowledge(s) and experiences by

the participants (the workshops and sequence is

presented below). After the co-creative exercises

in the workshops, the writing team of the paper

further developed the topics which were identiﬁed

as the most pressing issues by contributed theoret-

ical frameworks, references and literature as well as

AGORA Session

UNFOLDING THE

DILEMMAS OF

PUBLIC SPACE

06/2019 Valencia

AGORA Thematic

Dialogue

UNFOLDING THE

DILEMMAS OF

PUBLIC SPACE

11/2019 Riga

Input to the

Urban Agenda

for the EU

Partnership

AGORAPolicy

Paper Dilemmas

of Public Spaces

Input JPI Urban

Europe’s 2020

call EN Urban

Transformation

Capacities

… from 17 countries…

44 Participants...

… coming from 27 cities

Writing Team:

16 Authors

AGORA Activities on theDilemmas of Public Spaces

The process for unfolding the dilemmas of public spaces

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

practical examples, cases and initiatives which deal

with the dilemmas described in the chapter.

The AGORA Policy Paper does not provide a clear

deﬁnition of what is understood under urban public

spaces throughout the publications. The chapters

address interconnected issues from a dierent

angle. Providing a too rigid deﬁnition / understanding

seemed to be limiting. However, combined one can

observe that the individual chapters reﬂect bring

together the notions of “building” of and “dwell-

ing” in urban public spaces (Sennett, 2019). The

interplay between the two, how places are produced

by collective practices, have been subject to many

theoretical concepts and analyses (Cf. Lefebvre, et

al. (1991); Bourdieu (2018)). The collection of the

chapters reﬂects the relevance of bringing together

building and dwelling to create inclusive and sustain-

able urban areas.

PROCESS: UNFOLDING THE DILEMMAS

OF PUBLIC SPACE DEVELOPMENT AND

MAINTENANCE

Involving change makers, city makers, represent-

atives of urban public administration, the research

community, civil society organisations and other

urban actors in the strategic development of JPI

Urban Europe is an important part of the initiative.

Therefore, JPI Urban Europe organises activities in

the scope of AGORA – Stakeholder Involvement

Platform. AGORA activities typically bring together

urban actors with diverse backgrounds. The aim is

to co-create perspectives which resonate with the

knowledge(s) and experiences of the participants.

The sum of the experiences and expertise allows to

reﬂect the wicked nature of urban development in

more holistic ways.

From June 2019 to July 2020, JPI Urban Europe

organised a series of AGORA activities to generate

strategic intelligence on the dilemmas connected

to urban public spaces. Combined, about 65 urban

actors working on issues connected to the topic

joined the process. The ﬁgure informs sums up the

main cornerstones of this process.

AGORA SESSION AT THE EUROPEAN

PLACEMAKING WEEK IN VALENCIA,

JUNE 2019

During the 2019-edition of the European Place-

making Week in Valencia, Spain, JPI Urban Europe

organised a 2h-long AGORA session. The aim was

to bring together people involved in Placemaking

from across Europe and get the conversation and

thinking about the dilemmas of public spaces start-

ing. Seven participants, of which six were working

in and with public urban administrations on various

dilemmas participated in the workshop. The graphic

SAFETY

• Ensuring safety

in open public

spaces

• Increased

safety due to

better design vs.

Increased noise

levels

INCLUSIVENESS

• Placemaking as

a participatory

tool for

designing public

spaces

• Flexibility in

governance for

co-creating

high quality

public spaces

FINANCING &

PLANNING

• Speed of

change vs. long

term planning

processes

SOCIAL

COHESION

• Pressure on

public spaces

by certain user

groups

LIFESTYLES

AND DENSITY

• High population

density vs.

green spaces

• Counter-acting

urban sprawl

vs. natural

green spaces

ACCESSIBILITY

• Physical

and mental

accessibility

of/mobility to

green spaces

• Ecient

mobility ﬂows

vs. high quality

of public

spaces

Dilemmas connected to urban public spaces identiﬁed in the AGORA session in Valencia, June 2019

below wraps up the main dilemmas and challenging

urban issues discussed in AGORA session in Valen-

cia in June 2019.

AGORA THEMATIC DIALOGUE IN RIGA,

NOVEMBER 2019

In order to provide a platform of exchange with the

opportunity to combine various experiences and

knowledge(s), JPI Urban Europe organised an AG-

ORA Thematic Dialogue for unfolding the dilemmas

of public spaces in November 2019. In total, 44

participants across Europe (plus Canada), joined the

programme in Riga. The workshop brought together

people working in research & innovation, civil society

organisations, local public administrations, the pri-

vate sector and knowledge institutes.

Prior to the workshop participants submitted an ab-

stract / position paper on their perspectives on public

space dilemmas. This publication is useful resource

of further information on current developments,

challenges and local initiatives/projects of public

urban spaces. The booklet can be downloaded here

[https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/app/uploads/2020/07/

AGORA_PS_Booklet.pdf].

AGORA POLICY PAPER: DILEMMAS

OF URBAN PUBLIC SPACES

After the most pressing dilemmas were identiﬁed

and discussed in the workshops organised, a writing

team of experts and urban actors working in the ﬁeld

formed. The aim was to wrap up the discussions of

the workshops by developing a report which informs

about the main outcomes of the workshops and

provides practical ways of tackling dilemmas and

concerns in the form of recommendations for urban

actors, policy makers, the research community etc.

Each chapter sets out one (or more) speciﬁc

dilemma(s) connected to the creation and main-

tenance of inclusive public urban spaces. They

highlight the interlinkages of urban public spaces to

wellbeing, public health, inclusive societies, ur-

ban robustness, mobility, green spaces, etc. More

concretely, Chapter 1, Reconﬁguration of public

spaces via Nature-Based Solutions by Aksel Ersoy

(Delft University of Technology) and Ruth Yeoman

(University of Oxford and Northumbria University)

discusses the synergetic eects the implementation

of Nature-Based Solutions in public spaces have to

address environmental, social and economic chal-

lenges. Karin Peters (Wageningen University) and

Dahae Lee (TU Dortmund) highlight the dilemma

Participants of the AGORA Workshop in Riga in November 2019

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

of ensuring inclusive and accessible public spaces in

an austerity context in Chapter 2. It concludes with

recommendation on how to encourage multi-stake-

holder engagement for developing and maintaining

public urban spaces to address the dilemma. Why

Targeting the Gender Inequality Dilemma in Public

Space is a central consideration when assessing

urban sustainability is outlined in Chapter 3 by

Caroline Wrangsten, (JPI Urban Europe), Cheli-

na Odbert, Joe Mulligan (both Kounkuey Design

Initiative), Emma Hill (University of Edinburgh) and

Maria Angeli (Mediterranean Institute of Gender

Studies). Chapter 4 by Ruth Yeoman (University of

Oxford) and Karin Peters (Wageningen University)

highlights how Inclusive Design and Public Urban

Spaces can enhance the safety in neighbourhoods.

Sandra Guinand, Yvonne Franz (both University

of Vienna), Johannes Riegler (JPI Urban Europe)

and Zala Velkavrh (prostoRož Cultural Association)

address the potentials and limitations of co-creative

temporary use projects in public urban spaces and

what should be considered to prevent from eects

which contradict eorts towards sustainable and

liveable urban areas in chapter 5. Rethinking urban

public spaces and re-allocating streetscapes for sus-

tainability and liveability is discussed in chapter 6 by

Florian Lorenz (Smarter Than Car) and Josh Grigsby

(University of Vienna). Finally, Christoph Gollner

(JPI Urban Europe) and Ruth Yeoman (University of

Oxford) highlight the interrelation between inclusive,

high quality public environments, the Meaningful

City concept and the energy transition in chapter 7.

The chapters conclude with recommendations for

local policy makers and urban public administration,

urban practitioners, the research community, re-

search funders as well as local urban initiatives which

provide practical ways to address the dilemmas.

Besides the writing team, many more experts with

various backgrounds contributed to the report

by exchanging and discussing on unfolding the

dilemmas of public urban spaces in the workshops

organised. Their names are listed on page xx.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bourdieu, P. (2018). Social space and the genesis of

appropriated physical space. International Journal

of Urban & Regional Research, 42(1), 106-114.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12534

Lefebvre, H., Nicholson-Smith, D., & Harvey, D.

(1991). The production of space. Wiley-Blackwell

JPI Urban Europe (2019). Strategic Research and

Innovation Agenda 2.0. https://jpi-urbaneurope.

eu/app/uploads/2019/02/SRIA2.0.pdf

Sennett (2018) Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the

City. Penguin Books

Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973), Dilemmas

in a general theory of planning, Policy Sciences, 4,

155-169.

Cheonggyecheon in Seoul, South Korea.

A former highway turned into a 10.9km

long green and blue public space.

Photo by Johannes Riegler

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Aksel Ersoy - TU Delft

Ruth Yeoman - University of Oxford and

Northumbria University

INTERDEPENDENCY OF CITIES

Cities and their regions in particular can be consid-

ered as highly interdependent urban systems, with

multi-scalar components of social, ecological and

technical sub-systems that go beyond the jurisdic-

tional or built-up boundaries of the individual city

(de Roo and Boelens, 2016; Meerow et al., 2016).

It is generally assumed that such sub-systems have

coevolved over time, inﬂuencing each other. Often-

times a distinction is made between intangible (cul-

tural or ethical) and tangible components, the latter

consisting of both natural/ecological and artiﬁcial/

manmade parts (de Roo & Boelens, 2016; Holling,

2001). These components cannot be understood in

isolation, and the interaction between subsystems of

an ecological, technological and societal nature is key

to understand the overall system’s behaviour (van

Bueren et al., 2012; Cumming, 2011; Cumming and

Collier, 2005; Senge, 1990; McLoughlin, 1969).

Climate Change and natural hazards are challeng-

ing the way we have produced our cities and public

spaces (Nightingale et al., 2019). It then also chal-

In recent years, many policies, programmes and projects of governmental and non-

governmental organizations strive for solving problems associated with urbanisation

and global warming. There is a growing consensus that we should adapt the way we

design our cities due to the increasing impacts of external events. It is essential to

think how to mitigate the negative eects of external events and adapt our cities

while maintaining better quality of public space. Nature-based solutions have been

proposed to help societies address a variety of environmental, social and economic

challenges via adapting natural principles in sustainable ways. However, due to

their complex governance such as functions, uses, regulations, public spaces pose

a series of challenges against implementing more environmental solutions. This

chapter summarises how nature-based solutions can be used to address some of the

unprecedented issues we are facing today.

RECONFIGURATION OF

PUBLIC SPACES VIA

NATUREBASED SOLUTIONS

lenges their design processes making it necessary

to work together at dierent structural levels of

decision-making and expertise in integrated ways

(see Savaget et al., 2019). We are confronted with

the fact that we need to climate proof our cities, and

thus public spaces. Unfortunately, in most urban

areas, the eects of climate-prooﬁng have been

neglected, which have impacted on human health,

the quality of life and the well-being, particularly

amongst the disadvantaged group of the society.

With the accelerated urbanization, the natural land-

scape inside as well as outside urban areas become

more ecologically fragmented which aects the

environment but also their supportive role to our so-

ciety and economy. Nature-based solutions (NBSs)

aim to help societies address a variety of environ-

mental, social and economic challenges via adapting

natural principles in sustainable ways.

Earlier examples of NBSs can be seen from Ameri-

can landscape infrastructure designer Frederick Law

Olmsted, and his famous designs for Central Park in

New York City in 1858 and the Emerald Necklace in

Boston in 1878. In an overall view, NBSs do not only

deliver the performance from a functional and envi-

ronmental point of view but also include the potential

beneﬁts for the society and the economy.

In this way nature-based solutions bring

together the three elements of sustainability:

environment, society and economy, through the

design of structures which are based on natural

processes. However, the main dilemma remains

as the trade-o between these elements.

For instance, urbanisation has direct consequences

on land use changes such as increasing surface seal-

ing and loss of green spaces that lead to environ-

mental degradation. The ongoing pressure on green

spaces and surface sealing is continuously aected

by increasing air temperatures, reduced storm water

retention, increasing levels of air pollution, poor

access to green space, and diminished potential

for outdoor physical activity. As a consequence,

a number of human-health-related issues can be

identiﬁed: reduced outdoor physical activity can lead

to obesity, hypertension and diabetes, as well as to

associated psychological problems such as depres-

sion, anxiety and burnout; increased air temperatures

can lead to hypertension, dehydration and increased

risk of cardiovascular diseases and air pollution can

result in respiratory diseases.

