Speaker
Description
This presentation examines the views of local planners towards the implications, challenges and barriers of (re)designing public spaces within the context of urban and ecological transitions in suburban and metropolitan areas.
Nowadays, the importance of public space is widely disseminated across academic research and policy-making, often emphasising its paramount contributions to sustainable development and the promotion of just and cohesive communities.
Public spaces play a crucial role in different aspects of sustainability - environmental, social and economic. Indeed, they can galvanise through design solutions for resource efficiency or nature-based solutions, supporting active mobility and socially inclusive development. Moreover, they can be pivotal in promoting sustainable behaviours and life choices beyond individual action. Along these lines, the recent crises highlighted the importance and need to adapt or design public spaces more suited to the new challenges. At the policy level, initiatives such as the European Ecological Pact or the New European Bauhaus define a framework for the sustainable transformation of urban environments and lifestyles. Public spaces are approached at a multi-dimensional capacity. Although the opportunities for change proposed by these approaches are evident, the development of city-wide local strategies must be developed with a place-based perspective. In other words, the specificity of different types of territories, their urban dynamics, existing public spaces and perspectives of local stakeholders should be considered vis-a-vis the broader debate on sustainability transition policies. This is particularly relevant in peripheral and suburban urban areas, where public spaces tend to have different configurations and dynamics than those of central or traditional areas, often lacking adequate ecological structures, collective facilities, and infrastructures.
To delve into this topic, we address the relation between urban transitions and suburban public space by accounting for how public authorities perceive and address the urban sustainability agenda locally, taking as a case-study examples from the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA).
This communication explores local planners' views on the future of cities, discussing:
(1) the perceived meanings of urban sustainability and challenges regarding public space;
(2) the integration of the concept in their planning practices;
(3) existing constraints and tensions experienced; and
(4) the progress and opportunities for innovation.
The study is based on qualitative data collected through a series of focus-group workshops with planners from different departments in two LMA municipalities, Odivelas and Almada. After processing this data through thematic qualitative analysis, the results will address the urban planners' interpretations of urban sustainability, its implications in public space design and management, and a critical view of the concept and agendas in suburban metropolitan territories. The study will contribute to a deeper understanding of how agendas for urban sustainability are understood, implemented, and adapted in complex suburban contexts, as well as how the particularities of the production of public space in different contexts impact the implementation of said strategies.
The work intends to contribute to the theoretical discussion regarding discourses on urban sustainability transitions, specifically by addressing the views of urban practitioners and confronting these with empirical findings on local public space adaptation measures.
| Keywords | Public space; urban sustainability; suburban areas; place-based approach; planner’s views |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
