Reinventing Neighbourhoods: New Mechanisms for Creating Public Space

This side event will demonstrate how new governance partnerships (local government – civil society) and delivery mechanisms (tactical urbanism instead of traditional urban planning) can quickly and cost effectively create networks of public spaces that can build urban resilience and tackle inequality. Creating networks of accessible, inclusive public space is a cornerstone objective of the New Urban Agenda. They are critical for maintaining the socio-economic function of the city, mitigating urban inequality, improving health and environmental quality. However, too often our approach to implementing public space relies solely on under-resourced local governments as the primary provider (or funder) of such spaces. As a result, most rapidly urbanising cities are struggling to keep up. The event will draw ‘The Neighbourhood Project’ as a case study framework to provide tools and strategies that can be adopted by local governments and communities everywhere, to engage communities in innovative ways to re-imagine their neighbourhoods. Using the People - Process- Place Framework, the Neighbourhood Project unlocks the creative potential of everyday citizens to strengthen public spaces This project is a key action within the Resilient Melbourne strategy. This event is run by award-winning placemaking social enterprise CoDesign Studio, in partnership with Resilient Melbourne (of the 100 Resilient Cities global network). This event is an open invitation to civil society, government, urban practitioners, designers and anyone interested in how community-engaged design can help build better neighbourhoods. Through this side event delegates will: Learn new frameworks for strengthening civil-society government partnerships through the people-process-place paradigm; Hear from globally leading case studies on fast, low-cost approaches to improving public space. Be invited to share their knowledge and experience through the highly participatory format. Come away with new inspiration to resolve new strategies for their city, town or program.