ENACT 15-mintute City
Research Network_ENACT 15-minute City
ENACT15mC will (re)imagine urban public spaces and streets to make them more walkable, cyclable, and pleasant to spend time in. We will engage residents coming from diverse backgrounds and ability, property owners and local municipalities in thematically distinct urban living labs (ULLs) to co-create ideas for street and neighbourhood transformations. The living labs will address spatial and functional issues that currently challenge walkability in Trondheim, Gdansk, Valencia and Oxford. These cases each have different cultural, climatic and geographic contexts that design thinking must respond to. Iterative design processes through the living labs will be supported by novel Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies. While these tools are not uncommon, their use by the Enact 15mC consortium will address critiques that they are functionalist in approach (versus design oriented), that they are manipulative and that they create barriers to involving people who are unfamiliar with or otherwise unable to use them. Visualising technologies will be made available to the public, along streets, in public spaces and during co-creation workshops. We aim to break down barriers with coaching and to compare use of these tools alongside others, including tactical urbanism, mapping and physical modelling. These comparisons will lead to new knowledge around co-creation processes.
While transformation of currently car dominated areas to be more walkable and attractive to be in makes sense to many people, this is not universally accepted. Some will suffer loss, whether because driving becomes less attractive or that barrier walls become more open. Enact 15mC must engage people with all viewpoints on street design, including those who are often left out of participatory processes, to ensure all needs are understood and taken account of in co-creating change. Working with our industry partners, students and the local municipalities, we will engage with existing informal networks in the four living lab contexts alongside more formal recruitment strategies. Enact 15mC adopts a people centred approach to urban design.
ENACT 15mC
A cross-Europe multi-stakeholder, international cooperation
Enact 15mC will develop, contextualise and test methods for (re)distributing street space in favour of sustainable mobility options and the social dimension of streets and places. This will lead to new knowledge about walkable and attractive places in European contexts. Knowledge specific to each of the four consortium cities will be made available to policymakers, property owners and the public. Guidelines based on the experiences of all four living labs will be presented as guidelines on designing for walkability and active transport, urban co-creation processes and the use of technologies and other tools in public engagement. The ENACT 15mC project will therefore make a critical contribution to debates and understanding on the 15mC and its contribution to urban transitions for sustainable cities.
Urban Living Labs
Trondheim Norway
People-Centred 15mC
ULL Trondheim aims to transfer Haakon VII Street (H7) from a car-based street and parking lots into people-centred urban spaces via engaging and empowering the citizens in this co-creation process.
Gdansk Poland
Planning Instruments for 15mC
In ULL Shipyard Gdansk the main focus will be on understanding and shaping local identities of the public spaces as well as incorporating various vehicles for delivering unique experiences within these, like i.e. artistic and cultural activities.
Valencia Spain
Identity of 15mC
Valencia’s 113.5-hectare historic city centre is grappling with the effects of touristification, rising logistical demands, extensive pedestrianisation, limited local social movements, and the costly maintenance of heritage structures. To tackle these issues, the ULL City Centre Valencia is taking a co-creation approach.
Oxford UK
AR/VR Supported Co-creating 15mC
Oxfordshire is a UK innovator in implementing sustainable transport policy and 15mC is one of its key objectives. The
East Oxford ULL approach uses AR/VR technologies that will help communities envision and understand the possibilities created by the 15mC approach and be part of co-creating this vision.
AR-enabled Community Visioning Platform
The ENACT 15mC consortium will make extensive use of innovative digital technologies to enable a greater number of
people to visualise the way their city could be. Augmented reality is a human interface technology that projects 3D computer
generated images on live video, enabling users to interact with a modified environment in real time. This technology is now readily available on smartphones and digital tablets. Visioning through VR, and to a certain extent also AR, can provide total
immersion in a real-life scene and an opportunity to see and imagine the essential character of different spaces (i.e. streets incorporating walking, cycling and people lingering rather than dominated by car traffic) and how this may change the
essential quality of the public realm. Application of AR/VR technologies will respond to critiques of functionalist approaches to active transport planning, which are seen to neglect the aesthetic dimension. Use of these technologies recognises that people’s decisions to use a setting is influenced not only by perceived safety concerns, but also by spatial characteristics that can make it pleasant to move around and linger in.
Core Partners
Relevant Projects and publications
Projects
publications
Co-creation
Suatinable mobility
Social innovation
Urban regneration
Spencer, B., Jones, T., Carpenter, J., Brownill, S. (2023, forthcoming) ‘The potential for public participation in planning healthy urban mobility: the case of Oxford, United Kingdom’ in Hansson, L., Rye, T., Sorensen, C. (Eds). The role of citizen participation in decision-making in transport and mobility. Emerald, Bingley, UK
Public particiation
Urban living labs
The project addressed the key challenge of how to best design and turn cities into intelligent, socially integrative, and sustainable environments. and testing them in 5 Living Labs (NTNU lead) with the purpose to derive operational and evidence-based knowledge about urban transformative capacity. The Learning outcomes of Living Labs has transferred into designing ENACT 15mC’s ULLs.
Healthy Urban Mobility: UK and Brazil
The Healthy Urban Mobility (HUM) project was a study to understand the impact of everyday (im)mobility on health and wellbeing with a variety of social groups living in different neighbourhoods in Brazil and the UK, and also to explore the potential for participatory mobilities planning with local communities to support and develop solutions for healthy urban mobility.
Street Voice: Oxford’s Citizens’ Jury
Street Voice aimed to develop proposals on how local residents can move around Oxford in ways that are positive for climate and health. Learning points from Street Voice that are relevant to ENACT 15mC include the importance of engaging with local residents taking a deliberative approach, particularly relating to issues around local transport and active travel options.
Project has provided the platform for a step change in the way that NBS are embedded in the long-term planning, development, operation and management of cities around the world. UPV has developed a digital twin for the impact assessment of green infrastructure development at neighbourhood level. That can be further developed to be AR-enabled co-design digital platform for ENACT 15mC
SOS Climate Waterfront was an interdisciplinary project that aimed to explore waterfronts in Europe that are facing climate change. The GUT team was developing ideas and strategies associated with bringing together not only professionals, but also municipalities, stakeholders and citizens in pursuit of adaptation and contribution in combating climate change.
ENACT 15-minute City
A network for people-centred 15-minute City
Contacts
wang.yu@ntnu.no
ENACT 15-minute City 