At the society level, the contact with nature via

increasing the presence, quality and access to green,

blue and natural settings can help reduce some of

the psychological problems citizens are facing such

as increasing stress levels, social isolation and exclu-

sion (Haase et al., 2017). Accessing nature supports

urban liveability, especially when citizens participate

in caring for nature and creating nature-based solu-

tions. When promoting nature-based solutions, it is

aimed that cities beneﬁt from deliberative processes

that are designed to be inclusive, fair, and respectful

of dierences although gentriﬁcation can be one of

the main challenges. Social trust, collective knowl-

edge and social learning is more likely to occur when

people are able to express how their lives are aect-

ed by nature-based solutions. Deliberative processes

rely upon activated citizens, an urban ethos, and

participatory governance (Kenter 2016; Ranger et

al., 2016). Similarly, high quality public spaces and

nature-based solutions can stimulate long term

economic beneﬁts for cities’ green infrastructure

which involves ‘connected networks of multifunc-

tional, predominantly unbuilt spaces that support

both ecological and social activities and processes.’

In the long term, this will maximize the inclusion of

green spaces in planning and as a means of increas-

ingly urban liveability. Nevertheless, it is essential to

integrate the green infrastructure within the broader

strategies of cities for more inclusive development

(Florida, 2019).

APPROACHES TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE

Unfortunately, the strong focus of public and private

actors on economic growth as driver for human de-

velopment and prosperity have led to an unsustain-

able development mode of cities and their regions,

resulting in climate change, growing inequalities,

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

unhealthy living conditions, increasing inaccessibility

and an ever-growing ecological footprint and ex-

hausting natural resources. As a solution, there is an

increasing focus on local responses that tackle prob-

lems associated with our production and consump-

tion patterns. For instance, the UN SDG 11 and the

UN New Urban Agenda call for accessible greener

and cleaner cities, with attention for the urban and

hinterland connections and the role of local innova-

tion in providing solutions that work in a particular

context. Better urban planning, improved resource

management and improving local responses are key

in delivering SDG11 and the New Urban Agenda.

In the light of these responses, NBSs can bring the

urban use of land and resources more in balance

with nature by strengthening the positive relation-

ship between environmental, social and economic

links between cities and resource use. Local arenas

play a crucial role in developing new ecosystems

where innovation and adoption takes place between

people who understand that sustainable outcomes

require relationships based upon cooperation and

shared values. However, it is important to note that

the development of such ecosystems might depend

on the ecacy of dierent goals of nature-based

solutions such as rewilding, conservation, ecosys-

tem services. These goals may sometimes conﬂict,

requiring people to make trade-os and dicult

decisions. A robust system of deliberative procedure

and participatory governance can help cities navigate

such challenges.

PRACTICES OF NATUREBASED SOLUTIONS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Below are two examples where integrated understanding of nature-based solutions have been imple-

mented. The ﬁrst example is a water square in Rotterdam, Netherlands which combines water storage

with the improvement of the quality of urban public space. Here the public space is used for recreational

reasons, i.e. this water storage facility provides opportunities for leisure. Also, it generates opportunities

to create environmental quality and identity to central spaces in neighbourhoods. The second example is

a public space in Tainan, Taiwan. Here the square is surrounded by an urban lagoon. It not only provides

opportunities for leisure and fun but also enable access to improved pathways and a reduction of trac.

Photo by Gemeente Rotterdam

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ast, F. J. (2019). The Deliberative Test, a New

Procedural Method for Ethical Decision Making in

Integrative Contracts Theory. Journal of Business

Ethics, 155(1), 207–221.

Cumming, G. S. (2011). Spatial resilience in social-

ecological systems. Springer Science & Business

Media.

Cumming, G. S. and Collier, J. (2005). Change and

identity in complex systems, Ecology and society,

10(1)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

• There is an urgent need to acknowledge the

interdependent nature of public spaces and

how they should be addressed in cities

• Nature-based solutions are one of the ways

to provide opportunities for adapting our

cities while maintaining better quality of public

space

• Applying nature-based solutions necessitates

incorporating a variety of economic, environ-

mental and social challenges

• Public spaces are the most visible and lively

component of the built environment for cities;

hence they are ideal locations for experiment-

ing various nature-based practises.

Tainan Springs, Tainan, Taiwan: A former shopping centre transformed into an urban lagoon. Architect: MVRDV.

Photo by: Daria Scaliola

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

de Roo, G. and Boelens, L. (2016). Setting the scene:

about planning and a world of change. In Spatial

planning in a complex unpredictable world of change

(pp. 14-27). Coöperatie InPlanning UA.

Florida, R. (2019). Why greenway parks cause

greater gentriﬁcation. Retrieved from: https://

www.citylab.com/life/2019/10/urban-

parks-gentriﬁcation-city-green-space-

displacement/599722/

Haase, D., Kabisch, S., Haase, A., Andersson, E.,

Banzhaf, E., Baró, F., Brenck, M., Fischer, L.K.,

Frantzeskaki, N., Kabisch, N. and Krellenberg, K.,

(2017). Greening cities–To be socially inclusive?

About the alleged paradox of society and ecology in

cities. Habitat International, 64, 41-48.

Holling, C.S. (2001). Understanding the complexity

of economic, ecological, and social systems.

Ecosystems, 4(5), 390-405.

Kenter, J.O., (2016). Shared, plural and cultural

values. Ecosystem Services, 21(B), 175-183.

McLoughlin, J.B. (1969). Urban and regional planning:

a systems approach. Faber and Faber.

Meerow, S., Joshua P.N. and Melissa S. (2016).

Deﬁning urban resilience: A review. Landscape

and urban planning, 147, 38-49

Nightingale, A. J., Eriksen, S., Taylor, M., Forsyth, T.,

Pelling, M., Newsham, A., Whitﬁeld, S. (2019).

Beyond Technical Fixes: climate solutions and the

great derangement. Climate and Development,

0(0), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2

019.1624495

Ranger, S., Kenter, J. O., Bryce, R., Cumming,

G., Dapling, T., Lawes, E., & Richardson, P. B.

(2016). Forming Shared Values in Conservation

Management: An Interpretive-Deliberative-

Democratic Approach to Including Community

Voices. Ecosystem Services, 21 (October),

344–357.

Savaget, P., Geissdoerfer, M., Kharrazi, A. and

Evans, S., (2019). The theoretical foundations of

sociotechnical systems change for sustainability:

A systematic literature review. Journal of cleaner

production, 206, 878-892.

Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and

Practice of the Learning Organization. Century

Books.

van Bueren, E.M., van Bohemen, H. and Visscher,

H. (2012). Sustainable Urban Environments: An

Ecosystems Approach. Springer

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Karin Peters - Wageningen University

Dahae Lee - TU Dortmund

Well-designed and maintained public spaces oer

enormous economic, social and environmental ben-

eﬁts (CABE, 2004). In order to preserve the quality

of public space in an austerity context, non-munic-

ipal actors are increasingly engaged (Berding, et al.,

2010). They not only bring in resources but also new

ideas and expertise. Public spaces that are provided

as a part of urban (re)development projects are good

examples. In this case, the public-private develop-

ment model for public space is common in terms

of project organisation, ﬁnancing and ownership

(Carmona, et al., 2019). In other words, the public

and private sectors involved share the costs, rights

and responsibilities of public space within the project

area.

Public spaces have become a key component of

many regeneration and (re)development schemes

(Carmona, 2019). The engagement of private actors

both in a (re)development project as a whole and

public space within the project is desirable especially

in an austerity context. Whilst it might help achieve

the high quantity and quality of public space, it does

not always bring intended eects. In fact, inclusive-

ness and accessibility of this type of public space is

often called into question as expensive and fancy

looking public spaces exclude undesirable popula-

tions. Two goals seem to be competing as private

ENSURING INCLUSIVE AND

ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC SPACES

IN AN AUSTERITY CONTEXT

Since the ﬁnancial crisis of 2008 cities have had to rapidly adapt to a new more

uncertain reality (Carmona, et al., 2019). The austerity context has considerably

aected public spaces in European cities, from its design to delivery, and use to

management. In particular, the governments, who were once the main supplier of

public spaces, have seen the lack of budgets, incentives or capacity to maintain

adequate investment in public space (Webster, 2007). As a result, co-production

of public space has become popular, between public authorities and private entities

ranging from individual citizens to large-scale corporations (see Van Melik & Van der

Krabben, 2016; Nissen, 2008; Klemme et al., 2013).

actors who play a decisive role in the design and pro-

gramming of public spaces in urban (re)development

projects have other values as well then inclusiveness

and accessibility only.

Hence, the dilemma arises between two

goals. How can public spaces be inclusive and

accessible for all whilst engaging the private

sector to secure budgets? How would public

spaces in this case look like? What is the role of

the governments, municipalities, developers and

communities?

APPROACH TO ADDRESS ISSUE

The role of the public sector in public-private

cooperation is important. The public sector plays

a role as a regulator and clearly sets rules on how

public spaces should be used. It may exercise formal

and informal instruments. For instance, a design

guidance may be prepared to make sure that public

spaces within the project area are open and inclusive

to all. Public participation may be legally enshrined to

have meaningful input from their side. As an exam-

ple, many disabled citizens are and/or feel not fully

able to engage in their communities because public

spaces often are not designed with those who strug-

gle to navigate around in mind. This element is even

more dicult because getting information is crucial.

Data is not always available (Vale et al., 2017). Public

participation ensures inclusiveness and accessibility

of the vulnerable population. Moreover, inclusive-

ness and accessibility of public space can be better

secured as contracts are clearly written between the

public and private sector. Contracts set roles for the

involved parties and they play an important part in

this form of public space provision.

For private actors, especially real estate developers,

it is important that they have good reasons to make

the space more inclusive and accessible. Depending

on the type of public space, they might recognise

the value of providing inclusive and accessible public

space by themselves or incentives may be given

by the government. Also, the third sector can play

a role in showing the added value of inclusive and

accessible public spaces. In addition, the quality of

public space also depends on the function of public

space. Spaces that can accommodate multifunc-

tional uses and diverse users are more inclusive and

accessible (see the example 2 below).

Coming back to the discussion of the navigation

in cities, it is something that comes back in other

studies as well. Basha (2015) concludes in her study

in two cities in Kosovo that in documents and plans

technical aspects of making public spaces more

accessible are often included, but discussions around

accessing and navigating public spaces by disabled

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

• Actively engage non-municipal actors in producing and maintaining public space and

encourage collaboration between actors by facilitating multi-stakeholder participation processes;

• Use of formal and informal instruments, e.g. design guidance, right of way, incentives and

public participation;

• Contractual agreement helps clarify the role and responsibility of each stakeholder and

can be used as a way of sustaining inclusiveness and accessibility in the long term;

• Give diverse uses to the space, e.g. by creating subspaces, organising dierent programmes

(multi-functional use);

• Robust design for ﬂexibility and in doing this focus not only on technological solutions

but also on visibility and navigation; and

• Stimulate creating more/better data: very detailed built environment data are required

to be able to identify all possible barriers that might exist in public space, which is often absent.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

persons was absent. This is mainly due to an absence

in planning for accessibility. She then states that:

“Adaptations tend to complicate, extend and reroute to

backdoors, storage entrances and service lifts the paths

of disabled people, thus contributing to their invisibility

in the public realm.” (ibid., p.63)

One example of this is the issue of accessible ramps.

For many with a physical disability, a ramp is their

only means of getting in and out of premises, going

up and down levels and navigating around a city.

Without accessible ramps, those in wheelchairs, with

visual impairment or walking diculties will struggle,

or ﬁnd it impossible to get up or down stairs.

CHESTER’S HISTORICAL CITY

Chester in north-west England is renowned for its two-mile circuit of Roman, Saxon and Medieval walls

and its elevated walkways, called Rows. But the city’s historic status belies its role as an accessibility

champion: last year it became the ﬁrst British city to win the European commission’s Access City award.

The Rows are accessible with ramps, a lift and an escalator, while the council’s 15-year regeneration

strategy prioritises accessibility in new developments. [..] The hotel will include a changing places facility

for people with complex or multiple and profound disabilities. (Unlike standard accessible toilets, these

include a height-adjustable changing bench, adjustable sink, a toilet designed for assisted use and

hoist.) Chester already has six such changing places facilities, including one at the recently opened bus

interchange, and more are planned around the city. (source: Salman, 2018)

SPITALFIELDS MARKET IN LONDON

The regeneration programme in 2005 brought new public spaces to the historic market – Bishops

Square, Crispin Place and the modern market. This was a joint venture between the City of London

and a private developer. Later on, the City gradually departed from the scheme, eventually leaving it

in fully private hands. Both the market and square have a high degree of accessibility and inclusiveness.

