Time2Adapt Urban Chapter N°1: Setting the ground for Time-based Innovative Measures and Experimentations to ADAPT our cities to climate change
Time2Adapt (T2A) is a new project, part of the first call of the European Urban Initiative (EUI) programme under the theme of New European Bauhaus and led by the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL), in France. It uses time-based policies/urbanism to help cities and urban authorities manage heatwaves by making small but smart changes to how and when public spaces are used. Through a paradigm change, the concrete solutions experimented and offered by the Time2Adapt project will empower not only the municipalities of the project but also the transfer partners, and more widely all other interested cities thanks to the toolbox it will eventually produce.
This first chapter of the Urban Diary sets out the scene, and in particular: the context for this project, its details, the partners and the reasons they joined the project, as well as the main foreseen impact and challenges.
A bit of context
The socio-economic situation of MEL
MEL, composed of 95 municipalities, is the fourth local authority by population in France, with 1.2 M inhabitants. It struggles economically: 20% of MEL inhabitants are below the poverty line and it faces an unemployment rate of 9.1% (respectively 14.2 % and 7.8% in France).
MEL is also the second most densely populated territory in France, with a particularly high density in its three main cities (Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing). In addition, a significant part of those areas – and one out of five MEL inhabitants live there- are classified as ‘city priority areas’ with important urban regeneration programmes. In particular, Lille and Loos (respectively 236,234 and 22,000 inhabitants), partners of the project, have large parts of their territories classified as ‘city priority areas’.
City priority areas : ‘Quartier prioritaire de la ville’ (QPV), is a device of the French government's urban policy, bringing together the most deprived urban areas, requiring intervention by public authorities, particularly in terms of urban renovation. It is part of the ‘Politique de la Ville’, a set of actions by the French State aimed at revaluing certain urban districts known as ‘sensitive’ or ‘priority’ and at reducing social inequalities between territories.
At the same time, the territory is subject to strong climatic vulnerabilities: temperature has increased by two degrees between 1955 and 2017 in Lille and long-term forecast anticipates an increase between 1.5 and 2.7 °C by 2055. Summers bring droughts and water-use restrictions, and the situation is worsened in densely built areas by the heat island effect caused by ground artificialisation.
The climate crisis is also social as thermal discomfort and its health impact hits first the most fragile population (elderly, fragile health, low socio-economic categories, isolated people...), in the most deprived areas, and increases inequalities.
The policy background
In order to address these, MEL signed the EU Mission 'Adaptation to Climate Change' Charter. It is also applying the Regional Scheme of Sustainable Development and Territorial Equality Land Planning (SRADDET 2020) of Hauts-de-France Region (promotion of adaptation to climate change through the development of natural spaces in urban areas), the Low-carbon national strategy (SNBC-2) as well as Climate change adaptation national plan (PNACC-2). Through the implementation of the 2020 Biodiversity plan, it also addresses a ‘zero net artificialisation’ objective.
At the local level, the pressure to act and adapt the territory took the form in 2021 of the MEL Climate-Air-Energy Territorial Plan (PCAET). In particular, priority 8 seeks to “adapt the territory to climate change”, with a focus on the collaboration with local municipalities (action 37) and on the support of behaviour change (action 38). Other policy objectives focus on better managing water through permeabilisation work and renaturation.
Taking into account the specificity of summer, with days getting longer and hotter, at the same time as the usage of the urban spaces being disrupted (e.g. closure of some public infrastructure such as schools), action 28 of the PCAET stresses the need to use a “time-based policy to mitigate the impact of human activity on climate”.
Time-based urbanism in a nutshell
Time-based policy therefore emerged from the pression and need to adapt as well as to achieve carbon neutrality, in parallel of the PCAET in 2021. Time-based urbanism was detailed in a previous article. In a nutshell, this approach, which is at the core of Time2Adapt, focuses on a better use of what already exists. Therefore, regenerating urban spaces by intensifying the way they are used, and this through 3 main axes:
- better distributing activity over time to reduce peak hour urban congestion;
- optimising service times and therefore intensifying their uses; and,
- optimising spaces by diversifying and intensifying their uses.
