Innovative Public Participation Practices for Sustainable Urban Regeneration

In Italy, participation is an emerging practice in the urban regeneration processes of public spaces. However, the experiences of the last few years leave some perplexities regarding their effectiveness, suggesting the necessity of codification. The end of urban sprawl led cities into a crisis scenario marking the beginning of the urban regeneration and Zero Land Consumption season. During this phase, the focus shifts from full spaces to empty ones and the existing city becomes the only possible context for intervention. In this scenario, the Urban Strategic Design (USD) tool integrates the enhancement in terms of urban identities attractiveness with the design of a cycle-pedestrian mobility network, leading to public spaces, urban parks and the historic center. This methodology provides to public authorities a support to operate on the settlement with the possibility to foresee scenarios to be shared through an oriented participation process. The USD methodology finds its ultimate validation in the project and the journey of sharing for the city of Parma. The first opportunity was, in 2016, the exhibition of Parma Città Futura (Parma Future City), combined with a participatory process of 10 roundtables with experts on the city's issues. Five years later, in 2021, the initiative Parma città d’oro (Parma golden city) represented a further validation of the experimental model on the city. The update of the urban projects was the basis for a participatory process articulated on two converging levels: the discussion with experts and the involvement of the citizens. The public discussion adopted an innovative tool, the Civil Atlas of Architecture, which represents a census of Parma's historical heritage born from a collective vocation. From this participatory design process emerged the importance of integrating two levels of involvement: a top-down participation with the experts, who offered guiding contributions, and a bottom-up participation with the population.

This chapter presented a participatory design approach for involving children with special needs in public space regeneration. Specifically, this chapter focused on children with neurodevelopmental disabilities who are hyper- or hypo-sensitive to sensory stimuli or have a unique sensory interest. The study aimed to use the participatory design framework to build a sensory-friendly square based on a case in China. The case study area is located in Ningbo city, enclosed by a rehabilitation centre catering to around 300 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The participatory design approach used in this study began with online questionnaires in which parents of ASD children reported information about their child’s preference when visiting the square. Following the online questionnaires, living lab and focus group methods were used to involve children as key informants and design partners. The living lab equipped with virtual reality devices allowed children to experience a ‘real’ regenerated square and the focus group after each living lab session allowed all stakeholders to provide feedback for design iterations. Preliminary results obtained from the online questionnaires were presented, inspiring several design considerations for square regeneration. The sensory experience of children at the square would be supported via designs such as sensory stations. Common techniques for smart environments were selected to build a smarter square. This chapter not only provided regeneration recommendations for current square space in China but also introduced a feasible framework for actively involving children with special needs in the regeneration process.

In most contemporary cities there are often buildings and open spaces, both public and private, which are dismissed, empty, not used, or abandoned for several reasons. These places might be in several different sectors of the city like historical centre, suburban areas, deprived neighborhoods, etc. The rehabilitation and the management of these underused and/or dismissed places (urban commons), through collaborative processes, is a recognised way to catalyse regeneration offering social and cultural services with positive side effects in terms of jobs creation, social inclusion, socio-cultural growth, strengthen of local identities, appropriate management, and maintenance of such places, avoiding urban sprawl. In this framework, public leverage is essential to promote such collaborative processes, and for this reason, it is important to identify and understand the method to follow and find the appropriate and necessary resources. Despite their relevance, these kinds of practices are still experimental, and there is no systematic application because even if local authorities recognise the added value of such collaborative processes, promoting such practices is not easy for many reasons, mainly:

To be able to manage this complexity we must develop regeneration actions, not only through collaborative approaches from the bottom up, capable of making different urban and territorial actors interact but above all also with horizontal actions, capable of making different departments of local authorities in charge for the urban management cooperate, therefore design integrated urban regeneration processes.

In the past two decades, community participation has been increasingly playing a critical role in urban regeneration. It refers to as an important part for the design and implementation of the urban regeneration process. Due to the persistent top-down tendency, particularly in developing countries, it is critical to expand the channel for community participation in urban regeneration practises. For achieving an inclusive target and enhancing positive interactions among different stakeholders, in recent years, partly as a response to the criticism of high-centralized regeneration projects, the community are increasingly empowered in the process of regeneration to bridge other stakeholders including government, private sector, and professionals in China. Through an appropriate participatory method, people could have an opportunity to act in the regeneration process, and cooperate with other stakeholders to complete a sound, long-term, and local-based solutions to regeneration (Li et al. in Cities (Elsevier Ltd.) 102:102743, 2020). However, although community participation approach is launched, people’s demands have failed to be satisfied due to the continuing marginalizing the community. In order to dissect the reasons, by taking Sanxue historical district in Xi’an as case study, this paper aims to elaborate a new community participation model–collaborative workshop; analyses how collaborate workshop operates and why it finally results to the ineffective of participation. Grounded in a qualitative research methodology, this paper is built upon data collected through archival research, interviews with local community as well as other stakeholders, and on-site observation.

Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, has been the world’s most densely inhabited city since 2016, with a density of 30,093 people/km² in 2022, posing challenges in providing access to basic civic facilities to its residents. The planning history of Dhaka reveals that both planned and spontaneously developed neighbourhoods have evolved here throughout time. Besides these two distinct types of development, the historic older part of Dhaka with all its cultural and social heritage has expanded within its physical limit. Consequently, citizens’ liveability conditions in Old Dhaka characterized by the low standard of urban services, narrow road networks, poor drainage systems and congested urban fabric, have steadily worsened over time. A new Detailed Area Plan (DAP) has recently been restructured and published to develop Dhaka into a better liveable city, resolving its urban challenges, ensuring citizens’ equity proportionate to urban amenities, upgrading urban services, and gradually improving the physical, social, economic and environmental condition of different areas. Engaging locals during the fieldwork, this study attempts to identify the existing problems, their experience living with these challenges and the aspirations of the locality regarding the new urban regeneration proposal of DAP. Several participatory approaches were exercised, including focus group discussions, key informant interviews, transect walks and community mapping of the existing conditions and two urban design workshops were conducted with 50 participants to demonstrate the urban regeneration proposals of DAP for two Old Dhaka neighbourhoods. This paper suggests solutions in terms of policy and design to provide a liveable environment for the locals in terms of physical infrastructure, amenities and facilities while conserving the socio-cultural fabric of the neighbourhoods. This study concludes that balancing top-down and bottom-up approaches in design solutions can ensure liveability not only in terms of physical outcomes but also regenerate the embedded socio-cultural aspects of these neighbourhoods.

The urban villages are a common yet heterogeneous informal living space in China's developed cities, characterised by high density, a high degree of autonomy, and difficulty in being regulated by the government. As a provider of low-cost residential accommodation, they have contributed significantly to the successful growth of cities, however, they have also posed a number of problems such as hygiene and security. During the period of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in China, the government has often considered demolition and redevelopment to be a convenient and cost-effective way of regenerating the urban villages. However, with the recent shortage in the supply of land resources and soaring land prices, the demolition and redevelopment approach has created a series of social and policy issues. Recently, comprehensive improvement—a way of beautifying the built environment and optimising management without altering the building construction—has been introduced as an alternative approach to regenerate urban villages and it is anticipated as a sustainable model of urban regeneration. The planning and implementation process involves multiple stakeholders, including the government, developers, villagers, tenants, etc. These different actors, however, all have different interests and expectations in the processes of planning, implementation, and operation. While contributing to the sustainability of the regeneration projects, many potential problems have also arisen, some of which have led to small-scale open protests. This chapter uses the case of Jingle Village in Shenzhen as a case study to examine the interests of different stakeholders at different stages of the comprehensive improvement process and the problems faced in the implementation of the project. The chapter critically assesses and analyses the positions and roles of the various stakeholders at different levels based on in-depth semi-structured interviews and resident questionnaires, in order to assesses the sustainability of the new regeneration model. The findings can contribute significantly to the sustainability of urban regeneration strategies in China and even the global South. The analysis of the different levels of stakeholders also will be of great value in informing many different types of regeneration policies.

Over the past three decades, the city of Medellin has sustained dramatic transformations, transitioning from being one of the most violent cities in the 1990s to emerging as one of Colombia's most resilient, innovative, and greenest urban centers. A key component driving these changes has been the revitalization of lower-income neighbourhoods through participatory strategies aimed at reducing violence, enhancing social resilience, and promoting inclusivity via urban green projects. A remarkable initiative was the Green Belt project included in the Plan Maestro Area Centroriental, designed to connect the most relevant nodes through walking and cycling paths, recreational facilities, and diverse urban green infrastructure such as urban farming, community gardens, parks. Government-led participatory strategies have not only beautified the neighbourhoods but have also garnered both local and international attention. Nevertheless, the shortcoming of these strategies in Medellin is the fragile relationship between stakeholders and spatial ownership, particularly concerning green spaces. Conflicts occur when green areas previously managed by communities, are transferred to the local governments, fracturing both activism and spatial equality. Amidst these deliberations, the significance of an overlooked green infrastructure that has survived for decades is the small-scale community-led green interventions often located at the fringes of residual green areas (i.e., nearby roads or areas next to water streams). The random appropriation of residual green spaces depicts vital signs of pro-environmental behaviours, reflecting commitments to nature preservation and environmental agency. This green network, acknowledging the involvement of both human and non-human living agents (e.g., plants, trees, and wildlife), is often overlooked in traditional urban design and planning approaches. This chapter discusses the potential of these often disregarded small-scale community-led green networks as complementary avenues to government-led participatory strategies in urban green revitalisation projects. Through an exploration of the diverse living agents involved in this processes, the levels of interventions, and modes of autonomous participation, the chapter unravels and analyses these aspects to formulate an ecology of participation model. This model introduces a paradigm emphasising equitable interactions in urban green projects, grounded in a living ecology framework that recognises the social and political agency of all spatial actors.

In Latin American cities, with their incomplete urban development processes and marginalised natural spaces, adopt regeneration practices to recover and improve the existing spatial, social, and ecological dimensions. Since it is assumed that natural ecosystems are a key element in sustainable urban regeneration projects, this chapter aims to explore the synergy between natural and urban processes in urban renovation projects through the integration of wetland areas, particularly mangrove areas. This text dissects the Conservation and Revitalisation Master Plan for the Laguna del Carpintero wetland and its surroundings located in the port of Tampico, Mexico. The project focuses on the integration of urban biodiversity around open spaces. The author introduces the innovative methodological aspects adopted in the project, which is located in a tropical city context. It conceptually develops the essential material components for understanding and formulating projects for Sustainable Urban Regeneration, including ecological succession. Therefore, mutual adaptation between urban and natural components associates ecological restoration with public space and built heritage in the project logic.