Even though it is privately owned and maintained, it is not very corporate looking. Moreover, it has

multifunctional uses – it is home to a fashion market, an arts market, as well as restaurants and other

retailers. In addition, the market and square accommodate various uses and users. In fact, it encourages

a wide variety of groups and ethnicities in the local area to come by providing extensive programmes

and events that target the inclusion of people. Spitalﬁelds management has an incentive not to make

the space a more exclusive space, as doing so would make the space less vibrant, with possible negative

consequences for retailers on the site. Two things that can be learned here:

• Multifunctional use with subspaces and dierent programmes aiming to encourage the local

community to get involved

• Private actors having good reason to make the space more accessible and inclusive

(source: Langstraat & Van Melik, 2013)

photo: Clem Onojeghuo

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basha, R. (2015). Disability and Public Space-Case

Studies of Prishtina and Prizren. International

Journal of Contemporary Architecture. The New

ARCH, 2(3), DOI: 10.14621 / tna.20150406.

Berding, U., Havemann, A., Pegels, J., & Perethaler,

B. (2010). Stadträume in Spannungsfeldern:

Plätze, Parks und Promenaden im Schnittbereich

öentlicher und privater Aktivitäten. Rohn Verlag.

CABE. (2004). The Value of Public Space, How High

Quality Parks and Public Spaces Create Economic,

Social and Environmental Value. CABE Space.

Carmona, M. (2019). Principles for public space

design, planning to do better. Urban Design

International, 47–59.

Carmona, M., Hanssen, G., Lamm, B., Nylund, K.,

Saglie, I., & Tietjen , A. (2019). Public space in an

age of austerity. URBAN DESIGN International,

(24), 241–259.

Klemme, M., Pegels, J., & Schlack-Fuhrmann, E.

(2013). Co-production: review of analogous co-

production of urban space in German cities, New

York and Santiago de Chile. PND online, 1-11.

Langstraat, F., & Van Melik, R. (2013). Challenging

the ‘End of Public Space’: A Comparative Analysis

of Publicness in British and Dutch Urban Spaces.

Journal of Urban Design, 429-448.

Nissen, S. (2008). Urban Transformation: From

Public and Private Space to Spaces of Hybrid

Character. Czech Sociological Review, 44(6),

1129-1149.

Salman, S. (2018, February 14). What would a truly

disabled-accessible city look like? Retrieved from:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/

feb/14/what-disability-accessible-city-look-like

Van Melik, R., & Van der Krabben, E. (2016).

Co-production of public space: policy translations

from New York City to the Netherlands. The Town

Planning Review, 139-158.

Webster, C. (2007). Property Rights, Public Space

and Urban Design, Urban Planning. The Town

planning review, 78(1), 81-102.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Caroline Wrangsten - JPI Urban Europe

Chelina Odbert - Kounkuey Design Initiative

(KDI)

Joe Mulligan - Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)

Emma Hill - University of Edinburgh

Maria Angeli - Mediterranean Institute

of Gender Studies

Concretely, public spaces—usually referring to

streets, public markets, parks, public squares, and

beaches—can serve as hubs for community life. Ide-

ally, they promote good health and well-being (Bey-

er et al., 2014; Roe et al., 2013; Ward Thomspon et

al., 2012; Hobbs et al. 2017), provide opportunities

for decent work (Cities Alliance, 2018; The Trust

For Public Land, Center for City Park Excellence,

2010), and host important occasions for (face-

to-face) civic engagement. They are viewed as a

“vital ingredient of successful cities” (Daniel, 2016).

Certain public spaces have an added dimension of

private control to them and referred to as semi-pub-

lic (Madanipur, 2004). At the same time, public

space is more than the built environment itself, and

needs to be understood as a process as opposed to

something ﬁxed. Public spaces are produced and re-

produced continuously and can hence be dominated

and appropriated by dierent interests and groups.

On this note, the famous notion ‘right to the city’

is not only about the right to use and inhabit space,

but about the right to participate in the continuous

production thereof (Olsson, 2008; Buser 2012)

And yet, public spaces do not provide the same level

of comfort, access, and opportunity for growth, for

women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities, as

they do for what has been their dominant stake-

holder group, heteronormative men. The 2030

Sustainable Development Goal 11, target 11.7, which

seeks to “… provide universal access to safe, inclusive

and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular

TACKLING GENDER

INEQUALITY IN PUBLIC

SPACE: SUSTAINABILITY IN

GOVERNANCE AND DESIGN

A truly sustainable city is one where everyone – of all genders – has equal

opportunity to be safe, healthy, and prosperous. Gender equity, therefore must

be a central consideration when assessing a city’s sustainability. What is the

dilemma with gender and public space, and how can it be approached policy wise?

for women and children, older persons and persons

with disabilities” by 2030, arms this imbalance.

It is therefore critical that policy eorts aimed at

reaching target 11.7, not only increase the inventory

of public spaces across cities, but act with a shared

objective to change the process by which public

spaces are designed, re-produced and realized – in

both existing and newly built environments.

WHAT IS THE DILEMMA WITH

GENDER AND PUBLIC SPACE?

There is a general consensus that we will only achieve

gender equality when all genders enjoy the same

opportunities and rights in all aspects of life – public

and private. Public spaces are ideally centres of civic

life, deﬁning a “public,” and providing an environ-

ment where people engage with urban politics,

economy, environment, and residents. It follows,

then, that providing public spaces that are equally

accessible to all genders is a key component to

creating the type of equity that is foundational for a

sustainable urbanisation.

One of the longstanding misconceptions of

public space is that it just exists as a kind of

neutral space, freely available to anyone who

chooses to visit it.

One of the longstanding misconceptions of public

space is that it just exists as a kind of neutral space,

freely available to anyone who chooses to visit it.

In reality, though, public space has similar barriers

to access that have beset other areas of society.

As the World Bank’s recently published Handbook

for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design

demonstrates, “Space is not neutral, and hence

(its) design can either facilitate or impede usage,

appropriation, and safety for women, girls, and sexual

and gender minorities” (Odbert et al., 2020). In

practice: a public town square is accessible to all by

law, but in reality, if a group of young men occupy

the square and signals that it belongs to them, the

practical outcome is that not all gender groups will

use and produce the characteristics of this, publicly

owned, area.

Feminist scholars have repeatedly shown how wom-

en throughout time have been excluded from public

space in various societies (Rose, 2003) and that ur-

ban development projects do not appreciate them as

a ‘user’ group (White Architects, 2017). Scholarship

has also indicated that this exclusion is intersection-

al, so that racialised women and gender minorities

experience both racialised and gendered barriers to

public space, as well as the exclusions resulting from

their interaction. These exclusions have persisted

so long because white, heteronormative men have

historically occupied, deﬁned and shaped the public

realm and public spaces, inadvertently, and at times

intentionally, prioritizing their needs and desires over

other genders (Greed, 1994; Fainstein et al., 2005;

Rose, 2003). This absence of women, girls, and

sexual and gender minorities in planning and design

decisions around public spaces, has served to further

encode traditional gender roles within the built

environment and public spaces in particular (Moser,

1993). These actions are part of a patriarchal system,

a system that contains an urgent sustainability crisis

in more aspects.

These actions are part of a patriarchal system,

a system that contains an urgent sustainability

crisis in more aspects.

Today, as we set a goal to create public spaces that

are equitably enjoyed and shared by “all”, we are

however confronted with a scarcity of policies, pro-

cesses, and practical procedures to get us there. Few

practitioners and policymakers are equipped with

concrete strategies to help those who have been

historically left out or overlooked to exercise equal

power in public space-related processes.

URBAN GOVERNANCE

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Focus on the process, rather than template

solutions for gender-equal public space. Imple-

ment a participatory and inclusive design process

that explores how a city is experienced and used

from the perspective of all citizens: women, men,

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

girls, boys, sexual and gender minorities, racialised

minorities, people subject to immigration controls,

and people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.

Ensure a process where people of all genders are

represented and explore what they would wish for

in the built environments of their neighbourhoods.

• Ensure women’s, gender-minority and minority

groups with gender specialisms are meaningfully

included in design and decision-making processes.

Moving policy design beyond ‘consultation’ with

gender groups, and towards sustained, meaningful

interaction avoids making gender a ‘token’ equality

issue and places gender expertise at the heart of

the planning process.

• Ensure that the inclusion of women and gender

minorities in policy solutions is intersectional and

robustly addresses the needs of racialised and

bordered minorities. Although gender is a site

of inequality in urban landscapes, racialised and

bordered gender minorities experience addition-

al barriers to public space. To create an equal

gendered-approach to public space, these barriers

must be treated seriously and tackled in parallel

with gender inequality issues.

• Align gender equal public space processes with

overarching sustainability goals. Gender-inclusive

design processes should be planned in a way that

integrates with broader sustainability goals for

the city - otherwise there is the risk of “gender

equality” becoming a siloed concept and losing its

impact.

URBAN DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS

• Recognize the broad expertise within civil society

organisations, feminst NGOs, women migrants

groups, research teams and universities that work

on gender and integration. There is great value

in developing synergies among those groups that

can better articulate the needs of women, girls,

and minority groups and can inform the gender

mainstreaming in urban planning- and the main-

tenance of places. Be place speciﬁc and avoid

“gender coding”- do not assume the preferences

of dierent genders: include them and discover

preferences and needs jointly.

• Awareness-raising to combat persistent racism

and sexism through the use of urban space.

Awareness raising activities such as exhibitions and

public discussions, can contribute to combating

persisting racism and sexism that is faced by wom-

en and girls disporportionally.

• Create safe spaces for women, gender minorities

and minority groups. Although the avoidance

of stereotyping ‘gender’ issues as ones of safety

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TACKLING GENDER INEQUALITY IN PUBLIC

SPACE: SUSTAINABILITY IN PLACE AND PROCESS

To work out this dilemma, we must radically reorient who deﬁnes the goals, priorities, and forms of urban

public space. The aim of anti-racist, gender equal policies and feminist approaches in public space design

is not to pit groups against each other, but to create sustainable and liveable public spaces for all.

To provide universal and equitable access in public space that works for people of all genders, we must

transform decision making so that the contributions and needs of women and gender minorities are

equally valued and represented- both at the professional and community level. We must also consider

how the intersections of race and gender create additional barriers for racialised women and gender

minorities. We must then reorient design and resource allocation priorities to change what is consid-

ered “good” and desirable public space. To help cities achieve sustainability goals, the following policy

recommendations therefor address both decision making and process (“governance”) - the way in which

we make decisions around public space design and planning, and the principles of inclusive public space

design. Certain cities in Europe and the world, have indeed progressed further than others on the topic of

gender and public space. Nevertheless, the following are a few areas that most cities can attend to.

is important, the provision of safe public space

in which women, gender minorities and minority

groups are not excluded or under threat is of

vital importance. Anti-Racist, feminist scholar-

ship shows that the provision of ‘safe spaces’ for

racialised gender minorities supports their access

to public space and public life. What type of space

this is, however, is place-speciﬁc and needs to be

understood from the viewpoint of the group at

hand/ in place. Policymakers and planners need to

create innovative solutions to facilitate this.

• Focus on leisure, not just safety. Simplifying

women, girls and minority groups into entities that

need safety and protection is not only diminishing

and un-dignifying, but also incorrect.

• Focus on the long-term programming and main-

tenance. It is no good building a park that appeals

to people of all genders if it quickly falls into disuse

or disrepair - in such situations, public spaces are

often co-opted by dominant social groups and for

antisocial activities. Critically examine how, and by

TOOLS AND FURTHER READING

GLIMER: In-depth reports on the governance of gender in integration policies in Europe, all accessible

at www.glimer.eu/outputs (such as “How gender-neutral — and therefore gender-blind¬ — integration

policies can easily be transformed into gender-sensitive ones: http://www.glimer.eu/gender-neutral-

policies-are-gender-blind-policies/ )Also ﬁnd Policy Briefs detailing how‚ integration’ policies for asylum

seekers and refugees can improve their approaches to gender inequality through gender-mainstreamed

and intersectional approaches to policymaking.

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design by KDI and The World Bank: The Handbook

for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design sets out practical approaches, activities, and design

guidelines on how to implement a participatory- and inclusive design process that explores the

experiences and uses of the city from the perspective of all citizen: women, men, and sexual and gender

and other minorities: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/33197/145305.pdf

Urban Girls Movement Catalogue and Handbook: An encyclopaedia of good examples, a guide to inclusive

urban planning and to the process behind #UrbanGirlsMovement: https://www.globalutmaning.se/

rapporter/urbangirlsmovement-catalogue/

Handbook: Find the necessary arguments and tools to challenge set norms in your speciﬁc urban

development context: https://www.globalutmaning.se/rapporter/urbangirls-handbook/

whom, a speciﬁc place can be taken cared of and

be re-produced in the longer run. Who has, or will

have, stewardship in this place?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beyer, K. M. M., Kaltenbach, A., Szabo, A., Bogar,

S., Nieto, F. J. and Malecki, K. M. (2014).

