Trust-making is an active and applicable response to challenges emerged through the pandemic. This project proposal enhances established Placemaking practices and aims at fostering confidence of youth to co-create urban spaces through creatively working in and with green infrastructures in four European cities. Establishing a trustful basis is key for well-informed, intergenerational and cross-sector collaboration with city governments, entrepreneurs and civil society organizations (CSOs) in the course of urban transformation processes. Strategies for trust-building encourage and empower the most needed level of competence, therefore, the project explores the relationship between trust creating principles and urban spaces to reveal the best framework for liveable and inclusive neighbourhoods.
The goals of the project are (1) to initiate Urban Living Labs at four different urban sites in Austria, Lithuania, Norway, and The Netherlands, with a focus on youth co-creation, where (2) existing and new tools for youth co-creation of green infrastructure are identified and developed, and (3) crosssection collaboration mechanisms through summer/winter schools are designed, in order to (4) develop guidelines of youth co-design and access of green infrastructures to increase capacities in public service for integrating youth perspectives and their abilities to bridge short-term concerns and long-term objectives in urban transformation processes.
Project funding:
ERA-Net Cofund Urban Transformation Capacities (ENUTC)
Project results:
Expected impacts.
TRUSTMAKING will develop innovation in social cohesion, inhabitant engagement, co-creation and co-design to support liveable, just and inclusive neighbourhoods. Producing research-based knowledge about how to enhance trust-making opens up many possibilities beyond the scope of the project, providing an essential roadmap forward for local governments to not only provide for, but engage their citizens in the project of democracy. Inclusive design has been a focus for many years, but its potential to increase trust in institutions is largely unexplored. TRUSTMAKING will concretise the civic value of inclusive design processes, providing a roadmap forward for democratic engagement in urban areas. Within the Urban Living Lab approach research and project output is iteratively tested in practice and leads to other revised outputs and outcomes. The primary output of co-research on trust-making and its application is reflected upon within the Urban Living Labs. Lessons are exchanged within the exchange network. The continuous learning process within the Urban Living Labs results directly to various outcomes: an increase of individual capabilities of youth and of professionals, a change of work and governance culture and a green public domain that fits the needs of all youth. Through the development of the guidelines other indirect outcome are to be expected: solidifying the inclusive and co-creative practice that has been developed in the Urban Living Labs in the case study areas (where guidelines will make explicit the capabilities and ways of working that has been developed and acquired in a partly implicit and unconscious way) as well as the application of the practice in other fields both within the case study areas as in other regions. The expected societal impact of these outcomes will be an improved integration of policy goals, a more inclusive approach to governance, the empowerment of youth, which will all contribute to a more inclusive society.
Period of project implementation: 2022-03-01 - 2025-02-28
Project coordinator: Universitat fur angewandte Kunst Wien
Project partners: UAB Theoria, NABOLAGSHAGER AS, ROMM, TREECYCLE, TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN (TUE)
