In early March 2024, the meeting of the partners of the PopUpUrbanSpaces project took place in Varazdin, Croatia. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and advance various aspects of the project, including capacity building, action planning and communication strategies. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christine Rottenbacher and Mag. Stefanie Kotrba, MSc from the Department for Building and Environment took part.
As part of the meeting, Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christine Rottenbacher gave a presentation on the ecosystem services of streets and squares. Particular attention was paid to climate-regulating natural processes of interconnected, biodiverse soil-water-plant systems. In addition, Christine Rottenbacher led a workshop on placemaking and placemaning, which dealt with the question of how to survey how residents identify personal place qualities and organize their everyday use of streets and squares.
In addition to presentations on e.g. tactical urbanism, digital campaigns or - as mentioned - placemaking, in which experts provided valuable insights and guidance to help partners develop effective strategies for implementing the project in their cities, interactive workshops also helped partners to jointly design action plans for pilot projects. The program was rounded out by presentations from the project leaders, in which they provided updates on the progress of each work package, highlighted successes and outlined next steps. Important decisions were made regarding the implementation of pilot projects and partners left the meeting with clear action points to focus on in the coming months.
Overall, the three-day project meeting was extremely productive and provided valuable opportunities for collaboration, learning and planning for the rest of the project.
