Space is at a premium: so often it seems other drivers take precedence over people- and planet-centred values. How can design help?
This panel is for insights and inspiration into creating the homes and neighbourhoods we want to inhabit.
This should start with you and I: as residents, citizens and custodians of our built and lived environments, and the users of services and infrastructures. But how do we (as ‘users’, or designers, of place) get a sense of agency and control? The seeming complexity of development projects and the divergence of interests between stakeholders and 'the public' makes it challenging to create places that work for everyone.
Design needs to activate better, fairer and more sustainable models of housing and living, here are some examples:
Participatory Cities is building the largest prototype of its kind: building new networks of friendships, ideas and activities. Find out more about the Every One Every Day initiative, launched in 2017 and which has been growing a Participatory Ecosystem, where neighbours and local organisations cook, grow, learn, make, recycle, play and build together. Nina Timmers, Co-Production Lab Director, will share highlights, and also talk about the programme Tomorrow Today Streets.
Bristol Housing Festival is re-imagining better ways to live in our cities. Join Jez Sweetland, Project Director, to see how this five-year project is taking on the national housing crisis, climate and sustainability issues, and supporting communities. Significantly, the festival brings together what might seem quite separate worlds: hosting conversations between local authorities, government and suppliers, acting as incubator and piloting scheme, creating conditions to prototype new ideas and making it safe to ‘go first’.
Learn from Liam Dargan: who before becoming Service Designer at the Connected Places Catapult, launched the award-winning project Heart of Darwen, an initiative which turned the demolition of one the town’s markets into an opportunity for idea generation, collaboration and debate around the future of the town centre and market.
Our chair is Payal Wadhwa, Service Design Principal at Idean and Co-founder of PlaceLabs, cross-pollinating perspectives on placemaking, better cities and public spaces.