Several projects have already been implemented by MEL to experiment item-based solutions: optimisation of the opening hours of public libraries (‘Rythm my library’), a map of cool places in the metropolis, and optimisation of outdoor spaces (‘Free courtyard, free garden’, allowing residents to access schoolyards and gardens not usually accessible during hot summer). This was in turn supported by a series of awareness-raising activities to elected representatives, civil servants and the general public (e.g. ‘What if we Meddled about the time?’ - to present temporal policies, ‘What if we Meddled about the night?’ - to question the night and the adaptation of public policies to this particular time of the day, ‘What if we Meddled about the summer?’ - to question summer and the adaptation of public policies to this particular season).
These actions go hand in hand with other local actions related to climate adaptation such as the greening of schoolyard. In Lille, as part of the Lille Climate Plan, all the 79 public schools have been, since 2021 – at least up to one third - greened and concrete removed to create fresh islands). In Loos, located in the MEL territory of the ‘water guardians’, there is a strong focus on improving water management.
The details of the project
Time2Adapt has identified three main objectives:
- To reinforce the offer of cool and safe places using the time-based approach
- To allow the population to take ownership of cool places
- To test new management methods for public facilities
Its actions, past and future activities are summarised in the figure below and detailed in the remainder of this section.
Objective 1: To reinforce the offer of cool and safe places using the time-based approach
Action 1
The first Action of Time2Adapt is to intensify existing use of cool places such as swimming pools, parks, cemeteries, sports halls, cultural facilities by changing their opening time to allow them to be used by more people. A collaborative work will define, for the designated cool places, timetables adapted to the needs and desires of the population, while being attentive to the consequences on the lives of employees. The project will then implement the new opening schedules.
Past activities (2024-2025)
The following activities were already carried out:
- an inventory of:
- the offer of existing cool places (parks, gardens, cultural equipment, etc.),
- places with a cooling or opening potential, whose initial use can be adapted to transform them into cool places or make them accessible to the population, whether they are accessible to the public or not.
- update of page centralising the opening hours of all the swimming pools in the MEL
- a selection of pilot sites for experimentations via:
- a citizen diagnosis via Mobile stands, urban walks, workshops and seven online surveys
- a physical diagnosis of the heat and cool islands in MEL
Future activities (2025-2027)
Experimentations will take place on new opening hours, which will not necessarily be increased, but adapted in the six pilot sites of Lille (at the “Plein Sud” swimming pool, Lille South Cemetery, Lille East Cemetery, Palais des Beaux-Arts’ atrium) and of Loos (at the Neptunia swimming pool, Clemenceau park and Loos Public Park).
Action 2
The second action is to transform places with single types of use into multi-use places depending on the day, week or season’s time (chronotopy). Instead of one type of user, there will be multiple audiences for the cool places depending on time.
Past activities (2024-2025)
The renovation of two schoolyards (Michelet and Perrault schools) with green solutions was launched in Loos.
Future activities (2025-2027)
The yard of the Hugo-Sévigné Sorlin school, in Loos, will be renovated. Small-scale works to improve cooling potential of existing cool spots, such as small works to facilitate access, light equipment, visibility and signage of accesses, will be implemented in up to seven pilot sites in Lille (in the Palais des Beaux-Arts garden, in the médiathèque Jean Lévy’s garden, in the Pouponnière garden, at the Arsenal square) and in Loos (as playful paths on Danel street and Fileuse square, and in Clemenceau park).
Action 3
The third action is to diversify the usage of cool places, which already exist and can have another function and address the needs of other users.