Exposure to Neighbourhood Green Space and

Mental Health: Evidence from the Survey of the

Health of Wisconsin. International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health,

11(3), 3453–3472. http://doi.org/10.3390/

ijerph110303453

Buser, M. (2012). The production of space in

metropolitan regions: A Lefebvrian analysis of

governance and spatial change. Planning Theory,

11(3), 279–298.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Cities Alliance (2018). Public Space as a Driver of

Equitable Economic Growth: Policy and Practice to

Leverage a Key Asset for Vibrant City Economies.

https://www.citiesalliance.org/sites/default/ﬁles/

Cities_WUF_FinalWeb2%20(1).pdf

Daniel, K., (2016). Public Spaces: A Key Tool to

Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

https://healthbridge.ca/images/uploads/library/

Final_Electronic.pdf

Fainstein, S. S., and Servon, L. J. (2005). Gender and

Planning: A Reader. Rutgers University Press.

Greed, C. H. (1994). Women in Planning: Creating

Gendered Realities. Routledge.

Hobbs, N., Green, M. A., Griths, C., Jordan, H.,

Saunders, J., Grimmer, H., McKenna, J. (2017).

Access and Quality of Parks and Associations

with Obesity: A Cross-sectional Study. SSM

Population Health, 3, 722–729. doi: 10.1016/j.

ssmph.2017.07.007

Madanipour, A. (2004). Public and Private Spaces of

the City. Routledge.

Moser, C. O. N. (1993). Gender Planning and

Development: Theory, Practice and Training.

Routledge.

Odbert, C., Mulligan, J., Jewell, R., Ohler, S.,

Elachi, L., Kiani, N., & Rempe, S. (2020).

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning

and Design, Washington DC: International Bank for

Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank.

Olsson, L. (2008). Den självorganiserade staden:

appropriation av oentliga rum i Rinkeby. Faculty of

Engineering.

Roe, J. J., Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P. A.,

Brewer, M. J., Du, E. I., Miller, D., Mitchell, R.

and Clow. A. (2013). Green Space and Stress:

Evidence from Cortisol Measures in Deprived

Urban Communities. International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health,

10(9), 4086–4103. http://doi.org/10.3390/

ijerph10094086

Rose, G. (2003). A body of questions. In: Pryke,

M., Rose, G. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using

social theory: Thinking through research. Sage

Publications.

The Trust For Public Land, Center for City Park

Excellence. (2010).The Economic Beneﬁts of

the Park and Recreation System of Mecklenburg

County, North Carolina. http://cloud.tpl.org/pubs/

ccpe_MecklenburgNC_econben.pdf.

Ward Thompson, C., Roe, J., Aspinall, P., Mitchell,

R., Clow, A., & Miller, D. (2012). More green

space is linked to less stress in deprived communities:

Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns. Landscape

and Urban Planning, 105(3), 221–229. http://doi.

org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.12.015

White Architects. (2017). Places For Girls. https://

whitearki tekter.com/project/places-for-girls/

[Accessed 08 July. 2020]

Daily scene in a Hutong in central Beijing.

Photo by Johannes Riegler

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Ruth Yeoman (University of Oxford and

Northumbria University)

Karin Peters (Wageningen University)

CONTEXT

Neighbourhoods that provide city residents and

workers with vital services for living a good life in the

city are safe neighbourhoods. The importance of

safe cities is enshrined in SDG Goal 11 which aims to

make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sus-

tainable. Ideally, public spaces are open and acces-

sible commons that facilitate satisfying encounters

between people who may be very dierent from one

another. They can be material and/or virtual (online

and digital public spaces), and are provided through

private as well as public initiative. People experience

safety in public spaces when they trust that their

physical and psychological well-being will not be

harmed by their interactions with others. In a safe

city made up of safe neighbourhoods, public spaces

are rooted in an urban ethic of mutual respect, fair-

ness and care, and are co-created and maintained by

residents and workers who share a concern for one

another’s safety.

BEING SAFE AND SAFEGUARDING

People’s lived experience of safety is uneven-

ly distributed across material, psychological, and

interactional dimensions, and is aected by gender

and economic inequalities. Psychological feelings of

being unsafe – fear, anxiety, and uneasiness – are

eased when people can ‘read’ public places, and

accurately observe the behaviour of others. When

residents and visitors to public spaces are able to

conﬁdently assess their environment, they experi-

ence themselves as resourceful agents and capable

of inﬂuencing public spaces for mutual beneﬁt.

By grounding a person’s sense of safety in their

resourceful agency, city administrators with respon-

sibility for inclusive and collaborative design can

expand the idea of safety beyond fortiﬁcation and

defence. Rather, they can link the sense of safety

to safeguarding as a social practice, underpinned

INCLUSIVE DESIGN/

PUBLIC SPACES FOR SAFE

NEIGHBOURHOODS

‘Design is the human capacity to shape and make our environments in ways that

satisfy our needs and give meaning to our lives’ (Professor John Heskett, 1937-2014)

by a collective determination that each person’s life

matters.

COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

OF SAFE PUBLIC SPACES

The right to the city is ‘a right to change ourselves by

changing the city (…) the freedom to make and re-

make our cities’ (Harvey, 2008). City administrators

can use collaborative design to better equip residents

and workers to be resourceful agents in making safe

public spaces. Inclusive collaborative design asks:

By what procedures is public space designed, and

who will be included? What ways of living do speciﬁc

designs promote or inhibit? Who will be responsible

for maintaining public spaces?

To ensure that all relevant perspectives are included,

collaborative designers need to search for, make

visible, and reach out to diverse groups. Citizens ex-

perience urban spaces as distinct places that embody

a web of meanings, history and culture shaping the

kinds of lives they can live. Public space-making is

enriched when people bring their dierent mean-

ings, values, and narratives into the design process.

These narratives and symbolic meanings are carriers

of local and city identity and are more commonly

used to communicate a city brand within a globally

competitive market for tourists and inward invest-

ment. They remain a neglected resource for creating

and maintaining safe public spaces (Yeoman, 2019;

Oxford Impact Case Study).

Residents and workers use symbolic meaning-mak-

ing to inform narratives of how to live together in the

city. When they are institutionally embedded, for

example through collaborative governance regimes,

meanings and narratives can motivate collective

action directed at solving shared problems. This

is especially important where there are marginal-

ised and migrant groups whose contributions are

under-valued, but who are bearers of potentially

productive meanings. The City of Vienna, for exam-

ple, has sought neighbourhood policy interventions

and bottom-up initiatives to increase social cohesion

of the immigrant population with the city as a whole.

Issues arising from super-diverse neighbourhoods

mirror city-scale challenges, and the City of Vienna

has used participation tools to recast ethnic diversity

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

as a source of innovation and development that can

help solve such challenges (Kohlbacher et al, 2014).

Intermediaries – organisations and individuals -

have an important role in enabling the place-mak-

ing agency of residents and workers by acting as

conduits for diverse meanings and narratives. They

can help realise the value of ethnic diversity in

intercultural spaces by negotiating and synthesising

dierences (Aygeman, 2017). Successful safe spaces

require partnerships and multi-sectoral collaboration

that include diverse people in both conception and

implementation. Barcelona’s ‘plan for gender justice’

was co-created by women’s groups and urban

planners at the City Council to ensure that gender

and safety risks were considered when designing safe

public spaces. Safe public spaces are more likely to

be maintained when neighbourhood and city levels

are connected using collaborative governance.

Medellin, under the UN’s women’s safe city and

safe public spaces programme, created a ‘Public

Safety Council for Women’ to ensure that gender

mainstreaming is included in city zoning (Metropolis

report, 2018).

DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC SPACE MAKING

Participating in collaborative design is not a risk-

free undertaking, and people may be anxious for

their physical and psychological safety. Safety/risk

tensions can arise acutely in public spaces that are

open to diverse participants. Collaborative design

processes can manage this dilemma by incorporat-

ing into deliberation an urban ethic that promotes

mutual respect and collective learning. Key questions

to ask are: how are the voices of as many people as

possible included whilst also eciently producing

public space; how is the psychological safety assured

of those whose worldviews may be challenged by

contestation; and how are people kept safe outside

the collaborative design circle?

Deliberation in public space-making challenges

participants to consider diverse perspectives. This

can make people feel vulnerable to changes in their

values, beliefs and ways of living. One way to alleviate

concern is to guarantee dignity safety by enabling

participants to jointly determine the rules of delib-

eration, as well as group norms, expectations, and

behaviours (Flensner and Von der Lippe, 2019). In

Superkilen Park in Copenhagen, Denmark

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

deliberation, dignity safety means respecting partic-

ipants as persons, and acknowledging how they can

feel intellectually and existentially unsafe when their

opinions and world views are scrutinised (Callan,

2016). UN Habitat (2010), Bridging the Urban Di-

vide, identity two key principles of a right to the city:

ﬁrst, the dignity of all urban residents, and second,

holistic, balanced, multicultural urban development.

In Bogota, for example, cultural diversity was used to

promote social inclusion, and build collective identity

and conviviality. Safe spaces can become temporary

‘communities of disagreement’, or ‘a group with

identity claims, consisting of people with dierent

opinions, who ﬁnd themselves engaged in a common

process, in order to solve shared problems or chal-

lenges’ (Iversen 2018: p. 10). When supported by an

urban ethic of mutual respect and care, communities

of disagreement help people feel conﬁdent and safe

when contributing their dierences to the co-design

of public spaces.

TECHNOLOGY AND GOVERNANCE

IN THE COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

OF SAFE PUBLIC SPACES

Collaborative design processes must incorporate

general features of safety, including mutual respect;

conﬁdence that there is room for one’s dierence;

the ability to maintain one’s physical and psycholog-

ical integrity; and knowing that participation takes

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INCLUSIVE CODESIGN

• Agree on an urban ethic and adopt this into governance and strategy: undertake with residents and

workers a city-wide exercise to describe the public values, meanings and narratives that make the city

distinctive and valued.

• Develop a participatory toolkit for residents to co-create public spaces with developers and city

administrators: elements of a toolkit may include techniques such as recommended deliberative pro-

cesses, stakeholder mapping to ﬁnd and invite participants, building communities of disagreement and

urban living labs.

• Foster local leadership and capacity building: Create intermediary roles and recruit intermediary

organisations.

• Integrate co-design of public spaces with collaborative governance regime: use intermediaries and

local representatives to carry meanings, values and narratives into strategic decision-making at a city

level.

place under conditions of fairness and care. Key

impact indicators of safety span digital, health, infra-

structure, local characteristics and personal security

(Risdiana and Susanto, 2019).

Increasingly, city administrators aspiring to provide

residents and workers with a sense of safety turn

to smart city technologies to augment the ability

of people to observe and read the city. The To-

ronto Transit Commission used technology-based

solutions to report on gender-based violence and

disseminate information (see Metropolis report,

2018). However, a sense of safety may be reduced

when smart city technologies lack legitimacy, leading

residents and workers to be suspicious of surveillance

and control. Safe public spaces depend upon social

trust, and this means making sure that technology

operates with the informed consent of residents and

workers.

Residents and workers need access to a participatory

toolkit to co-create safe public spaces that will help

them to solve problems that they identify as relevant

to their lives, and to lead meaningful lives. In addition

to a locally relevant toolkit, residents have a part to

play in collaborative governance and shaping the

framework of rules for technology and procedures

that are legitimate and trustworthy.

SUPERKILEN AND MIMERSPARKEN

Public space-making is a power-infused activ-

ity marked by struggle and conﬂict over what

public space means, and often weak capacity of

marginalised groups to inﬂuence concept design

and implementation. The design of participatory

processes aords funders, architects and admin-

istrators the ability to inﬂuence design concepts

and representation of outcomes, leaving resi-

dents little decision-making capacity and control

over their neighbourhoods. Power imbalances in

public space-making shaped the development of

Superkilen and Mimersparken, two parks in Co-

penhagen’s multi-ethnic and working-class neigh-

bourhood of Nørrebro, situated three miles from

the city centre. In 2004, the Danish real estate

association Realdania partnered with the City of

Copenhagen and Bjarke Ingels Group to develop

the parks. A core aim was to create safe, diverse

and vibrant public spaces that would increase in-

ter-cultural encounters, foster urban conviviality,

and support social cohesion. The dilemma was how

to reconcile the interests of residents for spaces

responsive to the multi-ethnic reality of their

daily lives, and the interests of the developers and

administrators for spaces that would allow them

promote an image of Copenhagen as a cosmopoli-

tan, open, multi-cultural city (Reeh, 2012).

Superkilen is a well-known and award-winning

space using colourful and ethnocultural street fur-

niture such as benches, trees and waste bins. The

space is popular with urban middle-class visitors.

However, residents complain that the participa-

tory design process was “manufactured bottom-up

democracy” (Stanﬁeld and van Riemsdijk, 2019: p.

