Overview of ACUTE & Polis Network workshops - Connecting practitioners' expectations from research

ACUTE/UERA workshops : Connect with practitioners' aspirations from research 

Polis x ACUTE workshop in Leuven

We held two workshops in partnership with Polis Network gathering european cities and regions cooperating for innovative urban and transport solutions. 20 participants attended to the two workshops and they represented 8 various European cities.  

The first one took place in Leuven and was a focus group with as an introduction an experience from a city implementing the concept of 15-min City.   

The narrated experience from Aarhus (Denmark) points out the difficulty to bring services to everyone in 15-min, in particular in areas other than city centers. Aarhus counts 360.000 inhabitants of which 100.000 live in the city center. The practitioner  underlined the necessity to change mobility habits and wondered about the social acceptability of policies that the implementation of 15-min city concept would bring. Among  policies in the implementation of the concept, the practitioner indicates the development of multimodal hubs in order to encourage modal shifts and inclusive urban designs taking into account disabled, reduced mobility and gender perspectives. The solution shared by the practitioner would be to develop co-creative tools for the planning process.  

Several questions were addressed during this workshop:  

• What Research should start/stop/continue doing to contribute the concept's operationalization ? 
• To whom the 15-min cities ? 
• Who lives now and will live in the future in the 15-min cities
• Which problems the concept tackles ? 

What Research should start/stop/continue doing to contribute the concept's operationalization?  

 Participants highlighted that people are still very doubtful towards the concepts. They reminded Oxford's events and the statements of the former English prime minister. The main challenge of Research is to contribute on the storytelling around the concept of 15-min cities by bring into the spotlight more positive cases. Communicating effectively and involving people in the planning process in a 15-min city is essential to this storytelling and to the self-projections in the other travel modes uses. Furthermore, 15-min cities should be thought from gender, disability and reduced mobility perspectives to make them more inclusive. 

Participants shed light on the communication aspect of 15-minute cities: how to deconstruct the misconceptions around the concept? They expressed that research should support the communication around the concept. To this effect, participants pointed out that research should stop "replicating spatial analysis" and "turning people into standard personas and needs".

Polis x ACUTE workshop in Utrecht

7 practitioners from different cities ( Utrecht, Stuttgart, Cork, Turkü, Lyon, Brussels) attended to the event. The aim of this workshop  was to hear experiences of 15-min City and  to identify opportunities and obstacles to implementing 15-Min City. To explore this second goal we used the methodology of the lego serious play with diverse questions around the concept.

A three part workshop :  

Workshop – Part I : Building the components of a city of proximity model – 25 min The participants individually build components that they see as part of a city of proximity using Lego models.  

• 10 minutes were dedicated to individual construction. Participants share their stories and give meaning to the model they have built. 

 This time is followed by a pitch time, answering this question : How is this component essential for a city of proximity?  

Workshop Part II : Creating a story: Sharing/exchanging – 25 min Assembling and creating a City of proximity together / 

 Following the city of proximity components built by each participant, participants collectively created a city of proximity answering these different questions :  

 How can these components come together and be implemented in our cities? 

 Which components should be prioritized? Are there any missing? What goals can these components help reach?  

Workshop part III : Discussion 

This part was meant to disassemble the model and free exchanges about the city of proximity constructions.  

Main outcomes :  

This workshop showed different stages of implementation of the concept and different preoccupations related to. For cities at latter stage of implementation 15-min City's business model question popped out. For cities at the earlier stage, the communication aspect of the concept and how-to positively impact mobility habits remains the principal questions.  

During the discussion, a highlight in the importance of involving citizens at different steps and building the right communication emerged as the question to diversify the profile of citizens taking part of urban decisions.