ro urbact ndp_2nd report_2011

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Romanian URBACT National

Dissemination Point

2nd

Bi-Annual Report 2011



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1. STRATEGIC APPROACHES FOR

THE CONVERSION OF FORMER

MILITARY SITES: REPAIR FINAL

CONFERENCE

From June 14th to 17th, Sibiu and Avrig hosteda series of activities that marked the closureof the URBACT REPAIR project – Realisingthe potential of abandoned military sites asan integrated part of a sustainable urbancommunity. With this occasion, there were

organized several workshops, debates,workhouses, site visits, conferences etc., inwhich there were presented generalinformation and purpose of the project, itsprinciples (the four main pillars of interest),examples of local action strategies and pilotprojects for rehabilitation, variousrecommendations of European policy,examples and good practice advice frompartners in the project etc.

The REPAIR Project aimed for a clearer evaluation and the revaluation of the potentialof abandoned military sites as an integratedpart of a sustainable development of theurban communities. REPAIR was anexchange of experience project, that wasbased on the rehabilitation of abandonedmilitary sites, exploring diverse perspectivesfor their effective reuse, so that theymaximize their contribution to the sustainabledevelopment of the objectives. The partnersinvolved in this project have managed avariety of abandoned military sites,

separating them from the bases of the

Eastern Europe (some of them stronglyaffected), to the buildings of cultural heritagein the historic urban centers.

The biggest challenge for the involvedpartners in this project was transformingthese sites in sources of economic activities,meant to produce jobs and social cohesion,working in an integrated and sustainable way,through energy efficiency, using resources of renewable energy and sustainabletransportation, without polluting.

The partners of REPAIR proposed a widerange of reuses of the former military sites.Also, there were identified variousperspectives to reuse the results, includingusing a combination of local, regional andnational means, and political and financialinstruments of the European Union.

The city Avrig was admitted as partner in thisproject in the autumn of the year 2008, joining ten other European cities.

The issue of rehabilitating former military

units represents a subject of maximuminterest for Romania, given the existence of such former settlement, beingdecommissioned, located in theadministrative territory of several localities.The city Avrig was admitted as partner in thisproject in the autumn of the year 2008, joining ten other European cities. At Marsa,locality belonging to the city Avrig, workeduntil a few years ago, several military units,with various specializations. Through theREPAIR Project, the city Avrig benefited of an

1. Strategic approaches for the conversion of former military sites:Repair Final Conference

2. From knowledge sharing to practice: Construct Week Regional

Forum Conference3. Jan Gehl in Bucharest4. “Take back your city”: Initiatives for urban education in Romania. A

project of the Komunitas Association5. Back to the roots – A project developed by CeRe – A Resource

Center for Public Participation



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European funding with a total value of approximately 55.000 Euros, the money werebeing used for promoting the former 935Barrack, studies, expertises, elaboratingstrategies, local action plans, projects, etc.,which could be the start for the chance of “ anew life” for the former military zone.

2. FROM KNOWLEDGE SHARING

TO PRACTICE: CONSTRUCT WEEK

REGIONAL FORUM CONFERENCES

This autumn, under the Regional Forum inConstructions – Construct Week, threeRegional Conferences of Urban Planning willtake place, addressing issues as Urban Management for a Competitive City (Cluj,Timisoara 16 September and 6 October) andUrban Management for a Tourist Town (Constanta, 28 October).Regional Forum in Construction - ConstructWeek meets the need of communication

between authorities, as policy makers, andofficers and, on the other hand, theconstruction companies in a particular regionof the country. The first two such conferencestook place in Iasi and Brasov in the first half of this year.

In 2011 The Construct Forum Week isfocused on three important areas, in thecontext of regional sustainable development:constructions, architecture and urbanism.

The Mission of the Forum Regional Construct

Week is to create professional debates thatwould bring forward subjects of maximumimportance and responsibility suh as :antreprenorial management in constructions,romanian architecture : the current state andperspectives, conserving heritage, thermalrehabilitation and “a face lift” of Romania, thequality in constructions and the quality inarchitecture, policies for architecture, the roleof the architect in the urban development,urban planning, urban management for competitive cities, partnerships and urbanpolicies, the city between the center and the

periphery, urban regeneration.