1367). Whilst the park oers a vision of multicul-

turalism that is acceptable to the city, it is discon-

nected from the residents’ everyday experience of

multi-ethnicity. A vital factor for inclusive concept

design is understanding the needs of dierent

groups at a detailed and local level. Superkilen has

had some success in encouraging Muslim women

to access the park by including open programming

that focusses on shared common activities of

playing and eating (Daly, 2020).

By contrast, the Mimersparken process was

highly political. After listening to residents’ ideas,

the designers incorporated private and secluded

areas into the design. However, these were lost,

together with an access tunnel, to make way for

the Mjølnerparken Board’s (which included local

representatives) desire for full sized football pitch-

es. Although residents now use the space regularly

with a sense of safety and ownership, this has been

achieved at the expense of the park being isolated

from the rest of the City, with reduced public

proﬁle as a multicultural space.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

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Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Teren (eng. terrain) is a temporary experimental

space located on an abandoned construction

site in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The space is run

by non-proﬁt urban design studio prostoRož.

Photo by Jana Jocif“

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Sandra Guinand (University of Vienna)

Yvonne Franz (University of Vienna)

Johannes Riegler (JPI Urban Europe)

Zala Velkavrh (prostoRož)

Embedding temporary use projects in co-creative

planning processes aiming at addressing larger urban

challenges is important for releasing the synergetic

potential, as it can contribute to more just, liveable

and sustainable urban environment. Co-creation in

urban development might be understood as planning

(for public spaces) on equal terms that applies an

explorative people-centred approach (Dahlvik et al.,

2017). Without the embedding into a co-creative

process, temporary uses of public spaces run risk

to have negative (social) eects such as exclusion,

increase in land value (Schaller & Guinand, 2017)

and amplifying dilemma situations such as bene-

ﬁting one group while disadvantaging other groups

depending on who is identiﬁed as being legitimate to

act (Douglas, 2018). Whereas some actions might

be considered more socially acceptable, aesthetically

pleasing or granted ocial and normative legitima-

cy, others such as street vendors or other type of

uses or actions might be turned down. Co-creative

temporary uses can change the functions, identities,

services, perception and representation of public

spaces (Mariani & Barron, 2014; Harris, 2015). It

can highlight the requirements and needs of civil

society in an actors-ﬁeld that consists of dierent

stakeholder groups such as in urban planning.

Temporary uses of public spaces need to be better

taken into account as momentum for deciphering

and creating the meanings of public space and its

COCREATIVE TEMPORARY

USE IN PUBLIC SPACES: THE

PROCESS IS EVERYTHING.

Temporary use projects and initiatives have received signiﬁcant attention by urban

practitioners and scholars over the last years (Lydon & Garcia, 2015; Beekmans &

De Boer, 2014; Schaller & Guinand, 2019). The types of temporary interventions

are diverse: From formal community gardens, to food truck festivals, to

placemaking and tactical urbanism, pop up cafés and shops, cultural spaces, to

informal street vendors, grati’s, or green guerrilla, etc. What all these initiatives

with heterogeneous motivations have in common is the aim to transform (semi-)

public spaces through short- term interventions or activation towards alternative

uses that provide counter-strategies and critical thinking to establish new

“development pathways”.

use functions. Urban planning should understand

the co-creative character of the actions of these

interventions as an open process for involving

aected urban actors who are often residents, and

(potential) users of the spaces. Only by maintaining

open, transparent and co-creative processes around

temporary uses of public spaces in urban planning

rather than “ad-hoc” interventions driven by indi-

vidual interests - initiatives and projects can create

playing-ﬁeld among all stakeholders and enables

transitional processes in the long-run.

Conceptual understanding of temporary use

in this paper: (Counter)-Formal to informal

strategies in urban development and planning

that challenge established “development

pathways” for a limited period of time and

showcase more place-sensitive and community-

led exploratory appropriation practices.

Temporary use may result in new or dierent

symbolic meanings of the spaces being

temporarily used.

Conceptual understanding of co-creation in this

paper: Open urban planning and development

process that invites residents, users and

local actors to engage in an easily accessible

collaboration process to plan for place-sensitive

initiatives. Co-produced public spaces might

result from a cooperative planning process

depending on the speciﬁc point of time in which

actors become involved.

Rather than an end in itself, co-creative tempo-

rary use projects need to be understood as a tool

to enhance public spaces with multiple purposes in

established urban development and urban planning

systems. Without being implemented in a larger

co-creative process with clear aims and goals, indi-

vidual, ad-hoc interventions run the risk to be coun-

terproductive in the larger scope, hence, contribut-

ing to urban dilemma situations. There are a number

of essential considerations to take into account for

these processes such as actors’ involvement, the

balance of interest, expectations, communication,

temporality and risks while realizing potentials.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

ACTORS INVOLVED

Temporary uses of (semi-)public spaces might be

initiated by dierent constellations of urban actors

(Douglas, 2019) by either acting on their own or

collaborating with each other’s: individuals, com-

munity initiatives, private landowners, developers,

public authorities, informal street vendors, etc.

While all are striving towards using spaces dierently

compared to its initial function, the motivations, as

well as the needs and requirements, might be very

dierent: fulﬁlling concrete needs of the community,

accessibility to and representation in public spaces,

experimentation and testing of use functions, brand-

ing and, but also urban renewal, land valorisation,

proﬁt-maximization, etc. (Colomb, 2012; Schaller &

Guinand, 2017).

BALANCING INTERESTS

Balancing interests and facilitating co-creative pro-

cesses for temporary use is essential for enabling and

identifying the potential of open public spaces (Sen-

nett, 2019). In market-oriented urban development,

the needs and requirements of local population risks

to be underrepresented which leads to the devel-

opment of exclusion of unheard user groups and

individuals in urban public spaces. Here, the potential

of temporary uses in (semi-)public spaces unfolds:

Inviting and bringing dierent ideas, perspectives and

interests together to collectively plan at equal levels

for temporary use projects should ultimately improve

the appropriation of potentially underused spaces,

and thus, create beneﬁts for more involvement

(Campo, 2002).

TEMPORARY USE FOR

LONG TERM PLANNING

It is the process of bringing perspectives and expe-

riences of dierent actors together, to co-create

ideas and knowledge, while being able to experiment

in public spaces what makes temporary interven-

tions an eective tool. Thus, temporary uses allow

to test ideas in public spaces, often providing the

ﬂexibility to change focus on short term, develop

new ideas, draw conclusions and ideally inform long

term planning mechanisms (Lydon & Garcia, 2015).

Additionally, temporary use initiatives can transform

the identity and perception of a public space, even if

ephemeral. It allows people to test and experiment

with ideas of alternative uses and therefore make

visible what changes are possible of what the po-

tentials of a speciﬁc place is (Harris, 2015; Schaller

& Guinand, 2019). Long(er) term processes using

temporary use as a strategy have the potential to

contribute to a wider urban transformation (Grin,

2012). They take stock of the requirements and

needs in a neighbourhood/district/city/urban area,

co-create temporary projects to experiment in pub-

lic space. Altogether, this provides the ﬂexibility for

short-term adaptations of the planned project and in

the long run change identities of (underused) spaces

by showcasing what their potentials are. Co-creative

temporary use projects make the development and

maintaining public space more accessible to many

and stimulate educational skills to participate in

socio-spatial changes in urban areas (Beekmans &

De Boer, 2014).

This empowerment and access capacities are all the

more prevalent as means to achieve more just urban

environment (Fainstein, 2010).

RISKS

Temporary initiatives, per deﬁnition, are implement-

ed for a limited period of time. While the experi-

menting which takes place on these sites is reversible

physically, the social and symbolic eects are longer

lasting. This oers the potential for synergetic

eects if conducted in open, non-discriminative,

co-creative ways. Informal actions are also trigger

for reﬂections on alternative uses and practices.

They convey precious information on the public

spaces’ social dimensions that need to be taken into

account. If these elements are not embedded in a

more comprehensive planning process with co-crea-

tive character, there are signiﬁcant risks of contrib-

uting to dilemma situations such as social exclusion,

frustration and distrust, privatization and inacces-

sibility, especially if individual (market) interests

are over-represented in the process (Madanipour,

2019).

Not all interests of individual stakeholder / actor

groups might ultimately lead to sustainable and

liveable urban practices (Tonkiss, 2013) - but there

should be at least an awareness for “responsible

use” of scarce space which includes the potential of

temporary use of public spaces.

FURTHER READINGS

REFILL URBACT Network (2017) A Journey Through

Temporary Use. https://urbact.eu/sites/default/ﬁles/

media/reﬁll_ﬁnal_publication.pdf

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Temporary use projects as part of long-term

planning processes

For policy-makers, including, facilitating and/or

allowing for co-creative temporary use projects in

long-term planning processes can bring a number

of beneﬁts to their daily work. If implemented in

long(er)-term planning processes, the experimen-

tation taking place temporarily may provide im-

portant co-created knowledge for future projects

and policies of the city administrations and local

governments. Furthermore, temporary initia-

tives and projects have the potential to change

perceptions of residents and urban actors, thus,

contributing to collectively thinking and develop-

ing pathways for transitioning urban public space.

Temporary use projects should be considered as a

tool to change perceptions, to enhance appropri-

ations by co-creating the future uses, design and

functions of urban public spaces in a longer-term

planning process. By taking into account co-cre-

ative temporary forms of uses in long(er) term

planning processes, the synergetic eects tend to

be supported while the risks of amplifying dilemma

situations are decreased.

Transparent, ﬂexible and open regulations

Temporary initiatives and projects tend to be limit-

ed, or even prevented, by rigid regulations, access

barriers and precarious (non-)planning strategies.

While regulations have their reasons, higher ﬂexi-

bility is required to implement temporary projects

which go beyond initial mainstream use functions

and processes. To tap upon the potentials, the

regulative frameworks of local public administration

and planning need to provide the required ﬂexibility

and openness while framing transparent regulative

boundaries. Additionally, open and transparent pro-

cedure for temporary use practices are necessary.

The local urban administration or intermediaries can

take the role of the facilitator and broker between

dierent urban actors which can ensure the safety

of the project, the maintenance, etc. while the

co-creative factor contributes to a shared ownership

of the people and organisations involved. A clear

communication of the local urban administration

on the objectives including future scenarios and the

deﬁnition of co-responsibilities is essential for facili-

tating co-creative temporary processes and projects.

Team up to scale up

For facilitating projects and initiatives as part of a

larger process to transform public spaces (and urban

areas in general, for that matter) towards sustainable

and liveable futures, the co-creative temporary use

should not be understood as a single intervention.

Instead, it should be implemented as a tool for

experimentation to become a standard in transition

processes. To make this a reality, it is important to

overcome “silo-structures” in public urban plan-

ning administration and to ensure exchange and

collaboration between departments. Furthermore,

for enhancing the eects of the intervention(s) on

a larger scale (from one speciﬁc case to neighbour-

hood and urban scale), the inclusion of residents and

users in urban spaces, as well as the private sector is

a pre-condition for taking collective action.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beekmans, J., De Boer, J. (2014). Pop-up city:

City-making in a ﬂuid world. BIS.

Campo, D. (2002). Brooklyn’s vernacular

waterfront. Journal of Urban Design, 7(2),

171–199.

Colomb, C. (2012). Pushing the urban frontier:

Temporary uses of space, city marketing, and the

creative city discourse in 2000s Berlin. Journal

of Urban Aairs, 34(2), 131–152.

Dahlvik, J., Franz, Y., Hoekstra, M., Kohlbacher, J.

(2017). Interethnic co-existence in European

cities. A policy handbook. ISR Research Report

46. Austrian Academy of Sciences. https://doi.

org/10.1553/ISR_FB046.

Douglas, G.C. (2018). The Help-Yourself City.

Legitimacy & Inequality in DIY Urbanism. Oxford

University Press.

Fainstein, S. (2010). The Just City. Cornell

University Press.

Harris, E. (2015). Navigating pop-up geographies:

Urban space-times of ﬂexibility, interstitiality

and immersion: Navigating pop-up geographies.

Geography Compass, 9(11), 592–603.

Lydon, M., Garcia, A. (2015). Tactical urbanism:

Short-term action for long-term change. Island

Press.

Madanipour, A. (2018). Temporary use of space:

Urban processes between ﬂexibility, opportunity

and precarity. Urban Studies, 55(5), 1093–1110.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017705546.

Mariani, M, Barron, P. (2014). Terrain vague

interstices at the edge of the pale. Routledge.

Schaller, S., Guinand, S. (2019). Popup landscape

design and the disruption of the ordinary. In

Albrecht, P., Stevens, Q., (eds.) Public space

design and social cohesion. Routledge, pp. 242-

259.

