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Project/initiative|France, Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Austria, Finland, Poland|Transnational

Human Cities | Challenging the city scale

Project title

Human Cities | Challenging the city scale

Description of initiative

Questioning the scale and the co-creation of the city, Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale is a large-scale European cooperation project between 12 partners from 11 cities. This platform of interdisciplinary exchanges explores how the inhabitants reclaim the constantly evolving contemporary city. It uses experiments in the urban space as ways of (re)inventing city life, a step to improve well-being and quality of life. Human Cities’ network highlights 13 strong and shared values: Empathy – Well-being – Sustainability – Intimacy – Conviviality -Mobility – Accessibility- Imagination – Leisure – Aesthetics – Sensoriality – Solidarity -Respect. Human Cities is shaped as a multidisciplinary European network composed of various profiles: universities, design centers and design weeks, ICT platforms, service design and creative design consultancies. An exemples of a project activity related to well-being: urban planning students at Ljubljana’s Faculty of Architecture even designed and constructed a wooden pavilion – called a “station of well-being” –which now serves as a meeting place in Bratovševa ploščad.

Further information on the initiative

Themes: Culture and...

Individual well-being
Community well-being
Mental health
Physical health
Quality of spaces and built environments
Quality of social relations

Keywords

co-creation, cities, experiment, urban space, well-being, design

Target group

Not targeted to a specific group

Cultural field

Architecture | Design | Other

Budget

€1.880.000

Timeframe

2014 - 2018

Sources of funding

Creative Europe Programme of the EU (Culture Sub-programme)

Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt

According to the project team in the ”Human Cities 2014-2018 Final Book : Challenging the City Scale” publication, ”Since 2014, the Human Cities network has been working on Challenging the City Scale to question the urban scale and investigate cocreation in cities. The Human Cities partners have carried out urban experimentations in 11 European cities empowering citizens to rethink the spaces in which they live, work and spend their leisure time. Through conversations with people involved, the book examines how bottom-up processes and their design, tools and instruments generate new ideas to reinvent the city. It offers inspiration and insights to everyone, from practitioners and politicians to designers and active citizens, eager to try out new ways to produce more human cities together. Our project can be seeen as a journey in people-centred design.”

Organizer(s)

Cité du Design-Ecole Superieure d'Art et de Design
France
Private / Business | Culture

Partner(s)

Association Design Week Belgrade
Serbia
Other | Culture
Association of Estonian designers
Estonia
Other | Culture
Zamek Cieszyn
Poland
Other | Culture
Clear Village, London
United Kingdom
NGO / Non-profit | Culture
Culture Lab
Belgium
Other | Culture
Design Department of Politecnico di Milano
Italy
Public / State | Culture
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Finland
Public / State | Culture
FH Joanneum
Austria
Public / State | Culture
Lan Ekintza Bilbao
Spain
Other | Culture
Pro Materia
Belgium
Private / Business | Culture
La Cité du design Saint-Etienne
France
Other | Culture
Urbanistični inštitut republike Slovenije
Slovenia
Public / State | Other