Envisioning Neighbourhoods and Co-Creating Thriving Communities in the 15mC

ENACT15mC will (re)imagine urban public spaces and streets to make them more walkable, cyclable, and pleasant to spend time in. We will engage residents coming from diverse backgrounds and ability, property owners and local municipalities in thematically distinct urban living labs (ULLs) to co-create ideas for street and neighbourhood transformations. The living labs will address spatial and functional issues that currently challenge walkability in Trondheim, Gdansk, Valencia and Oxford. These cases each have different cultural, climatic and geographic contexts that design thinking must respond to. Iterative design processes through the living labs will be supported by novel Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies. Visualising technologies will be made available to the public, along streets, in public spaces and during co-creation workshops. We aim to break down barriers with coaching and to compare use of these tools alongside others, including tactical urbanism, mapping and physical modelling. These comparisons will lead to new knowledge around co-creation processes. Enact 15mC will develop, contextualise and test methods for (re)distributing street space in favour of sustainable mobility options and the social dimension of streets and places. This will lead to new knowledge about walkable and attractive places in European contexts. Knowledge specific to each of the four consortium cities will be made available to policymakers, property owners and the public. Guidelines based on the experiences of all four living labs will be presented as guidelines on designing for walkability and active transport, urban co-creation processes and the use of technologies and other tools in public engagement. The ENACT 15mC project will therefore make a critical contribution to debates and understanding on the 15mC and its contribution to urban transitions for sustainable cities.