Schaller, S., Guinand, S. (2017). Pop up

landscape. A new trigger to push up land

value?, Urban geography, 39(1), 54-74, DOI:

10.1080/02723638.2016.1276719

Sennett, R. (2019) The Fight for the City. https://

www.eurozine.com/the-ﬁght-for-the-city/.

Eurozine.

Tonkiss, F. (2013). Austerity urbanism and the

makeshift city. City, 17(3), 312–324.

Acknowledge political representation

and expression

The political role and dimension of interventions

in public space should not be left out of planning

considerations. Public space should remain an open

space for socio-political expressions and contes-

tations. Public authorities, planners, practitioners

should avoid the temptation of taming expressions

through institutionalisation. Co-creative temporary

space activation should not become the next tool-

kit to tame contestation through consensus and

normative codes of conduct and behaviour. These

spaces through the interventions should remain the

informative barometer of the socio-political state of

our urban societies.

Deﬁne the potential value of the initiative

Urban land is a scarce resource which results in

pressures on the use and function of public spaces

caused by conﬂicting interests. For that reason, it

is essential to acknowledge the value of co-creative

temporary use as a potential tool to use (public)

space more eciently. In co-creative temporary

projects/initiatives, it is crucial to align divergent in-

terests and develop a common value for the project

together. This shared understanding of the value of

the project should include social, environmental,

economic and political aspects to ensure overall just

urban environments. This step is essential to balance

market and social interests, create common objec-

tives of what is to be achieved with the temporary

projects and, ultimately, how the temporary urban

practice can contribute to a shared understanding

of just, sustainable and liveable public spaces.

ProstoRožev is a cultural association located in Lju-

bljana, Slovenia. Their work focusses on improving

urban public spaces by exploring the meaning of

local residents and society at large. prostoRožev

activated overlooked public spaces by organizing,

rearranging and revitalising them according to the

needs of the local population. Zala Velkavrh reﬂect-

ed upon the role of temporary use activities and

projects to activate underused urban public spaces:

What value can be realized through temporary use?

“Temporary use can help uncover and point to the

hidden and forgotten qualities of space. As a ﬁrst

step in a long-term renewal process, it has the power

to establish a link between residents, planners, and

local decision-makers, easing the way for permanent

improvement. It enables stakeholders to experience

one of the possible scenarios for space in 1:1 scale.”

What does co-creation require in practice?

“Co-creation requires negotiation. The rules need

to be ﬂexible and all actors need to know how they

can inﬂuence the co-creation process and the space.

Beyond building the temporary space, planners, mu-

nicipal ocials, local residents and other stakehold-

ers should be involved in the debates concerning the

long-term vision of the space.”

What are the main challenges

to co-create temporary use?

“The greatest challenge is the balance between the

temporary and the permanent. In the absence of a

long-term strategy, co-created temporary spaces

might be (ab)used for marketing purposes. Atten-

tion should be paid to the maintenance aspect of

temporary use. While local residents and other users

easily embrace a space they helped to co-create,

maintenance of public space should not become

PROSTOROŽEV  LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

HTTPS://PROSTOROZ.ORG

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

their exclusive burden. Temporariness means that

a plan for maintenance and removal of spatial

intervention must be implemented together with the

intervention.”

How can outcomes of co-created

temporary use be sustained?

“Temporary use can serve as a starting point for

permanent renewal and a well-informed long-term

collaboration. A plan for observation and evaluation

should be set up to measure the success of tempo-

rary use. The outcomes of co-created temporary

use should only be sustained if the experiment is

successful. The long-term legacy of temporary use

does not have to resonate in the design of the space.

It can resonate in new trac plans, maintenance,

and new governance of the space.”

Why should cities make use

of co-created temporary use?

“Temporary use enables cities to test the ideas for

public space quickly and eciently. It doesn’t require

a high budget and is usually simple to install and

remove. As such, it provides a platform for instant

feedback. Not only does this save time and money

for the city when it comes to presenting and design-

ing ideas for public urban space, but it also serves as

a more eective way of understanding the needs and

wishes of local residents.”

prostoRož mission is to enhance the quality of underused public urban spaces in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Photos by Dijana Vukojevic.

Ciclovia in Bogota, Columbia.

Photo by Florian Lorenz

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Florian Lorenz (Smarter Than Car)

Joshua Grigsby (University of Vienna)

STREETS AS LEVERS FOR URBAN

TRANSFORMATION

Since the mid 20th century, urban mobility has

rapidly motorized and individualized, resulting in an

enormous rise in the number of privately owned

motor vehicles in cities. Since a single-occupant

car moving at 50 km/hr occupies 30 times more

space than a bicycle at 15 km/hr, and 20 times more

space, per person, than a bus with 40 riders (Litman,

2019), this shift would not have been possible with-

out new spatial arrangements.

To accommodate individual motorization, and often

to encourage it, cities re-allocated vast swathes

of public space for dedicated motor vehicle lanes

and on-street parking. Streets ceased to be “the

main public places of a city” (Jacobs, 1961) as lively,

diverse, interactive public spaces were replaced by

RETHINKING URBAN PUBLIC

SPACES: HOW TO UNLOCK THE

POTENTIALS OF STREET SPACES

TO IMPROVE SUSTAINABILITY

AND LIVEABILITY

Policy makers working in the urban realm often deal with negotiating the repurposing

of streets as public spaces. Transforming street spaces – by re-allocating space

from motorized individual transport to other uses – appears as eective strategy

to improve on sustainability and liveability goals. Yet such a re-allocation of public

space faces several dilemmas in a real world setting that relate to timescales of urban

transformation, fairness of street space allocation, fossil-fuel based mobility as personal

comfort, as well as, mobilizing of political capital for long term urban transformation

projects. This chapter explores how the transformation of streets into sustainable

and liveable public spaces can be expedited and made more ecient. New urban

imaginaries and narratives that integrate small steps for success can foster streets as

public spaces that are built in participatory and co-creative projects.

mono-functional transportation strips dominated

by motorized vehicles and protected in this use by

societal practices and legal regulations.

Now, another transformation of city streets appears

to be both necessary and inevitable in the light of

sustainability (climate change, public health, social

equity) and liveability (climate comfort, inclusive

public realm, etc.) challenges. Cities must not only

adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions but

also anticipate and prepare for the impacts of fun-

damental changes in energy systems, supply chains,

economic structures, demographics, and more. The

reconceptualization of streets as postcarbon urban

ecosystems has been proposed for research and

innovation projects and urban policymakers alike:

“The design challenge of postcarbon urban mobility […]

is to facilitate the mobility needs of people while inviting

the production of urbanity and enhancing adaptive

capacity in the face of systemic change. In practice,

this means rejecting the monolithic car-based system

in urban areas in favour of redesigning streets, parking

areas, and networks of streets so that the greatest

proportion of city dwellers can maintain a high quality

of life even as energetic, economic, and environmental

conditions shift.” (Grigsby & Lorenz, 2017)

Streets are the predominant and most ubiquitous

form of public open space in cities, and despite

appearances to the contrary, they remain available

for policy and planning interventions. Indeed, many

cities are leveraging street transformations to reduce

the urban heat island eect, improve microcli-

mates, reduce air and noise pollution, support social

cohesion, encourage public participation, and foster

transitions to sustainability mobility. Yet, neither the

rate of change nor its scope and scale are congruent

with the challenges ahead, and the overall vision of

Performance during a car free Sunday on Avenida Paulista, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo by Johannes Riegler

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

transformation tends to be fragmented, leading to

conﬂicting policy aims and strategic planning goals

that never make the jump from paper to pavement.

The COVID-19 pandemic with its disruptions in

mobility patterns and public space usage shows that

cities can change quickly and radically in the face

of crisis. Yet, COVID-19 is not the only challenge

humankind faces in the 21st century as climate

change, resource depletion and biodiversity loss

constitute a “long emergency” (Kunstler, 2005) that

requires systemic change towards deep sustainability

in the Anthropocene. Streetscapes constitute the

largest and most pervasive spatial tool at the disposal

of public authorities for catalysing – or resisting –

socio-ecological transformation.

REALLOCATING STREET SPACE: FOUR

DILEMMAS

Despite the potential beneﬁts, the re-allocation

of street space remains a contentious and highly

politicized process. There is no clear consensus con-

cerning which (or whose) needs the design of public

space should prioritize, or how public space ﬁts into

larger societal challenges. Streets, in particular, are

deeply symbolic spaces associated for many people

with notions of modernity, progress, cars, and speed.

Public space is a limited resource, and its allocation

always favours certain practices and meanings at the

expense of others. Any signiﬁcant change to public

space requires negotiation between dierent inter-

ests, thereby presenting dilemmas from the outset.

An inclusive dilemma-oriented approach identifying

such hurdles can help to consider multiple sides and

motivations involved in such a process. This has the

potential to produce engaged change-coalitions and

expedite co-created visions of sustainable, liveable

futures.

Dilemma #1: Consolidating urban transformation

timescales and required pace of change

Perhaps the main dilemma for urban policymakers

and planners is how to achieve rapid transforma-

tion, given the scale and complexity of changes

needed. Simply achieving consensus on the nature

of the problems can take decades, and previous

socio-technical system transitions have tended

to unfold over 40-60 years or more (Kanger and

Schot, 2019). In order to avoid runaway global

warming, however, near-total decarbonization within

the next 10-20 years appears to be necessary (Ste-

en et al 2018, IPCC 2018). This leaves very little

time for cities to envision and implement alternative

paradigms. At the same time, if cities act too fast

and push too hard, they risk making mistakes that

increase human suering, even if only in the short

term. If the support of the public is lost, entire long-

term agendas can be delegitimized.

Dilemma #2: Striving for fairness in street space

allocation

Creutzig et al (2020) provide useful insights into the

challenge of “fair street space allocation” arising in

the context of “emerging concerns about transport

emissions, global warming, public health and urban

sustainability [which] have reinvigorated public

discussion about the function and fairness of street

space allocation”. The authors describe street space

allocation in Berlin, Germany, where motor vehicles

(moving and parked) take up about 60% of street

space while only 17% of daily trips are made by car.

A similar mismatch can be observed for Vienna,

Austria, where 66,5% of street space is dedicated to

motor vehicles (Furchtlehner & Licka, 2019) despite

them accounting for only 27% of daily trips. Far from

being outliers, these cities appear to be more the

rule than the exception.

However, the car system has been locked in to the

point that reducing or dismantling it will have adverse

impacts on large numbers of people, particularly

those from poor and even middle-class neighbour-

hoods at the urban fringe without access to quick,

reliable, and inexpensive public transport who rely

on cars to reach places of employment, schools, and

essential shopping such as supermarkets. The reality

is that street space allocation will never be fair in the

sense of providing equally to all transport modes and

non-transport demands; societal and political priori-

ties will always produce “winners” and “losers”.

Dilemma #3: Contemporary comfort versus inter-

generational fairness

While we enjoy moving upon wish in a convenient

and personalized manner we also want to maintain

planetary health for future generations. Planetary

sustainability requires addressing climate change and

decarbonisation goals and is ultimately incompatible

with individual, car-based and fossil-fuelled mobility.

Likewise, citizens appreciate improvements in the

public space at their doorsteps but may also want a

cheap and easily accessible parking space.

This dilemma is manifested by lock-ins and path de-

pendencies in infrastructure (as well as ﬁnancial and

ﬁscal systems) that are currently skewed towards

incentivising car-based mobility (Mattioli et. al.,

2020). Streets dominated by fossil-fuelled private

motor vehicles reproduce a “system of automobility”

(Urry, 2004) based on the unsustainable burning of

vast quantities of fossil energy. Structural changes in

this system need to be framed in innovative ways to

overcome the resistance of car owners and automo-

tive lobbies (Gössling, 2020).

Dilemma #4: Short-term political capital versus long

term societal beneﬁt

Interventions that make perfect sense from a

long-term perspective and would bring beneﬁts for

society in the long run are often hard to “sell” in a

short-term political timeframe. Replacing on-street

parking with urban greenery makes perfect sense in

the long run as trees will bring real beneﬁts (shading

and cooling) in about 10-20 years after planting.

Politicians deciding to implement such an urban

policy, reasonable in terms of climate change adap-

tation, may have a hard time to build political capital

on long-term beneﬁts within their tenure but are

still faced with a potential backlash from citizens that

want to keep “their” (inexpensive) on-street parking.

To encounter this dilemma the (necessary) short-

term political capital need to align with long-term

societal beneﬁts. Meeting today’s challenges in a

proactive way does provide positive outcomes for

decision-makers and politicians to communicate

the co-beneﬁts of urban transformation (better

health, high liveability, localized economy, etc.) to

constituents. In this context it will be important to

nest short-term transformational projects in long-

term narratives and imaginaries of sustainable urban

futures.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Develop strong narratives and imaginaries for streets

as public spaces

Amplifying the pace of urban change requires

“transformational urban projects” (Zografos et. al,

2020) that deliver on many aspects of urban life.

