19-10-2020 // FOLLOW-UP PROPOSAL

SHARABLE 

The city of Eindhoven is growing and has ambitions to transform the Brainport area into an internationally interesting junction with its unique TDK profile. TDK stands for Tech, Design, and Knowledge; a rare combination of core qualities that form the specific skillset of the city. It comes naturally that the area within the central ring of the city evolves with these ambitions. There are a lot of areas in (re)development and the Emmasingelkwadrant is one of them and the municipality drew up a vision document with guidelines for the future of the neighborhood. The most drastic change in the plans is the creation of a central park in the area.  

 

However, there is one big obstacle. When the Philips company left the terrain, most of the ground was sold to real estate developers while the municipality took a much smaller piece of the pie. Nonetheless, the developers still have to follow the vision document from the municipality. Therefore, the involved parties are still negotiating about the permits and developments while they have been doing so for years already.  

 

According to research conducted by NUL ZES, a social design bureau from Eindhoven, the park should become a park to the city and a garden for the neighborhood.  

 

As a result, the area looks and feels neglected. It is home to both newly built buildings and the ruins of older buildings and offers a contrasting view. Especially the public space is a sad mixture of parking lots, an empty square, and a dry field. According to research conducted by NUL ZES, a social design bureau from Eindhoven, the park should become a park to the city and a garden for the neighborhood. The municipality expects that the park will positively transform the complete living experience of the public space in the area. However, in the meantime, the area looks bad and attracts people that cause nuisance for the local residents which have become impatient by the long run-up towards the planned developments.  

 

It is time to do something. In the run-up to the planned development projects, the municipality wants to make the stakeholders excited for future plans. By sparking co-creation we can envision different use of the public space even before it looks welcoming. At this moment, the space is not being used and it offers a lot of opportunities. Moreover, by bringing BOB (inhabitants, entrepreneurs, and others concerned) together, we can take a first step in the creation of a neighborhood community.  

 

WHY 

Because the stakeholders should be able to enjoy the public space in the Emmasingelkwadrant. 

 

HOW 

By involving stakeholders in the process of the creation of their local public space in the run-up to the development projects. 

 

WHAT 

We get insight into the involved stakeholders, bring them together, connect to existing initiatives, and create new initiatives.  

Together we take the first steps into the creation of the public space in the Emmasingelkwadrant and the neighborhood community.  

FOLLOW-UP

As you can read in our logbook (12-10-2020), we changed our challenge. The current challenge we formulated is as follows: How can we improve the general living experience in the public space of the Emmasingelkwadrant in the run-up to the development projects? We clarified our temporarily work approach, that we have converted to the challenge the challenge: 

The underlying thought about our challenge is: How to get people excited about the future of the neighborhood in the run-up to the start of the planned development projects, with the aim of setting up a lively neighborhood community in a sustainable form? In order to find out the ‘real’ challenge behind the challenge,  we will become involved inside the neighborhood. We will observe and talk to the ones involved, mostly in an orienting and appreciative way without prejudgements. By talking and interviewing multiple members, experts in the field, and surrounding stakeholders, we will be able to get to the bottom of the problem. It is clear from our challenge that the general living experience has to be improved but to do so, it is important to know what is it that has to be improved? So questions we could ask ourselves: Who are the (important) stakeholders in this area, what are their needs & values, and how to create a positive buzz in the neighborhood in collaboration with them? Our role will mainly concern the direction and facilitation of the process and not really the execution of specific organizational tasks. This means that we have to ask ourselves how we can bring the stakeholders together while being a leading ambassador of the creation of a positive buzz in the neighborhood? We will aim our energy at finding out what it is the stakeholders want and need and how we can unite them in order to spark initiative rather than being on the frontline of the organization of events. Throughout the project, while facilitating the project, we would jointly look at how the neighborhood community can continue to exist after we leave the project.

CONNECTION TO COMMUNITY DESIGN AND TSI

Transformative Social Innovation is a rather broad term to define. In the working paper, 'Towards a TSI theory: a relational framework and 12 propositions' by TRANSIT (2017), a brief but clear definition is given of Transformative Social Innovation. ‘We frame the theoretical challenge of explaining transformative social innovation (TSI), which we define as the process of challenging, altering, or replacing the dominance of existing institutions in a specific social and material context. SI initiatives and networks are understood as the key collective actors that instigate TSI processes’’ (Haxeltine, Pel, Dumitru, Avelino, Kemp, Bauler, Kunze, Dorland, Wittmayer and Søgaard Jørgensen, 2017).

More and more we discover that society is changing. This ongoing transformation cannot be stopped and will even accelerate in the upcoming years. These changes are hardly influenced by traditional systems. As just said, TSI is about the process of challenging, altering or replacing the dominance of existing institutions in a specific social and material context. But what is the existing institution in our project? What we know so far is that no one takes responsibility and ownership over this area. At the moment, this area is in a bridging period; the neighborhood knows that buildings will be demolished and a new park will be built, but these developments are not yet happening. Various stakeholders are involved, but it seems no one steps forward to improve the living experience in this area. It is a complex situation; the municipality sees the need to improve this area but is not the owner of this area. The owner does not seem to see the need of improving this area, because he knows that in around a year the constructions will start. There are some ideas and initiatives going on, but it seems like they are not acting as a whole*. 

*This is what we heard from our supervisors and other voices within the municipality, but we will be critical whether this is actually the case/truth. 

This is where Community Design can come in. Communities can arise around any topic, where more people feel the need to link to that topic with others and are willing to take responsibility together. What role can community designers like us play in this situation? We think it is important to interact with the existing and new networks, to map the stakeholders and their involvement in this area, their willingness to improve the living experience of this area, and facilitate the processes around this. Communities create structure, and that is what is missing now. Community Design is about creating value by bringing stakeholders together and facilitating the process of co-creation to solve complex problems in an innovative way and create movements. That is in our opinion of great importance at this point in the process.

PROJECT ESTIMATION

As mentioned in our first proposal, Amber wants to do this project as a big and small project and Jesse wants to do this project as a big project. Now that we have formulated the challenge together with our clients, we can better estimate the extent to which it is possible to do it as a small and big project. We first looked at the client's demand to estimate how much time it will take us. The client's question is actually focused on a community that is not (yet) there. We are involved in the process of building a sustainable community. It will take a lot of time to map out all the needs and values ​​of the neighborhood. We will spend time in the neighborhood, talk to stakeholders and experts, find best practices, and organize sessions, and built together. Due to this taking a lot of time and the possibility to meet all the competencies for a small and big project, this will be a small and big project.

REFERENCES

Haxeltine, A., Pel, B., Dumitru, A., Avelino, F., Kemp, R., Bauler, T., Kunze, I., Dorland, J., Wittmayer, J. and Søgaard Jørgensen, M. (2017). Towards a TSI theory: a relational framework and 12 propositions. Retrieved from http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/286a%20TRANSIT_WorkingPaper_TowardsTSItheory%20AH161217.pdf