Lively Cities’ aim is to turn misused, underused and/or non-used spaces into new destinations where people choose to spend their time. How? By using new concepts in Europe: placemaking and place management. Instead of a traditional approach, where the design of a public space is imposed to communities and often made according to aesthetic criteria rather than the needs of potential users, the project chooses an approach where communities are questioned about their expectations and requests on defined spaces in order to propose solutions to decisions makers.
Keywords: transnationality & work with communities
8 partners from 4 different countries work together and exchange on common issues together with users, and key stakeholders. Partners share their expertise, experience and knowledge to set up pilot tests, actions of place making and long-term structures of place management that will guarantee the long-term success of public spaces.
4 years, 8 partners, 4 countries,
Lively Cities is a European project cofunded by the INTERREG IVB programme, the Walloon Region, and the partners. The project gathers eight partners from four countries in North West Europe: Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. They have started working transnationally and involving communities in March 2011 and will continue doing so until the end of the project, in December 2014. The partners gather one town centre management, five city councils, one university, two public private partnerships. They will share their expertise during four years. The Belgian Association of Town Centre Management (AMCV) is lead partner of the project.
Project partners have different expertise: public consultation, ecology, culture, music, performing arts, sustainable development and environment, restoration & enhancement of heritage, green landscape, urban renewal, information & communication technologies, design, town centre management, place making, tourism, European projects. All expertises wil be shared in two working teams: empty public spaces and linkage between public spaces.
Partners identified in their own city one or more misused/ underused/ non-used public spaces. Because these public spaces have not been designed for people, potential users don’t use them. LICI’s aim is to transform these empty, damaged public spaces into long-term lively places, new destinations for communities: Urban Lifestyle Point (ULP).
→ Lively Cities is an INTERREG IVB project with a total budget of 3.035.548 € invested in North West Europe to rethink public space and give it back to communities.
