This blog post is part of discussions carried out within the Life Itself Research. To get follow our activities, please join the Life Itself Research monthly meetings or follow discussions on github discussions forum.

Why research on place making?

We live in the world where established democratic and participatory governance, societal protests and political oppressions coexist. Creation of places, where such big issues, as well as small local plans for development can be dialogued, has been an important topic of recent years. Bilieving, that social technology and AI can benefit from each other, we aim to follow exisitng social technology methods. Place making activities, and techniques of holding those spaces is one example of such activities.

In May 2023, Liu, researcher from Life itself Research, visited one of the Berlin place making labs. In this blog we describe the context of place making and how it is related to ecological transitions and urban transformations we are aiming for in the 21st century.

What is place making anyway?

Place-making can be any action, related to creation of a place itself, or activities on that space which aim to make it more habitable by people. Examples of place-making initiatives range from the restructuring of segregated communities in the United States, exemplified by Jane Jacobs' efforts in "Making American cities great again" to place-making endeavors involving young people and marginalized communities in Brussels, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Place-making and urban transformations

As French philosopher Lefebvre mentions in his book "La Production de L'Espace" (1974) each form of society produces its own space, which in continually reciprocal process, conditioning the societal systems. Place defining society and society defining place are complex processes, interrelating and one through the other. Rarely nowadays one can participate openly in place-making activities, where each person as a citizen can participate in observing, or taking actions, constructing pieces of complex system, such as cities, especially large cities. At the same time, large cities (with a population beyond 8 million inhabitants) are a new phenomenon in urban history. Some of the most actual topics for metropolitan development is that of the form of governance of these big cities, directing different issues such as urban planning, the creation of governmental functionalities.

Place making event in Berlin

We started small and participated in the local place making event. Urban Foxes were coordinating the place-making event in Berlin together with CISR institute, as part of the Erasmus+ project https://cisr-berlin.org/wakeupcities The place making event created a possibility for urbanists, environmentalists, activists and citizens to participate in common event, projects frequently intertwining with activities aimed at creating a sense of meaning and understanding.

Berlin was not chosen to be a random place for such activity with citizens. Having many open territories some of which just recently were closed (Tacheles being one of them) it still has either a special statuses or being empty. Here we do refer to the extended meaning of the word "empty space" we eleborate further on. after the Second World War Berlin left some undiscovered opportunities for researchers, urbanists, place-makers to come and contribute to the space liveliness.

Main activities from the place-making events could be summarized into several groups:

• assessing needs of the place (discussions with platz!da association, which was the original contact with the place itself)
• first individual brain-storming session in the place (when people give their first raw ideas on the place)
• collective brain-storming session (when people give their ideas on how people can collaboratively create together

Important aspects of these activities is that they underly the importance of facilitation for assisting changes needed in our cities.

Extended urban empty space

Typically place making activities are best when considered on spaces, with unclear function (such as empty spaces in our cities), or with some challenging historical background, e.g. abandonned factories, squotes etc. What is actually an empty space in our cities? Can place be empty? Should any place in the city be filled with anything? Can some places have their own agencies? There are always many memories, associated with each space. Especially in space, like Berlin. For digging deeper into it, we interacted with reserachers/audio-walkers who designed space-based walks through Berlin places, where not all spaces were yet taken. Some example of such spaces, which are often refered to as being empty were left in various places around Germany.

Main Take-Home Message from the Place-Making Projects

In any place-making project, there are two distinct stages that form the foundation of the process:

• The first stage can be named as "place holding/understanding" and includes engaging in discussions of sense making about issues and meaning of the place itself, establishment of a connection with the local community who owns the place, fostering brainstorming sessions with various facilitation techniques (refer to the Figure below), and negotiating ideas. It can be associate with the deconstruction of the existing place to gain a deeper understanding of its dynamics.

• The second phase place-making/acting itself: is where the envisioned changes to place come to life. This phase encompasses the actual construction work, as well as the research required to inform the project's implementation. Normally second stage may need to be preceded by the completion of phase 1.

These two stages can be seen as design techniques representing the concepts of "exploration" and "exploitation." The exploration phase (phase 1) involves understanding and learning about the place, while the exploitation phase (phase 2) focuses on taking action and implementing the proposed changes.

Finding the right balance between these two stages is pivotal to the success of any place-making project. It requires a combination of facilitation, active listening, thorough research, and effective action. By creating this equilibrium, place-making projects can create vibrant, long-lasting spaces that are deeply rooted in the local culture, naturally inclusive and integrated. The documentation of place-making project is often difficult due to the amount of materials produced during the sessions, however assisting those activities with digital technologies one can document and follow these materials and save them for future place making sessions.