Platform31 knowledge and network organization for the city and region

The cornerstones of placemaking

Placemaking – now “a bit of” buzzword“, explains Slingerland – is the process by which a space becomes a place, the latter being a place that has (more) meaning for people, and where they feel at home. Placemaking is based on three pillars: 1) the physical environment 2) the social connection (with the local community) and 3) the institutional support. These three elements determine the extent to which a place is experienced as a place. But what is placemaking in practice, or what should it be? Important related questions in Slingerland’s research were: What interventions do you use? How do you know it works? how do you know that the placemaking took place? And to what extent can an intervention that has been successfully applied in one place be copied in other places?

Participation

Slingerland quickly had at least one criterion for a good and efficient placement: participation. This fact is also central to participatory design: a concept originating in Scandinavia that Slingerland included in his research. This concept supposes that a living environment improves if the (future) users have an influence on it. Slingerland has developed a framework for participatory placemaking, containing five design principles and four types of activities you can undertake with local actors to arrive at interventions. The five design principles are:

1. Including: Interventions are accessible to many different people. For this it is important to offer different forms of participation: digital and physical, short and long, etc.
2. empowering: people participate according to their own motivation and can, for example, also launch an initiative based on their own ideas.
3. Mischievous: there is an experimental and spontaneous framework and a collaboration in which there is room to make mistakes and learn from each other.
4. Reflection: The intervention should engage people in thinking about their role in the community, for example through conversations about the meaning of a particular placemaking intervention.
5. emerging: the fact that people can pursue their ideas and initiatives themselves, without, for example, an active role of the municipality. The security of resources (also in the longer term) and the transmission of skills to people are important in this respect.

Implementation intervention

Within these five design principles, Slingerland has identified four types of activities to develop a placemaking intervention with others in an area, namely (in no particular order):

• identify key partners and stakeholders;
• connection with the local context;
• collect and analyze data;
• reflect on effects with stakeholders.

The choice of a particular activity or sequence depends on the local situation. For example, if a lot has already been done in an area, it may be a good idea to first think about its effects.

Future residents

Slingerland’s framework for creating participatory places is therefore strongly based on the involvement of the users of the area. But what if they don’t exist yet? For example, how to take into account the interests of the still unknown future buyers of houses to be built in a certain area? Devise methods such as thinking of scenarios, doing role plays or working with the concept of conception-fiction be an answer, advises Slingerland. These types of methods are also used when they involve the perspective of non-human actors, such as nature.

As a municipality, investing in the creation of (participatory) places can also be a conscious and instrumental choice, noted an employee of the municipality of Amersfoort. This speaker: “I also see it in an instrumental way: when you develop a territory, you don’t want messy rooms, for security reasons. Then we are looking for a party that can do something with it, for example urban sports groups. This encourages the clubs of inhabitants who surround it to reflect: it is also possible! We then give them resources and tools, and let them go on their way.

I AM BICK

I AM BICK is a foundation involved in the development of Binckhorst in The Hague. The organization is an open network organization. This means that anyone who feels involved can join in and start drawing a spearhead or activity. More than ten years ago, Sabrina Lindemann, on her own initiative, laid the foundations of I’M BICK† She did this because of her involvement in the territory and her dissatisfaction with the way the development of the territory, but also in general, has been approached over the last decades: “If you decompose a lot, you throw away a lot: itineraries, social ties… And it takes a lot of time and money to seal it again and make it a beautiful place. And I missed the citizen in the development of the region. If the city belongs to everyone, how can citizens play a greater role in this process? Lindemann started by getting in touch with people who lived and worked in the Binckhorst, which meant spending a lot of time in the places they visited (like snack bars and businesses) and talking to them there. . Over the years, these contacts have grown into a community that now has around 2,000 addresses.

Six spearheads

I’M. work with this community BICK with six spearheads:

1. green space (‘Bincks green’)
2. place to walk
3. space for heritage (‘Lieux Binck’)
4. space for residents and entrepreneurs
5. learning room
6. workspace

All spearheads were established on the basis of interviews with residents and entrepreneurs. For example, “space for greenery” was chosen because people who came to live in the Binckhorst indicated that they would miss the greenery. Some interviewees also said that they would like to cross the Binckhorst, but missed a green space to do so. Since the choice of this spearhead, the ideas of the users have been collected and I am BICK worked hard with the various stakeholders (residents, businesses and others) to make the Binckhorst greener – from creating green roofs to planting trees and seeding landscapes with bees.

This gave rise to new collaborations, for example with Urgenda, which provided trees as part of the MeerBomenNu project, and with a school in the region where students made planters. The latter is just one example of the many collaborations with educational institutions. Gert-Joost Peek: “This is how the energy enters I’M BICK not only from the inside, but also from the outside. For example, we also have a partnership with Wageningen University. In response to a question from a participant (“Why am I BICK not in leisure? Lindemann said that I am BICK is mainly active in areas where other organizations are not or less active or where the government neglects to do things.

In addition to specific spearhead activities, I’M organizes BICK various general activities, such as network meetings, guided tours of the region (“To make the value visible: the secret of Binckhorst hides behind the closed facades”), festivals (“To attract people from the center and “the island” Binckhorst plus with the rest of The Hague”) and round tables with residents, businesses, the municipality and project developers.

Success factors

I AM BICK in its early years could use the so-called BEEP municipal budget, money for private initiatives in Binckhorst. The foundation now receives funds from various businesses in the region, among others. Asked about the success factors of I’M BICK, Lindemann and Peek emphasized the importance of working from personal involvement and motivation – from “personal commitment”, not for commercial purposes. Endurance and regularity in activities are also important: “All activities strengthen the network.”

What can others, active in other fields, learn from I’M BICK† Lindemann does not believe in copying, but in a number of general and effective principles, such as “not doing and inventing too many things yourself, but imagining ideas together and putting them back again, being curious: what is important, what are we missing? Then the things you do are urgent for everyone involved.