City practices
- UIA DARE project - Digital Environment for collaborative Alliances to Regenerate urban Ecosystems in middle-sized cities, Ravenna (IT). With Saveria Teston, Ravenna Municipality
- EC1 Łódź City of Culture pilot case, T-Factor H2020 project - Cocreating cities with temporary urbanism, Łódź (PL). With Patrycja Wojtaszczyk and Natalia Rydlewska, Municipality of Łódź
- UIA Cultural H.ID.RA.N.T. project - Cultural Hidden Identities Reappear through Networks of Water, Chalandri (EL). With Nadia Siokou, Ohi Paizoume non-profit organisation
Topic and challenges
The economic and financial crises, globalisation, the erosion of the welfare state, and the privatisation of public services are generating increasing imbalances and inequalities that significantly impact urban living conditions. These socio-economic transition processes frequently result in the dismantling, neglect and obsolescence of built heritage, even in once economically prosperous urban regions. Examples of this can be found in Ravenna, IT notably the old docklands area of Darsena, and Łódź, PLwith its derelict former heat power station. These processes challenge the very foundation of capitalism and the models that guide societal development. To thrive, cities need to create new mechanisms for producing space, new cooperative development models, new rules, and new ways to manage urban assets.
In this sense, public discourse on the city and its artifacts can have a strong impact at city and neighbourhood level. Space-related mobilisation of local actors is a powerful force for fuelling conflictual, critical or generative processes at local level. As the Cultural H.ID.RA.N.T. initiative in Chalandri experienced, this depends greatly on the level of activity and connection between inhabitants and the urban context. In turn, this engagement is influenced by the way memory, knowledge, identification, sense of ownership and belonging, and narratives about the urban experience are produced or can be stimulated. Who we think we are in our context contributes to shaping what we enact and how we interpret events, both individually and collectively.
Culture and cultural heritage are relevant in unlocking urban potential because they represent a multifaceted combination of tangible and intangible elements. They offer a perspective for defining and redefining the strategic and developmental goals of urban systems, help create new economic models, foster more cooperative and solidarity-based approaches to communities and spaces, and support the creation of new local alliances and shared values.
Highlights
Text
- Culture as a translation tool
Repurposing and redefining the use of spaces and buildings in the city is not to be considered a mere act of physical transformation. Friction is generated each time a new function, use or physical shape is defined for an existing object in the city, as it risks undermining the system of meanings, memories and experiences that local communities attribute to it. Practices and tools that take culture and cultural heritage into account can help understand these systems of values, working as a translation device. This supports the concept of urban planning as a trading zone (Balducci, 2016) where positive or negative, controversial or conflictual, shared or individual memories emerge and help feed a collective sense-making process.
- Participation is key, but with certain conditions
The transformation and repurposing of city spaces is complex and multifaceted. Because of this, these actions increasingly require the wide participation of local communities and stakeholders in order to be effective and feasible. As the principle of engaging citizens already seems to be well recognised and implemented in European cities, the very nature of participatory actions and approaches should be called into question. Participation in itself is not a solution unless an honest conversation with clear scope, objectives, rules, roles and frameworks for action is set up from the very beginning.
- Relevance, impactfulness, meaningfulness
The capacity to be accountable and consistent is crucial for public authorities to be recognised as viable interlocutors. Building trust in the short run implies producing visible and meaningful results from interactions with local communities and helps maintain trust in the long run. In order to be meaningful to local communities, participatory processes have to be, or become, locally relevant. They must address needs and issues that are felt to be urgent and produce solutions that are seen as impactful.
- Space-related local alliances
The way in which local systems of stakeholders are understood, mapped and incorporated in the urban production process is extremely important, especially when it comes to the repurposing and transformation of local tangible heritage. Spatially situated and space-related conversations are normally based on recognisable, circumscribed areas or objects in the city. These can serve as common ground for activating new, unprecedented alliances between different groups and interests, with partnerships based on shared ideas developed through the participatory process.
- Local authorities as enablers
Whether possible, potential or actual, any alliance generated around the transformation and repurposing of tangible cultural heritage is context-based. This means that different contexts are likely to generate different kinds of alliances. Public authorities have a key role here, as they are well placed to imagine, and enable, possible new alliances. Empowering local stakeholders and imagining new partnerships, as well as links between them, often depends on how processes are conceived and built, how planning and governance tools are designed and implemented, and how power is devolved.
