3 visual templates for placemaking
As a placemaker, you are constantly faced with the challenge of creating vibrant, livable spaces that meet the needs of the people who use them
One way to do this …
Participation methods
Articles and visual tools to better frame and support citizen involvement and participatory processes in urban planning
Making the city together: who should participate?
As we saw in this article, public participation is not for everyone, as it often attracts the same profiles again and again, and fails at involving people whose voice is heard the least. Is it possible to escape this recurring pattern? Should everyone really participate? Who is everyone, at the end of the day? In …
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Quick wins: why you should start with the low hanging fruits
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were in the middle of talking to someone and you suddenly felt an urge to use the restrooms? Do you remember having troubles to follow the conversation perhaps? And you focus on your bladder instead? Well, this is kind of what happens at the start …
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Is public participation for everyone?
There is a growing recognition that the making of the city should not be reserved to the experts only. After decades of exclusion, residents and users of the city finally start to be more and more involved. However, the involvement of different stakeholders in urban planning and design brings its very own share of questions. …
The wheel of public participation
In recent years, we have observed a growing number of participatory democratic mechanisms in cities. Participatory budgets, consultation workshops, or citizen committees are different approaches that all aim to involve citizens in the making of the city. Even the political programmes during the last French municipal elections demonstrated a growing concern around “citizen participation”. However, …
Making the city together: what is it all about?
In the traditional practices of urbanism, the power has always been held by the same actors. The making of the city has long been a closed technical and political discipline reserved to “experts” only. Excluded from this process, citizens were unable to voice their points of view and visions in an official way. Participatory practices …
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50 shades of urbanism
Tactical urbanism, new urbanism, sustainable urbanism, circular urbanism, DIY urbanism, collaborative urbanism, landscape urbanism, re-urbanism… There are a thousand urbanisms! What lies behind these -ism names? And what is urbanism, at the end of the day? Cities offer a lot of opportunities, but they also concentrate many environmental, societal and economic challenges. Since the age …