Past activities (2024-2025)
Four schoolyards were opened to the public during the summer 2024: in Lille, Ariane Capon and Berthelot schools from Wednesday to Friday (18h30-20h) and Saturday and Sunday (from 15h to 20h) and in Loos, Voltaire and Sand-Daudet - which was renovated in 2024 – schools – every weekend from 15h30 to 19h30.
Future activities (2025-2027)
The usage of seven pilot sites will be intensified, in Lille (Jean Bart and Arian Capon schools and the Pouponnière garden) and in Loos (Sand-Daudet, Perrault, Michelet and la Fontaine schools).
Action 4
The fourth action is to provide temporary outdoor facilities and furniture in public spaces in summer and warm periods and to identify access to cool places with an artistic signage meaningful to the population. Furniture, artistic installations, signage will prefigure fresh frames and bring comfort to the city. Participatory projects and artist residencies will allow to imagine, develop, build and set up these pieces of furniture and artist installations.
Past activities (2024-2025)
Temporary urban furniture was co-designed, co-created and installed in the Jardin de la Maison Folie Moulins.
Future activities (2025-2027)
Temporary infrastructure will be co-designed and co-constructed in five pilot sites of Lille ( Olieux garden, square de l’Arsenal, Lawn of the Children of Paradise) and Loos (Clemenceau Park and Danel Park).
Artistic installations will be co-created and installed in the three pilot sites of Lille (Footbridge to Jardin des Plantes, Pointe Carolus) and Loos (in Danel Park).
Objective 2: To allow the population to take ownership of cool places
Places will be transformed and used through individual or collective appropriation processes, thanks to the involvement of inhabitants and public services in a design process based on dialogues, co-conception and evaluation of the time-based transformations. This inclusive participatory process will guarantee that the transformations meet the population’s needs and that the physical changes are adopted and respected.
Past activities (2024-2025)
Residents have been involved in the above-mentioned citizen diagnosis (as part of Action1) as well as in the co-creation of temporary infrastructure in the Jardin de la Maison Folie Moulins (Action 4).
Future activities (2025-2027)
Residents will co-create and co-implement the temporary infrastructure and artistic installations (Action 4), together with an evaluation of the various actions with them.
Objective 3: To test new management methods for public facilities
Public facilities will require traditional but necessary actions (urban and landscape planning with natural approaches - shade, ventilation, vegetation; adapted signage,...), to open more or better. In addition, such a change may have consequences on the staff working practices/organisation and on the running costs, especially in a context of climate and energy crisis. Whilst respecting regulations, new management methods considering constraints will be proposed. To support this, a dialogue with facility workers and managers will be organised and their awareness on time-based approaches – risen.
Past activities (2024-2025)
Cities evaluated the schoolyards to be open and asked questions to users. On this basis, they chose the details of the schoolyards to be open, as well as opening times and HR procedures.
Future activities (2025-2027)
The experimentations will identify the impact of the change of opening hours of given sites on working conditions: a methodology will be developed to engage with facility workers and managers and workshops will be organised on the preselected sites.
Methodology
The project is divided in two phases:
- experimentation phase in living areas in the two partner cities of Lille and Loos, and,
- deepening phase: testing of solutions across other MEL cities.
During the first phase, the three above-mentioned objectives will be implemented. As a result, the project will deliver a toolbox with prototype methodologies. During the second phase, a call for voluntary cities from MEL will be made to further test, implement and improve the solutions, which will in turn improve the toolbox. In parallel, three other cities (Dresden – DE, Middleburg – NL and Barcelona Metropolitan Area – ES) will transfer key elements of the project, testing and applying the toolbox. The toolbox will then be finalised and made available to any other interested city.
Who are the partners and why joining such a project?