As such projects entail the redevelopment of vast

amounts of urban space over long periods of time,

new imaginaries will be needed that envision streets

to become vital public spaces. Big changes will be

required to transition into a sustainable world –

similar in scale to the industrial revolution – with a

transformation of economy, mobility, urbanity and

social relations, amongst others. The street can be

the place where we tell the locally nested story of

transitioning into a sustainable urban future.

Make streets an issue of wellbeing and

environmental quality

Fostering a new zeitgeist about streets as public

spaces requires changing the conversation from

streets as trac spaces to streets as public spaces.

Rather than being a space that merely serves trac,

streets should (again) be a public space servicing the

public good. Policy makers should apply wellbeing

and environmental fairness principles to argue for

street space allocation and redistribute street space

towards slower speed uses (Creutzig et al 2020).

Integrating non-transport stationary and mobile

functions – such as street vending, food trucks,

markets, artistic interventions, political expressions,

comfortable benches, green spaces – typically not

considered by urban (trac) planners today (von

Schönfeld and Bartolini 2017) will be vital for creat-

ing streets for wellbeing and environmental quality.

Re-allocate parking space towards other uses and

active modes of transport.

In many cities the use of street spaces is skewed

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

towards stationary vehicles that occupy public

spaces. A straightforward policy with long-term

impact is to reshue the land-use hierarchy (and

the aligned imaginary) within streets by implement-

ing on-street parking schemes to reduce on-street

parking gradually shifting the spatial balance towards

more sustainable and lively uses. This will free space

to revalue streets as public spaces of wellbeing and

environmental quality while at the same time accel-

erating a wider shift in mobility behaviour towards

sustainable forms of transport.

Critically in this process is having land-use alterna-

tives (parklets, greenery, social infrastructure, etc.)

at hand to quickly replace on-street parking with

uses that are of immediate beneﬁt to residents. For

doing so, a participatory approach raises local own-

ership for those new (public) street spaces thereby

improving overall sustainability.

Develop visions, projects and milestones to be

reached within short timeframes

To overcome the dilemma of mobilizing short-term

political capital from long-term projects and their

future eects, such long-term projects may be

constituted of smaller projects targeting the imme-

diate-, short- and intermediate-term. Such quickly

feasible interventions can be nested within the

narrative of long-term urban transformation creating

identity and agency as well as understanding for the

necessity of transformational urban change. Such

smaller projects can also be communicated more

eectively in a (local) political context.

Next to established mechanisms of implementing

projects in stages, urban transformation projects

can integrate short-term actions following a tactical

urbanism approach (Lydon & Garcia, 2015). Such

temporary (and inexpensive) interventions enable

the experimentation with a new normal of street

space allocation. Long-term and more costly inter-

ventions can thereafter build on the experiences and

expectations of citizens who also develop a better

ownership for the transformation process.

Support co-creation of new street space usages.

For successfully implementing transformational

projects the buy-in of residents is vital. Therefore,

Parklet2Go: an urbanistic tool for testing, evaluating and discussing the transformation of speciﬁc (parking) spaces

in an eective and informal way. Photo by Florian Lorenz

the imaginary for communicating urban transfor-

mation should be as diverse as the users’ needs in

regards of future urban spaces. To build this local

alliance and raise the sustainability of interventions,

the transformation of streets as urban public spaces

should be co-created together with citizens. Various

approaches for street transformation can be experi-

mented with (Bertolini, 2020) making the potentials

of urban transformation more tangible for residents.

Enhancing co-creation for urban transformation

processes makes sense from a policy and planning

perspective. Crowdsourcing ideas can help to devel-

op a richer imaginary and identify new concepts for

street spaces that serve the needs of a sustainable

urban future.

Superblock in Barcelona. Photo by Florian Lorenz

EXAMPLE: SUPERBLOCKS AS

TRANSFORMATIONAL URBAN

INTERVENTION

The Superblock model (Rueda, 2019) is a “transfor-

mational intervention” (Zografos et. al., 2019) that

re-organises urban space and mobility at a human

scale while reclaiming public space for meeting the

challenges of urban transitions toward sustainability

and decarbonisation. Superblocks limit the perme-

ability of the road network for private motorised

trac while prioritising walking and cycling on

non-arterial streets. The resulting “urban cells” are

trac-calmed with reduced on-street parking to

enable the re-design of streets as multifunctional

public spaces. A modal shift towards walking, cycling

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

and public transport is induced, while attracting

additional local services and businesses can further

reduce travel distances. As spatial policy tool, Super-

blocks aect multiple dimensions of urban life and

manage to address the aforementioned dilemmas:

Dilemma #1: Superblocks provide a long-term urban

transformation perspective and a localized narrative

for urban transition that manages to integrate small

and quick interventions within a long-term goal of

developing a sustainable and liveable neighbourhood.

Dilemma #2: Superblocks oer an equitable range of

transport options while redistributing street spaces in

co-creative processes involving multiple stakeholders.

The scale of Superblocks can mobilize potentials for

indoor parking facilities to free-up on-street parking.

Dilemma #3: Superblocks prioritise human-scale

mobility and foster urban public spaces that are (no

longer) dominated by cars thereby providing are a

model to live a frugal urban lifestyle that can comply

with intergenerational fairness.

Dilemma #4: As a spatial policy tool and a political

project, Superblocks integrate a visionary narrative

and providing manifold options for small nested

urban changes that can be leveraged for localized and

more short-term political capital.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bertolini, L., (2020) “From “streets for trac” to

“streets for people”: can street experiments

transform urban mobility?”, Transport Reviews,

DOI: 10.1080/01441647.2020.1761907

Creutzig, F., Javaid, A., Soomauroo, Z., Lohrey,

S., Milojevic-Dupont, N., Ramakrishnan, A.,

Sethi, M., Liu, L., Niamir, L., Bren d’Amour, C.,

Weddige, U., Lenzi, D., Kowarsch, M., Arndt, L.,

Baumann, L., Betzien, J., Fonkwa, L., Huber, B.,

Mendez, E., Misiou, M., Pearce, C., Radman,

P., Skaloud, P., & J. Zausch, M., (2020). Fair

street space allocation: ethical principles and

empirical insights. Transport Reviews. DOI:

10.1080/01441647.2020.1762795

Gössling, S. (2020). Why cities need to take road

space from cars - and how this could be done,

Journal of Urban Design, 25(4), 443-448. DOI:

10.1080/13574809.2020.1727318

Grigsby, J. and Lorenz, F., (2017). Great

Streets for the Post-Carbon Age, In: Franz,

Y. and Hintermann, C. (eds.). Unravelling

Complexities Understanding Public Spaces, ISR

Forschungsberichte, 44, Institut Für Stadt-

Und Regionalforschung (Hrsg.), Verlag der

Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,

Wien, 2017

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New Cities and Renovation of Existing Ones:

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authority and the Barcelona superblock project.

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cities.2020.102613.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Authors:

Christoph Gollner (JPI Urban Europe)

Ruth Yeoman (University of Oxford and

Northumbria University)

Urban environments play a crucial role in achieving

climate and energy targets. But public spaces as such

appear not to be in the centre of attention when

it comes to discussing the energy transition in the

urban context. Rather, the focus is on transforming

the energy system, smart grids, renewable energy

sources, energy-ecient buildings and user behav-

iour, the industry, the mobility system and other

speciﬁc infrastructures. Yet, public spaces play a key

role in shaping people’s interactions with the energy

system. Urban policies and investments in public

spaces can facilitate or inhibit these interactions,

with important consequences for the eectiveness

of urban energy systems. In their eorts to embed

smart city initiatives, such as those related to the

urban energy system, participation in public spaces

helps people co-create diverse meanings and

narratives that inﬂuence how they adopt sustainable

practices into their work and lives. An important,

but neglected aspect is how people’s behaviour in

smart city contexts is motivated by their need for

life meaning. Meaningfulness in life and work is a

potential resource for public space design, and could

be used to inform city strategy and governance when

managing energy transitions. Public spaces that

enable people to generate meanings related to their

interactions with the urban energy systems, and to

use these meanings to enrich their lives, help city ad-

ministrators and energy system designers to develop

integrated energy transition strategies that include

establishing fora for spread awareness and ownership

of responsible urban policies for sustainable energy.

DILEMMAS:

• How to address the energy transition targets

with regard to public spaces in terms of

design and function, while providing inclusive,

high-quality public environments and ensuring

broad ownership?

• How to address eciency (technical expertise

seeking to act quickly and at scale) versus

eectiveness (local knowledge, understanding

and commitment that takes time to develop)?

SMART CITIES AND ENERGY TRANSITIONS

Public spaces are the essence of urban life and

provide essential societal functions. As platforms for

social interaction and carriers of infrastructures and

mobility, they deﬁne identity, pace and functionality

of and access to the city. The JPI Urban Europe AG-

ORA Thematic Dialogue in Riga (JPI Urban Europe,

2019) has addressed a wide range of dilemmas such

as global vs. local interests, planned vs. experimental

ENERGY TRANSITION AND

THE MEANINGFUL CITY

space, temporary use vs. long-term planning, the

transformation of urban infrastructures and adaption

for climate change with its consequences for the

design of public spaces, combining high quality with

inclusiveness.

Discussing the role and function of public spaces

in the energy transition starts with urban planning

in general, including the aspects of density and the

allocation of functions: concepts such as the Com-

pact City (OECD, 2012) or the 15-Minute-City

(City Lab, 2020) not only support liveability for its

residents, but also energy-ecient and sustainable

urban development. The Smart City (European

Commission, n.D.) concept has signiﬁcantly impact-

ed urban development narratives: mostly focusing

on digital technologies to organize cities more

eciently and sustainably. On a global level, the UN

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)(United

Nations, n.D.), speciﬁcally SDG 11 – Make cities

and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and

sustainable, has contributed to focusing on urban

environments as main drivers for climate and energy

action. However, tensions often exist between smart

and sustainable city goals, especially when smart

city initiatives prioritise technological solutions at

the expense of people’s need for meaning. By giving

people voice in crafting the meanings and narratives

that shape the design, implementation and adoption

of technology, public spaces can use collaborative

learning and public values to manage the tensions

between smart and sustainable goals, and improve

the prospects for energy transition.

MEANINGFUL CITIES

People’s need for meaning in life and work is a

neglected aspect of human motivation that could

usefully be incorporated in urban public policy, espe-

cially those connecting public space-making and cit-

izens’ commitment to sustainable energy practices.

This is captured in the concept of ‘meaningful cities’

that put the lives and voices of city residents and

workers at the heart of sustainable cities (Yeoman,

2019). Crucially, citizens are invited to participate

in urban decision-making in ways that contribute

to life meaning. People experience meaningfulness

when they are actively involved with things of inde-

pendent value and signiﬁcance (for example, ideas,

activities, people, animals, places and organisations)

that they also ﬁnd emotionally engaging (Yeoman,

2014). Cities contain a dazzling diversity of values

and meanings that oer opportunities for personal

meaning. However, not all such meanings contribute

to the common good of the city. When public spaces

are informed by an urban ethic of inclusiveness,

equality, rights, and diversity, they enable citizens to

publicly evaluate the ethical viability of local and per-

sonal meanings against public values, and to assess

how meanings express the well-being of the people

and the ways that places contribute to life mean-

ing. For example, a citizen-led study of three East

London neighbourhoods ﬁnds that local meanings of

‘what does it means for everyone to prosper’ diverge

from economic models of material prosperity, and

place greater emphasis on belonging, voice and the

relational aspects of material security (Moore and

Woodcraft, 2019).

This suggests that the technologies of smart and sus-

tainable city initiatives, such as smart meters, solar

panels and innovative transport solutions, are more

likely to be successfully disseminated and embedded

when people are able to bring their local and personal

meanings into the design and implementation pro-

cess. As part of meaningful place-making, the King’s

Cross development in London drew upon multiple

sources of meanings – inclusion, culture and herit-

age, innovation, growth and diversity. These meaning

sources provide residents, community groups, cor-

porate tenants and other stakeholders with insights

into environmental, social, and governance (ESG)

dimensions that facilitate energy transitions, and

contribute to life meaning (see Oxford Impact Case

Study, n.D.).

PUBLIC SPACES IN TRANSFORMATION

The design of public spaces plays a key role in the

mitigation of global warming eects: greening,

cooling urban heat islands, adapting urban mobility.