3. JAN GEHL IN BUCHAREST

On the occasion of translating into Romanianhis book "Life between buildings. Uses of public space ", between 7 to 9 June 2011, thewell known Danish architect Jan Gehl, theman who changed the urban image of manycities around the whole world was inRomania. Well known for his fruitful activity, in

the area related to creating adequate publicspaces, perhaps his greatest accomplishmentmight be his influence regarding the urbandevelopment of Copenhagen, which in thelast 50 years, changed from a city choked bycars in a city of cyclists, with people whodirectly and healthily interact with their livingenvironment. The process was a gradualone, involving numerous studies and directobservations of urban life in an attempt to

establish and to adapt projects to the waypeople use spaces, to their needs andrequirements.

On the 9th of June the Ministry of RegionalDevelopment and Tourism organized a roundtable with the theme of The Leipzig Charter for European Sustainable Cities creatingquality urban spaces – The Man: a newdimension of the city, an event for which thespecial guest was Jan Gehl.

Starting from the four attributes of a qualitycity in the vision of Gehl, being: vivacity,security, durability and health, therepresentatives of local and centralauthorities, together professionals in the areaof urbanism and NGOs, have tried to identifyinstruments through which they can obtainthese attributes and foster synergies amongother actors involved in this process of former development.

Jan Gehl thinks that interventions in an urbanspace shouldn’t be aggressive, but rather

gradual. In the big cities more roads meanmore traffic; for example, the dissolution of the suspended roads led to an automatictraffic solution. In addition, people started totravel more with the public transportation.

The architect thinks that every urbantransformation must be bounded with theenvironment and its inhabitants. If thesituation involves average open spaces, thenit can only attract common activities; if theopen spaces are of a good quality, they canlast longer and attract a large range of

optional activities.

While many cities from Western Europe havean extensive experience in creating publicspaces, few cities from the Eastern part havemanaged to find approaches in order toimplement a culture for creating high-valuedpublic spaces.



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4. “TAKE BACK YOUR CITY”:

INNITIATIVES FOR URBAN

EDUCATION IN ROMANIA.

A PROJECT OF THE KOMUNITAS

ASSOCIATION

The urban education project "Take back your city" takes place in seven high-schools andeight schools in Bucharest. It aims to

introduce urban education as a form of activity extracourse or elective course, to leadstudents to engage as active citizens of thecity, able to participate in important decisionson urban development, to guide them inmaking personal interventions in the publicspace.

The project is part of a broad strategy of development of the association towardsurban education addressed to the teenagersand towards promoting participatory urbaninterventions in public space, according to theidea of making the city more beautiful andactively involving youth.

The project is based on interactive methodsrelated to urban anthropology, participatoryurban planning and multimedia means(photo-media), which the association hasalready applied for several years in itsprojects.

The Project Blog :http://educatieurbana.wordpress.com/

Komunitas started as an applied socialsciences association, focused on social-anthropological field work, visualanthropology and non-formal education,aiming to create new spaces for positivesocial interaction, to institute contactsbetween different social realities, to increasethe individuals participation to civic life, tofacilitate the access to culture for underprivileged categories, to transcend thesocial stereotypes, to educate and stimulateyoung people in order to become responsible

citizens.Throughout the years we developed severalinnovative methods of non-formal educationtargeting young people from the schools andhighschools from Bucharest. One of them isurban education , an innovativeinterdisciplinary method that brings together elements of urban anthropology, publicparticipation, architecture and urbanism.Komunitas members conceived and testedthis method in the last 3 years, throughvarious educational and participative projects.

“Take back the city!” is by far the mostcomplex project of urban education that wedeveloped so far. This project is structured in2 main steps:Teaching modules of urban education in 8schools and 7 high-schools from Bucharest;developing 10 urban education clubs andtraining its young members in video-activismand visuals documentation of urban issues,photography, fund-raising, urban

interventions; introducing urban education inschool-based curriculum of 10 schools/high-schools, in form of extra-class activities.Writing a professional manual of urbaneducation, training 10 teachers in order to beable to use it; organizing a national urbaneducation conference, in order to launch themanual.Between November 2010 and July 2011, wehave implemented the first step of thisproject. Our modules of urban educationincluded presentations in high-schools, onvarious topics: history of Bucharest as a city,architectural styles, industrial patrimony,street art, public art, urban interventions,relations and use of public space, examplesof public participation. For schools, wedesigned active workshops for kids,structured in 3 main steps: a) I notice, I observe, I learn (stories about Bucharest,children interventions on black and whitephotography, team work about good and badthings in Bucharest and about ideal cities) b) I analyze and I understand (mental maps andphotos realized by pupils) c) I propose and I

