Co-Creation of Temporary Interventions in Public Space as a Tactic to Build Community Resilience

The project promotes and develops tactical small-sized co-created temporary interventions in public spaces and tests how they can be instrumental for the positive transformation of public life in contemporary cities. It builds on the assumption that, in cities, there is an abundance of under-used spaces. Empowering local communities living in deprived areas to take ownership of such urban spaces, decide on their use and take action, can at the same time re-activate the public realm through a process of appropriation, define new forms of civic participation and regain individuals and groups to it, create synergies between diverse urban actors and raise awareness on and possibly establish new alternative ways for public realm planning. With the words of David Harvey, the “Right to the City” is “the freedom to make and remake our cities” and this is one of the “most precious of our human rights.” The project brings together the City Council and local communities and charities, the University and its students, and develops a long term strategy comprising several sites across the city mapped as opportunities by the citizens. It subsequently attempts to measure quantitatively and qualitatively the impact of co-created interventions in terms of engagement and empowerment of the communities, investigating the differences caused in their relationship with the public realm. The methodology, starting from an extended literature review and relevant case studies, develops a comparison between the use and perceptions of the spaces before and after the temporary interventions. At the moment the project consists of 5 temporary interventions (I Don’t Roll; #IHeartPompey; Secret Garden; Super-Hammock; Sound Garden), working with as many different communities, testing different working processes and progressively adapting and improving the co-production methods.