Cities that use public spaces to capture and use

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

citizens’ interpretations of meanings are well placed

to develop resilient and responsive integrations of

the social and technological dimensions of smart/

sustainable strategies. For example, narratives of

green and blue infrastructure provide meanings to

support climate and energy targets, as well as spatial

qualities. Applied in public spaces to topics such as

the mobility sector, meanings, values and narratives

help to motivate the transformation process needed

to move away from car-oriented streets towards

place-making based upon collective or shared and

fossil-fuel-free mobility. Many European cities,

including global cities such as Paris, Brussels and

Madrid, actively set initiatives for pushing back

motorized trac from their streets. Pedestrianized

zones or Shared Spaces (The City at Eye Level,

2017) are having a revival – combining ambitions of

economic revitalization of inner parts of the cities

(already a priority in the 1970’s) with climate action.

While energy eciency aspects are increasingly

mainstreamed in urban policies, the task of (local)

energy production is less prominent. Developing

strategies of including energy production by sensibly

making use of locally available renewable sources into

the design of public spaces are still very small-scaled.

Public spaces have the potential to act as a main

carrier for public infrastructures by providing energy

grids with locally produced energy, while at the same

time providing high-quality design for interaction.

Yet, top-down concepts of transformation processes

on a large scale tend to be slow-moving and ignore

issues of ownership, and therefore acceptance.

Bottom-up initiatives, small-scale, neighbour-

hood-oriented approaches and interventions are

equally important, usually faster in implementation,

and have immediate impact. Incremental ap-

proaches – re-designing a single street, providing

room for manoeuvre for local, non-governmental

initiatives and temporary uses – may serve as a pool

of experiments testing immediate action. A sensible

integration of top-down and bottom-up strategies

is needed that takes citizens and users on board

and uses the innovation potential on the ground.

Local Agenda 21 (Cities Territories Governance,

2012) and similar initiatives, Baugruppen (building

groups) (Spur, 2017), Local Energy Communities

(Local Energy Communities, 2019) or Amsterdam’s

CODALoop project use workshops, theatre, on-line

fora, and storytelling to activate an energy con-

sciousness among participants. Such creative public

spaces encourage citizens to generate diverse mean-

ings, adopting these into narratives that motivate

community-level co-creation of energy-conscious

lifestyles. Having citizens engaged and committed

addresses issues of inclusion and exclusion that

impede implementation strategies. Experimental

and inclusive public spaces foster a diversity of

approaches, allowing for the evaluation of dierent

methods, implementation strategies and stakeholder

engagement. This provides the basis for narrative

justice, or equality and inclusion in meaning-making

that contributes to narrative formation and trans-

mission, thereby helping people to incorporate smart

city technologies into their lives.

To sum it up – public spaces can contribute to

energy transition targets by

• providing the backbone of sustainable, climate

neutral and energy ecient mobility: creating an

urban environment that supports public transport,

shared mobility, cycling, walking and moves away

from car-oriented design;

• providing space for sustainable energy production:

using renewable sources (wind, sun, water) and

including them into design aspects;

• providing space for sustainable grey, green and

blue infrastructure: focusing on integrating green

and blue (water) elements to the design of public

spaces, thus reducing the need for energy for

cooling;

• inﬂuencing individual behaviour through design:

supporting energy-ecient and sustainable mo-

bility and the use of resources

• providing meaning-making capabilities: generating

diverse meanings, shaping narratives, and crafting

meaning in life and work

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cities Territories Governance (2012). 20 years of

Local Agenda 21. Retrieved from: http://www.

citego.org/bdf_ﬁche-document-1299_en.html

City Lab (2020, February). Paris Mayor: It’s Time

for a ‘15-Minute City’. Retrieved from: https://

www.citylab.com/environment/2020/02/paris-

election-anne-hidalgo-city-planning-walks-

stores-parks/606325/

CODALoop Amsterdam. (2017). Community

Data-Loop for energy conscious lifestyles. https://

amsterdamsmartcity.com/projects/coda-loop-

amsterdam-community-data-loop-for-energy

European Commission (n.D.). Smart Cities.

Retrieved from: https://ec.europa.eu/info/

eu-regional-and-urban-development/topics/

cities-and-urban-development/city-initiatives/

smart-cities_en

JPI Urban Europe (2019, November). A journey

through this year’s AGORA Dialogue in Riga.

Retrieved from: https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/

news/a-journey-through-this-years-agora-

dialogue-in-riga/

Local Energy Communities (2019). Local

Energy Communities. Retrieved from: https://

localenergycommunities.net/

Moore, H. L. & Woodcraft, S. (2019). Understanding

prosperity in east London: Local meanings and

‘sticky’ measures of the good life. City & Society,

31 (2), 275-298.

OECD (2012). Compact City Policies: A

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www.oecd.org/regional/greening-cities-regions/

compact-city.htm

Oxford Impact Case Study (n.D.). Making

Meaningful Cities. http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/

research-impact/making-meaningful-cities

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

• Connect climate action, energy transition targets and quality urban environment: Climate and energy

action addressing urban infrastructures and mobility systems must go hand-in-hand with accessible,

inclusive, high-quality designs of public spaces.

• Mainstream energy eciency and energy production aspects urban planning and public space strat-

egies and design: The energy transition targets must be integrated and evaluated in urban strategies

on all levels. This applies not only to new urban developments but also retroﬁtting and revitalisation

strategies in existing neighbourhoods.

• Focus on local communities and the urban neighbourhood: Active citizens and local communities are

valuable and innovative actors in transformation processes, implementation success depends on broad

ownership. Citizens and local stakeholders need to be informed, involved and engaged.

• Space for diversity of approaches and experiment: While mainstreaming energy transition targets in

urban policies, there is a need for experimental space, exploring a diversity of solutions with dierent

focus.

• Establish an urban ethic and institutional mechanisms for evaluating meanings: equipping citizens

to use public values to assess meanings and narratives secures their ownership and commitment of

technologically-driven sustainability initiatives

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

Spur (2017, September). Could Germany’s Co-

Developed Urban Housing Be a Model for the

Bay Area? Retrieved from: https://www.spur.

org/news/2017-09-21/could-germany-s-co-

developed-urban-housing-be-model-bay-area

The City at Eye Level (2017, March). Europe’s longest

shared space. Case Study Mariahilfer Strasse

Vienna. Retrieved from: https://thecityateyelevel.

ﬁles.wordpress.com/2017/03/22europe_s-

longest-shared-space-case-mariahilfer-strasse-

vienna.pdf

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social

Aairs (n.D.). Sustainable Development Goals.

Retrieved from: https://sustainabledevelopment.

un.org/

Yeoman (2014). Conceptualising Meaningful Work as

a Fundamental Human Need. Journal of Business

Ethics, 125, 235–251.

Yeoman (2019). The Meaningful City. Oxford

Handbook of Meaningful Work.

Unfolding Dilemmas of Urban Public Spaces

www.jpi-urbaneurope.eu

info@jpi-urbaneurope.eu

JPI Urban Europe

@JPIUrbanEurope

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Full-text available

Aug 2020

Research on car dependence exposes the difficulty of moving away from a car-dominated, high-carbon transport system, but neglects the political-economic factors underpinning car-dependent societies. Yet these factors are key constraints to attempts to ‘decouple' human well-being from energy use and climate change emissions. In this critical review paper, we identify some of the main political-economic factors behind car dependence, drawing together research from several fields. Five key constituent elements of what we call the ‘car-dependent transport system’ are identified: i) the automotive industry; ii) the provision of car infrastructure; iii) the political economy of urban sprawl; iv) the provision of public transport; v) cultures of car consumption. Using the ‘systems of provision’ approach within political economy, we locate the part played by each element within the key dynamic processes of the system as a whole. Such processes encompass industrial structure, political-economic relations, the built environment, and cultural feedback loops. We argue that linkages between these processes are crucial to maintaining car dependence and thus create carbon lock-in. In developing our argument we discuss several important characteristics of car-dependent transport systems: the role of integrated socio-technical aspects of provision, the opportunistic use of contradictory economic arguments serving industrial agendas, the creation of an apolitical façade around pro-car decision-making, and the ‘capture’ of the state within the car-dependent transport system. Through uncovering the constituents, processes and characteristics of car-dependent transport systems, we show that moving past the automobile age will require an overt and historically aware political program of research and action.

The Safe City: Conceptual Model Development - A Systematic Literature Review

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2019

In developing a smart city, it certainly has many aspects that must be met. One of these aspects is the aspect of security in the city which is usually called a safe city. The Safe City concept in Smart City provides a new way for the government to develop a city security system. "Safe city concept is one approach and as part of the live concept of the city focusing on the crime problem in urban areas" [1].In other words, Safe City is an idea in a community that uses technology to help governments, communities and businesses reduce the possibility of crime and provide an environment where people feel safe and comfortable. In developing the concept of a safe city, the government must first assess how safe the city is. General assessment of the level of city security in the world has been carried out by a leading company in Japan, NEC. In the security campaign conducted by NEC in 2017 [2], Indonesia has a relatively low-security value compared to other countries. The researchers assessed that the low value of city security in Indonesia is less relevant when viewed from the current state of the city. For this reason, the researchers collect other values that are owned by Indonesia and not owned by other countries to be used as an assessment material that Indonesia has a safe city. In the preparation of the literature review, this will produce a conceptual safe city model to provide a measure of city security assessment by the characteristics of cities in Indonesia.

Models of Collaborative Governance: The City of Los Angeles’ Foreclosure Registry Program

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2019

The economic recession of 2007–2013 brought many challenges to nations and cities throughout the world. Los Angeles experienced a foreclosure crisis that brought instability in the real property market, resulting in property loss and loss of revenue from property taxes and increasing demands on city resources from blighted properties. The paper begins with a background of the problem related to blighted properties and proceeds a literature review related to the five phases to the development and implementation of a governance network. The paper then examines a case study—the City of Los Angeles Foreclosure Registry Program’s governance network to reduce blight—to assess the phases taken to learn if the theory of network design offers meaningful direction and insight. The paper closes with an evaluation of the consistency regarding the literature related to the five phases of governance network development and its implementation by the City of Los Angeles.

Women and Planning: Creating Gendered Realities

Book

Sep 2003

Clara H. Greed

Education in Safe and Unsafe Spaces

Article

Jul 2020

Eamonn Callan

Recent student demands within the academy for "safe space" have aroused concern about the constraints they might impose on free speech and academic freedom. There are as many kinds of safety as there are threats to the things that human beings might care about. That is why we need to be very clear about the specific threats of which the intended beneficiaries of safe space are supposed to be relieved. Much of the controversy can be dissolved by distinguishing between "dignity safety," to which everyone has a right, and "intellectual safety" of a kind that is repugnant to the education worth having. Psychological literature on stereotype threat and the interventions that alleviate its adverse effects shed light on how students’ equal dignity can be made safe in institutions without compromising liberty. But "intellectual safety" in education can only be conferred at the cost of indulging close-mindedness and allied vices. Tension between securing dignity safety and creating a fittingly unsafe intellectual environment can be eased when teaching and institutional ethos promote the virtue of civility. Race is used throughout the article as the example of a social category that can spur legitimate demands for "dignity safe space."

Fair street space allocation: ethical principles and empirical insights

Article

May 2020

Urban street space is increasingly contested. However, it is unclear what a fair street space allocation would look like. We develop a framework of ten ethical principles and three normative perspectives on street space – streets for transport, streets for sustainability, and streets as place – and discuss 14 derived street space allocation mechanisms. We contrast these ethically grounded allocation mechanisms with real-world allocation in 18 streets in Berlin. We find that car users, on average, had 3.5 times more space available than non-car users. While some allocation mechanisms are more plausible than others, none is without disputed normative implications. All of the ethical principles, however, suggest that on-street parking for cars is difficult to justify, and that cycling deserves more space. We argue that ethical principles should be systematically integrated into urban and transport planning.

The everyday politics of urban transformational adaptation: Struggles for authority and the Barcelona superblock project

Article

Apr 2020
CITIES

As the vulnerability of cities to the effects of climate change increases, so does the urgency of and interest in urban transformational adaptation. To date, however, research has not looked empirically at how "everyday" urban politics shape the multi-scalar political constraints that prevent municipalities from implementing transformational adaptation. We analyze the Poblenou superblock project in Barcelona, Spain as an effort to enact transformational land use planning linked with climate adaptation efforts. We find that the key driver behind opposition is the everyday political struggle for municipal authority, which materializes in clashing visions for the future city -- and who has the political clout to define and own them. We show that urban transformation is at least as much about competitive urbanism and related short-term political gains as it is about the importance of environmental and quality-of-life benefits that are ostensibly the target of interventions. We also highlight how civic and political contestation over the authority of ‘climate champions’ can jeopardize not only transformational adaptation achievements, but also the political survival of champions themselves. We conclude that transformational adaptation can be obstructed not only out of fear for the material and political effects of transformation per se, but also because of the message it conveys as concerns of who has the authority to decide for “the common good”.

Co-creative temporary use in public spaces: The process is everything

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