organize (stickers, drawings and modelsrealized by pupils; one final exhibition).Members of urban education clubs realizeddocumentary films on various urban topics(which can be seen on the project web page – www.educatieurbana.blogspot.com) andactive urban interventions, such asorganising a public screening of their films,participating at the urban festival “StreetDelivery”, building urban furniture from wood,together with students from LandscapeArchitecture Faculty.Our main conclusion after this first step of the

project is that urban education was really wellreceived by children of all ages and that itmust become part of the extra-schoolcurriculum in as many educational institutionsas possible. Therefore, we are preparing for the second step of the project and alsodesigning the lines of a future project, inwhich we will promote our manual of urbaneducation at a national level as well asorganize trainings for teachers all over thecountry.The project is consistent with other actions



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and initiatives implemented by the KomunitasAssociation such as „From the Heart of MyNeighbourhood (a project of urbanintervention in one of the most disadvantagedneighbourhood from Bucharest)” and theproject „Our city – Our decision (an„experiment” of participative urbanism)”

Reed more about these projects :http://blogs.arte.tv/ferentari-

act/frontUser.do?method=getHomePage(Ferentari Act)www.orasul-nostru.blogspot.com

5. BACK TO THE ROOTS – A

PROJECT DEVELOPED BY CeRe –

A RESOURCE CENTER FOR

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Community organization is a long-termprocess by which people are encouraged tounify under common aims and interests and

to develop and implement actions so as to betranslated by decision makers in reality.Through this process, the citizens organizedin informal action groups, manage toinfluence the process of public decisionmaking and to produce positive changes intheir communities.Community organization is a processconsisting of the following 4 steps:systematically surveying the inhabitants of acommunity with the aim of selecting andprioritizing their problems and needs;identifying solutions and key institutions andpersons responsible for translating theactions into practice;involving in permanent dialog with decisionmakers;Establishing large informal groups able tointroduce new challenges on the publicagenda.

In order to forge the development of community groups in Bucharest able topromote the interests of the community, theCenter of Resources for Public Participationhas initiated the following actions andprocesses in 6 neighbourhoods:First, in November 2009 more then 700interviews had been performed with citizensfrom different parts of Bucharest as a part of the “systematic surveying step” of thecommunity organization approach.The following neighbourhoods whereincluded into the sample for the interview:Lacul Tei, Favorit (Drumul Taberei), Griviţa-Titulescu, Callatis-Drumul Taberei, MaicaDomnului, Dristor.

Following the community surveying phase,several meetings with the aim of prioritizingthe local problems were established. Morethen 120 citizens participated to thesemeetings. As a result of those meetings, thecitizens started to be aware of their problemsand to take action in order to solve them.

For example, in the Favorit neighbourhoodcitizens succeeded to initiate a process bywhich the local authority managed to salvageof an abandoned cinema building (FavoritCinema) and transforming it into a communitycultural center. After many petitionssubmitted, participations to the meetings of the local council as well as public audiences,the municipality of Sector 6 performed a cost-benefit analysis aiming to substantiate thedecision to rehabilitate the building.The citizens are asking now for a publicdebate regarding the results of the study.

In the Callatis neighbourhood the citizensasked for the rehabilitation of a alley whichpassed between 2 schools and itstransformation into a public space at the for the use of the citizens.

Community organization seems to be andadequate approach to foster authentic publicparticipation.

For more details about the project please goto :http://www.ce-re.ro/ENG/back-to-the-grassroots There you will also find a 25 minutes film

about community organizing in Bucharest.

CeRe is a member of the EuropeanCommunity Organizing Network:www.communityorganizing.eu



URBACT is a European exchange and learning

programme promoting sustainable urban

development. It enables cities to work together to

develop solutions to major urban challenges,

reaffirming the key role they play in facing

increasingly complex societal challenges. It helps

them to develop pragmatic solutions that are new andsustainable, and that integrate economic, social and

environmental dimensions. It enables cities to share

good practices and lessons learned with all

professionals involved in urban policy throughout

Europe. URBACT is 181 cities, 29 countries, and

5,000 active participants

www.urbact.eu

ro urbact ndp_2nd report_2011

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