Time2Adapt is composed of 8 complementary partners:
- Public authorities which ensure to carry out time-based urban transformations on their territory to regenerate urban spaces and offer more fresh places: MEL is the coordinator (association of local authorities), the cities of Lille and Loos experiment the first solutions;
- Experts in co-creation and participation who co-create temporary street installation and artistic creations: SEED (NGO specialised in participatory urbanism through co-creation) and Groupe A (cultural cooperative gathering curators and artists);
- Experts in urban planning and environment who analyse the area, the needs and wishes of the population: Ecologie Urbaine et Citoyenne (urban planning agency in ecology and collective intelligence);
- Experts in change management who design with the cities' workers new public services built on time-based urbanism for the co-conception of new opening schedules: ARACT (Regional Agency for the Working Conditions Improvement);and,
- Experts in climate who provide technical support through scientific methodologies: CEREMA (National Agency in the Adaptation to Climate Change).
These partners feel deeply concerned by the main issues at stake in the project, as they expressed during a word cloud on 29 August 2024 and presented in the figure below.
These are some of the reasons the partners decided to join the project but more than anything else, they wish to use their skills and resources to implement an innovative project in the MEL territory:
- To implement, on a large scale, several actions present in the roadmap of the Time Office (MEL);
- The share their expertise of installing works in public spaces and this in close connection with users and/or residents (GroupeA);
- To put in place an efficient work organisation (ARACT);
- To link collective intelligence at all scales of the project and resilience of the territory by using soft action levers (with little development) and (EUC);
- To use public spaces and train residents in other uses of schoolyards (Loos); and,
- To strengthen their own expertise (Cerema).
By taking part in concrete experiments, the partners hope to provide new answers to local and complex challenges related to sustainable urban development. It is indeed an opportunity to give greater scope to projects already initiated or thought about. By evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions, they will be able to promote the replication of the experiments carried out. By giving visibility to the benefits, it will be easier to then bring them to other projects. This will contribute, the partners also hope, to a form of "advocacy".
What difference will Time2Adapt make?
Even though we are only at the beginning of the project, the partners expect many potential impacts of the project.
Impact 1: Developing a real sense of place through co-creation while addressing local needs
The project will demonstrate the challenge of involving the population in the dynamics of change, for the emergence of projects, and the search for and implementation of solutions. It will seek to increase consultation and participation, in a deeply cooperative sense, in public policies both at the decision-making level and at the level of their applications. As a results, places will be owned by residents and users, and social interactions will be expanded. For all involved stakeholders, it will require a change in points of view.
Impact 2: Developing easy applicable solutions to just climate change adaptation
The project will ensure climate justice with a better focus and inclusion of vulnerable publics. It will demonstrate the added value of ‘simple’ and concrete actions (the temporal approach requires fewer developments and heavy investments), contributing to the adaptation to climate change, essentially based on changes in the use of urban space. Fresh places will become available as refuges, with a change of uses.
Impact 3: Developing more effective territorial governance
The project will serve as a catalyst for other initiatives common to the municipalities of the MEL. It will convince the departments of the MEL that the time-based approach can bring value to their own field of expertise. It will also stress the need to work horizontally and get the involvement of all relevant stakeholders.
The project will also provide technical support and financial participation for all communities that would like to engage in such a project.
Impact 4: Better use of resources and limiting land artificialisation
The time-based approach focuses on an efficient use of resources. For example, it is more efficient to use an already existing building, which could be more versatile and better used rather than creating a new one. This approach puts users and uses at the heart. As such, it will save equipment and resources, including land with an intensification of uses. It will, in turn, create better and more resilient neighbourhoods.
Impact 5: Better neighbourhoods
Throughout the implemented solutions, the entire neighbourhoods will be modified: they will become more resilient. The living environment and comfort will be improved, as well as security. It would, eventually, and ambitiously, enable re-enchanting everyday life.
What are the foreseen main challenges?
The first meetings with the project also identified the following potential challenges.
A complex project (governance)
Time2Adapt is composed of many individual activities which will implement its three objectives. It will be challenging to successfully integrate all dimensions of the project and not to lost sight of the ‘time’ dimension’. A strong coordination (beyond pure work package management) will need to be implemented, for each find their place but also where it is possible to capitalize on each other’s expertise.
