Copyright: Posad Spatial Strategies

How can we use less land while creating compact and mixed urban neigbourhoods? How to transform fragmented and privately owned places? How to encourage social interaction?

Prelimenary results and inspriring cases can be found in our mid-term Book of Ideas! 

In our previous newsletter, we highlighted a presentation of Daniel Legault on how the city of Montréal is making the social mix in housing happen, during the 5th Transnational Meeting of sub>urban on the theme of ‘Social Inclusion’.

Most intrigued by this presentation, we went for an in-depth interview with this expert on social inclusion to provide some practical, ready-to-use advise for urban planners.

Cooperative housing in the city of Montréal. 

Read the entire article with Daniel Legault on how the city of Montréal is realizing the social mix here.

Erratum

An editorial error was made in the item on Daniel Legault's presentation in last month's newsletter.

It stated that "since 2005 Montréal has realised: 21598 units 100% rent geared to income housing (social housing), 6883 units affordable housing (below-market units) and 32091 units of non-profit corporations and Housing Cooperatives" whereas it should have been "There's been over 115 projects since 2005 (occupied, under construction, in the planning stage). Those projects represent approximately 65 000 units including more or less 15 % social and community housing and financial contribution and more or less 15 % private affordable".

'Split TALKS' is a recurring event  in Croatia, where experts, lecturers, scholars and others are invited to discuss that year's theme at length. This year, the city of Solin took over the Split TALKS to put the focus on its fringe area.

The city of Solin, one of the partners in the sub>urban.Reinventing the fringe network, reached out to many stakeholders at the end of October with the Split TALKS, including an international student workshop and several public events. The events started on October 21 with an introduction to the topic. The name of the workshop was “Solin – City on the sea”. This name was chosen to present the possibilities and future development of the city. Solin has always been the city on the sea, but due to widespread infrastructure and numerous industrial sites located on the coast, the connection to the seafront was lost.

Lectures and discussions on archeology and urban fabric in Solin.

Following the welcoming speeches by the Mayor of Split and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy in Split, the local coordinator, Marijana Zizic, presented the work of URBACT III and of the network sub>urban.Reinventing the fringe. Participants were then introduced to the topic and given the assignments by the URBACT team of Solin and its ULG members, after which they were sent in the field to Salona, a large archaeological site that overlaps with the workshop area.

Later that day, a public conference by the name ‘Relation between the city and archaeology’ was held, where speakers gave an interesting example of the work on the archaeological sites and good and bad examples of the presentation and integration of archaeology into urban fabric.

Salona, archaeological site in Solin.

As the main topic of the student workshop was the renewal of the brownfield area, a full day conference organized by the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy in Split, the Association of architects Split and the city of Solin, was dedicated to best practices in different European cities on the 23rd of October.

Solin students at work.

Since the beginning of the workshop, students had spent time developing their concepts and ideas while working in groups guided by their mentors. After seven intensive days, on October 26, students presented their concepts. Each presentation proposed a different approach and future vision for the site area and Solin as a city on the sea.

“Good practice - better Cities” was the headline of the Urbact City Festival in Tallinn, to which we sent our network’s price winners for communication and project management. From the 3rd - 5th of October, they had the opportunity to meet the 97 newly labelled URBACT Good Practice Cities. More than 450 participants gathered in different working sessions with the Good Practice Cities in the Telliskivi Creative City. The presence of programme experts, members of the Secretariat and representatives of NUP completed the list of participants and was an important opportunity to face topics and challenges from different points of view.

Read more on the URBACT City Festival here.

We will highlight a 'best practice' from the festival in each of the upcoming newsletters.

The URBACT City Festival in Tallinn.

Community building and neigbourhood renewal

One of the best practice examples that were relevant for our network, came from the city of Kranj, Slovenia.

The project is a complementary combination of the “top-down” approach and the “bottom-up” approach aimed at renewal and revitalization of the degraded residential urban neighborhood of Planina. It is not only striving for solutions within the neighborhoods or municipality, but it is open to share and test the experience. It is concrete, transferable and proven in practice.

Read more on this 'best practice' here.

In the week of 13 November, URBACT drew special attention to our network by sharing our progress on all social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Check it out!

Our sub>urban network in the picture on Twitter.