by Valentin Schipfer
Together with die raumplaner Inpolis will introduce a concept to continue the shopping street management for Potsdam’s historic city center and for Babelsberg. After having conducted several stakeholder interviews, Inpolis is in the phase of research and analysis right now. I want to present some impressions on Potsdam’s shopping area and thoughts on a retail center management in this entry. Continue reading
"Energiestadt Flawil - We are sustainable"
by Hans Pul
Energiestadt Flawil, Energiestadt Bern, Energiestadt Zürich: Greenwashing or is there substance behind these claims? This blogpost introduces the Energiestadt label (“energy city”), a Swiss label certificated by an organisation with the same name. The organisation is occupied with the certification and support of municipality energy policies. After fulfilling certain criteria, a city is allowed to communicate itself as Energiestadt (i.e. “Energiestadt Flawil”). This makes visible the efforts and successes of a municipality’s energy policy.
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Cover of the book "Urban Interventions - Personal projects of public space".
by Valentin Schipfer
I’d say no. There even exists a specific blog – where I found most of my inspiration for this entry – and a recently published book on this type of urban interventions. They are taking place in almost every city of the planet. Here I want to depict just a small selection of projects. All of them have something in common: They try to revitalize distressed or vacant places. At first I want to describe my latest, personal pop-up experience in Berlin – thanks to the Siberian high Dieter. Continue reading
SWOT analysis according to wikipedia
by Ares Kalandides
I am sure most of us have already used some kind or other of a SWOT model to analyse something. In my business it is often used as an analytical tool to understand “places”, where they stand and what should be developed, but also to foresee possible changes. The people who pay us to do the job love SWOTs: they are clear, schematic, straightforward, unambiguous. But social reality is rarely any of the above. I would like to share with you my thoughts, after having used SWOT analysis for many years, and I would love to hear yours. Continue reading
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Screenshot from urbaninform.net
by Valentin Schipfer
Having introduced a blog on Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in my last post, I’ll present another new web-tool which serves as a communication channel for places, namely UrbanInform.net. It gives a voice to social investments in urban informal settlements.
by Renard Teipelke
In my first article on cultural flagship projects*, I tried to conceptualize the topic. Now, I will connect the flagship idea ‘Western style’ with the Middle Eastern North African (MENA) region. My last article will deal with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt based on a case study conducted during a field trip this month (tbc due to the currently unstable and tense situation).
by Hans Pul
Especially since the Place Branding Conference of last month, the concepts competition and cooperation have been the theme of some recent posts on this blog*. In this post I will follow-up on this topic and discuss some aspects of the Holland Art Cities project (2009-2010). This project was a cooperation between 10 museums in 4 Dutch cities, aimed at attracting foreign visitors. Holland Art Cities was initiated and organised by the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC).
I will finish this post arguing that cooperation can be seen as a strategy within a competitive context.
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by Valentin Schipfer
Since Brazil and especially its cidade maravilhosa Rio de Janeiro have become the second half of my soul (and my master thesis) some years ago, I’ve been keeping an eye on its urban development. Lately a new Brazilian blog has caught my attention. I am convinced of its socially innovative content as a best practice example for social place branding. It is about the Unidade de Polícia Pacifacadora, abbreviated UPP – the Pacifying Police Unit of Rio de Janeiro. A new type of police which literally pacifies gang-controlled favelas in long-term mediation processes. Continue reading
by Hans Pul
Although it is still freezing (at least here in Berlin), it is the time of the year for starting planning and planting this year’s vegetables. Around this time of the year, you can start planting carrots, spinach, lettuce, and radish. Depending on the location of your gardening efforts, this can contribute to the livability of your neighbourhood. Especially relevant in municipalities struggling with shrinking budgets, more and more residents make efforts to greenify, beautify and diversify public space through gardening. Not only can urban gardening contribute to city quality, it’s also a lot of fun. As an unexpected intervention in urban space, guerilla gardening surprises and triggers reactions from the public. The video above nicely captures that.
In this blogpost I will present some examples of urban gardening in Berlin that contribute to urban quality.
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by Ares Kalandides
Though I have more or less abandoned research on the issue of the Creative City, I am still often invited to participate in discussions or seminars on the subject. It is rarely satisfactory, as I find that we are recycling our knowledge of the past decade without any important progress – of course with the occasional exception. One of these exceptions was the two-part seminar on the “Villes des créateurs”, the first in Lausanne in October, the second in Lyon in January, organized by POPSU Europe, an applied research programme of the French Ministry of Environment, Sustainable Development, Housing and Transportation. One of the characteristics of the francophone context, is that it has its own intellectual traditions and this way it often offers insights that are not totally dominated by the Anglophone hegemonic discourse. Using this seminar as an excuse, I would like to gather my thoughts here and explain why I am tired of the subject, but also why I think that we still have some chances of finding seeds for fertile approaches: Continue reading