Political and civil servant mindset
Overall, the time-based approach is disruptive and requires the wish to try and experiment. Which in turn requires a change of mindset and adaptation. Not all will be willing to go in this direction. Also, municipal elections of 2026 might change the support of partner cities of both phases 1 and 2 to the project.
In addition, an additional layer of difficulty can arise as 3 local authorities have to work together and rely on the technical/operational expertise of many different departments, different for each activity. The process then can become very long to 1) identify who needs to be onboard, have a say or only informed; and 2)bring everyone identified on board and make sure that all are convinced enough by the project to put the necessary resources on the project (HR and financial) for a project they were not necessarily involved with from the beginning.
Communicating for co-everything
Reaching out to the final users, and specifically the most vulnerable ones (the main target of the project) has been challenging in the first summer, mostly because of timing (to launch the project and get partners mobilised, as well as political timing for decisions and actions). Resources are also scarce for the city of Loos to ensure proper reach out. Yet, once the beneficiaries were reached out, co-creation (of the diagnosis, of furniture, etc.) was successful. It will be crucial to generate interest without giving to much hope, while proposing concrete/immediately visible solutions for residents. The project will then test whether these activities enable the residents to appropriate the space.
Need for innovative and adaptive funding
As the project's approach is participative, the budget and projected works in each pre-identified site were only estimates. Co-design and participative approaches imply the budget to be flexible so it can be adapted to the results of the participative process.
Partners are aware that they will have to make tough decisions to remain within budget. In addition, the artistic installation is challenging as the foreseen budget will not enable covering for all the costs. Other forms of funding such as private sponsorship are currently envisaged.
Experimenting within a strict legal framework
Opening hours and working conditions are strictly bound to a protective legal framework, equipment and public spaces are strictly regulated. In order to integrate flexibility in the opening schedules of public infrastructure in the summer, partners will need to be agile to respect workers’ rights and find new approaches.
Decaying local infrastructure
MEL is losing its swimming pools which are aging and getting closed one after the other: the experiments on opening hours have had to expand their original scope to be tested in the remaining swimming pools, but also in other places such as cemeteries and parks.
A challenging transfer to very different cities
At the heart of Time2Adapt is its transfer to three transfer partners, Dresden (Germany), Middleburg (Netherlands) and Barcelona Metropolitan Area (Spain). The French legislative context is specific. Yet, transfer partners will provide expertise on their local legislation to help design methodologies with features valid in any context. Also, the financial solutions identified may not be available in other countries: these will be only a few of the proposed transformative solutions.
Similarly to the local level of MEL, the mindsets of policymakers and of civil servants could prevent the spread of the temporal solution. Envisaged solutions are to produce educational and demonstrative material on the solutions, their benefits for citizens and how to implement them, leading by example.
Is it time to adapt?
The first chapter of the Urban Diary is finished! In the following chapters, through the implementation of the project, we will specifically look at the experimentations’ learnings and takeaways which will make Time2Adapt’s experience as useful as possible for other cities!
I would like to thank all the partners who helped me to try and grasp the Time2Adapt project, notably through the first experimentations of summer 2024: François Lescaux, Emeline Guillaume, Ophélie Tainguy, Isabelle Bricout, Elisabeth Lopez (MEL), Marianne Nieuwjaer (Lille)Constance Dauvillez (Loos), Pascal Marquilly (GroupeA), Nicolas Vispi (ARACT), Raoul Robert (SEED), Corentin Ryckelinck et Céline Hebrard (CEREMA), et Gabrielle Carpel (EUC).
About this resource
The European Urban Initiative is an essential tool of the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy for the 2021-2027 programming period. The initiative established by the European Union supports cities of all sizes, to build their capacity and knowledge, to support innovation and develop transferable and scalable innovative solutions to urban challenges of EU relevance.
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