RE:IGNITE — Built Environment
As part of our trilogy to support community co-creation in the city, thirty seven of us came together to RE:IGNITE Wolverhampton, building on our earlier RE:IMAGINE session a few weeks earlier. At the previous session, people had identified seven themes that they were interested in putting energy into developing further. We shared examples of how similar ideas have been ignited around the world, and in themed breakout rooms, sparked ideas for how we can make this happen in Wolverhampton. This blog is part of a series sharing what happened in each room.
When Wulfrunians and beyond imagined what Wolverhampton could be like in 2030, they discovered a built environment without homelessness and with good quality, affordable housing distributed throughout the city. They imagined a Wolverhampton that embraced renewable energy, with district heating systems, and green technology centres where people could learn how to integrate it into their homes and everyday actions.
These ideas encourage us to think about what we can achieve across the city together. These ideas don’t have to be led by local authorities in the distant future. There are places in the world where citizens are creating changes to make their cities more regenerative.
Projects like R-URBAN in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, explore how ecological and environmental benefits can happen by connecting different community led projects across the city:
‘R-URBAN is a strategy of urban resilience in European cities involving the creation of a network of locally closed ecological cycles linking a series of fields of urban activities (i.e., economy, habitat, mobility, urban agriculture, culture) and using land reversibly.’
Initiated by Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée, the project is a four-year pilot of citizen-led collaborative networks between three sites:
1. AgroCité — a micro-farm where collectives and families can grow their own food.
2. Recyclab — A recycling and eco-construction site to ‘recycle and reuse objects and waste at the source by inventing new uses, as well as using recycled objects as raw material for green building projects; achieve environmental improvements through eco-construction techniques (locally recycled materials, renewable energy, etc.) to develop a social, sustainable economy in Colombes; initiate the spread of new urban, eco-friendly, practices such as reducing, repairing and reusing waste through educational activities and workshops; and reduce energy consumption for building operations on the entire project.
3. EcoHab — A site of seven self-built houses for the first steps to homeownership, social housing and for artists, students and researchers, and to ‘create a place to share practices of resiliency.’
By enabling local production, local recycling, and self-sufficiency, these three sites aim to work together to encourage people to reduce their consumption and break away from the model of life where ‘we produce nothing of what we consume and consume nothing of what we produce.’ (Gorz, A. 2007)
Whilst we’re in Paris, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée led another project which could be what Wolverhampton’s green technology centre would be like. Rather than a place where people just observe or learn about green technology, Wolverhampton could have a space where people are given the freedom to experiment with their built environment using this technology. Eco-interstice explores what can happen when a vacant space in the city is managed by local inhabitants and organisations. Relationships between different social and cultural networks grew out of learning eco-construction techniques as they built a space together. They also created a compost laboratory and a place to grow and recycle.
In the RE:IGNITE breakout room, we talked about the potential of the empty buildings in Wolverhampton. People want the beautiful heritage buildings of Wolverhampton to be revived and cared for (a popular desire as the breakout room for Economy & Independent Business Culture also discovered!)
What if Wolverhampton’s empty buildings could provide shelter for homeless people; to create comfortable spaces where agencies can come together and provide long-term support for people that need it?
What if all the unoccupied spaces were mapped, and we connected the landowners with ideas for how the spaces could be put back into use?
What if we found a space that we could bring to life with activity and creativity, and show what is possible and gain support from landowners?
We don’t have to look too far for how this has happened elsewhere. Hands-on-Bristol brought together architecture students and locals to reimagine a small pocket of overgrown land that had become a hotspot for fly-tipping.
‘A public event was staged on the pavement outside of the still locked space and participants were invited to record their dreams for the space beyond by writing text on colourful translucent flags, reminiscent of Nepalese prayer flags… Drawing upon the dreams of the participants as inspiration, alternative realities for the site were designed and visualized.’ (Sara, Jones & Rice. 2020)
Hands-on-Bristol took these dreams to the landowners (a housing association) to start conversations around opening the site to the community. With support from an urban regeneration consultant, the group convinced the landowners to agree to part of the space being used as a pocket park for storytelling.
The group hosted another event, inviting residents of the neighbouring sheltered housing to share tea and cake from a local cafe as they looked at developed drawings of what could be possible.
The ‘visualized dreams… captured the imagination of the community and funders’, and a local fabricator and architect worked with a group of locals to transform the dreams into a buildable reality. The gates to the site were opened for the first time in 20 years, and community members came together in a clearing event to free the site of rubbish and rubble.
‘In the run up towards the final opening of the park, an open call was made to the local community to contribute towards the opening. As a result there were two professional photographers, a professional storyteller and a musician who all volunteered their time. This allowed the space to open with an immediate community relevance and ownership. At the opening event a small group of volunteers were inaugurated as guardians of the park. This meant that they were given keys to the gates and effective collective responsibility for maintaining the space.’ (Sara, Jones & Rice. 2020)
The park guardians and community group worked together to green the space, establish a social media presence, and source a water butt and a book cupboard to enable book exchanges for the storytelling space. They have since constructed planters, received plant donations from a local garden centre, and other surprise donations. The book exchange was ongoing, people started placing ‘little trinkets in various nooks and crannies around the space’, and ‘an anonymous person has regularly left food out for a resident fox’.
What could happen in Wolverhampton if communities, organisations and landowners came together to transform empty spaces?