- Prototyping
Repurposing and transforming tangible heritage is complex, articulated, and often involves long, uncertain processes that evolve over time, influenced by internal and external factors. Since this requires innovative, non-standard solutions, it is vital to incorporate legitimacy, space and opportunities for testing solutions in the planning process. This involves, for example, anticipatory actions, prototypes, and experiments related to partnerships, regulations, and the use and management of buildings and spaces in the city. Failure should be considered a possible outcome, as learning practical lessons can help strengthen and fine-tune improved institutional actions in the long term.
- Incrementality and open systems
A clear strategy is crucial, especially when dealing with processes that aim to activate local communities. Meanwhile, uncertainty and the emergence of unintended or unimagined circumstances are an inevitable and defining aspect of each urban process. Accepting incompleteness, unsolved elements and non-linear development can help produce more open and flexible processes and outputs (Sennet, 2006). Building strategies that allow a more incremental approach, with open systems and processes, and the ability to redefine trajectories and directions during implementation, should become both a key consideration and a requirement.
- Culture as a translation tool
Repurposing and redefining the use of spaces and buildings in the city is not to be considered a mere act of physical transformation. Friction is generated each time a new function, use or physical shape is defined for an existing object in the city, as it risks undermining the system of meanings, memories and experiences that local communities attribute to it. Practices and tools that take culture and cultural heritage into account can help understand these systems of values, working as a translation device. This supports the concept of urban planning as a trading zone (Balducci, 2016) where positive or negative, controversial or conflictual, shared or individual memories emerge and help feed a collective sense-making process.
- Participation is key, but with certain conditions
The transformation and repurposing of city spaces is complex and multifaceted. Because of this, these actions increasingly require the wide participation of local communities and stakeholders in order to be effective and feasible. As the principle of engaging citizens already seems to be well recognised and implemented in European cities, the very nature of participatory actions and approaches should be called into question. Participation in itself is not a solution unless an honest conversation with clear scope, objectives, rules, roles and frameworks for action is set up from the very beginning.
- Relevance, impactfulness, meaningfulness
The capacity to be accountable and consistent is crucial for public authorities to be recognised as viable interlocutors. Building trust in the short run implies producing visible and meaningful results from interactions with local communities and helps maintain trust in the long run. In order to be meaningful to local communities, participatory processes have to be, or become, locally relevant. They must address needs and issues that are felt to be urgent and produce solutions that are seen as impactful.
- Space-related local alliances
The way in which local systems of stakeholders are understood, mapped and incorporated in the urban production process is extremely important, especially when it comes to the repurposing and transformation of local tangible heritage. Spatially situated and space-related conversations are normally based on recognisable, circumscribed areas or objects in the city. These can serve as common ground for activating new, unprecedented alliances between different groups and interests, with partnerships based on shared ideas developed through the participatory process.
- Local authorities as enablers
Whether possible, potential or actual, any alliance generated around the transformation and repurposing of tangible cultural heritage is context-based. This means that different contexts are likely to generate different kinds of alliances. Public authorities have a key role here, as they are well placed to imagine, and enable, possible new alliances. Empowering local stakeholders and imagining new partnerships, as well as links between them, often depends on how processes are conceived and built, how planning and governance tools are designed and implemented, and how power is devolved.
- Prototyping
Repurposing and transforming tangible heritage is complex, articulated, and often involves long, uncertain processes that evolve over time, influenced by internal and external factors. Since this requires innovative, non-standard solutions, it is vital to incorporate legitimacy, space and opportunities for testing solutions in the planning process. This involves, for example, anticipatory actions, prototypes, and experiments related to partnerships, regulations, and the use and management of buildings and spaces in the city. Failure should be considered a possible outcome, as learning practical lessons can help strengthen and fine-tune improved institutional actions in the long term.
- Incrementality and open systems
A clear strategy is crucial, especially when dealing with processes that aim to activate local communities. Meanwhile, uncertainty and the emergence of unintended or unimagined circumstances are an inevitable and defining aspect of each urban process. Accepting incompleteness, unsolved elements and non-linear development can help produce more open and flexible processes and outputs (Sennet, 2006). Building strategies that allow a more incremental approach, with open systems and processes, and the ability to redefine trajectories and directions during implementation, should become both a key consideration and a requirement.
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