Abstract
The transitional phase in which the Danube Region (DR) cities found themselves after the 2008 economic crisis allowed a window of opportunity to enact positive change on the planning policy level. There have been numerous initiatives in the past aimed to reuse, even temporarily, un-valued physical assets for launching novel forms of economies by a new generation of highly skilled young teams. Yet such initiatives remained disparate or difficult to replicate taking into consideration the large contextual variability surrounding urban settlement development (for instance, wealth, population density, historical development, etc.) and the fact that there is no centralizing tool directly addressing this issue. The biggest challenge remains that of embedding the necessary instruments into governance, creating local capacity and instruments for fast-tracking urban regeneration. Cities need to overcome a spectrum of bottlenecks, which include legal, administrative and organizational, financial, technical, logistical, and expertise related barriers and gaps. AGORA Interreg Project addresses this by deploying and adopting new, creative governance instruments for Public Administrations, in 10 different cities in the Danube Region, thus building their capacity for effectively involving, connecting, and empowering a wide group of stakeholders in the reintegration of vacant buildings and land, public and private, into the productive city value system. Those cities are: ( Regionalverbrand Neckar-Alb -Metzingen, MeBstetten, Rottenburg-, Prague 9, Szarvas, Chisinau, Cluj-Napoca, Sofia, Zenica, Slavonski Brod, Koprivnica, Kranj. We want to achieve substantial change in the process and workflow of PAs at the local level, as well as to launch a transnational policy-learning platform for supporting Danube Region cities in the reintegration and reconnection of local undervalued assets, giving a new sense to abandoned spaces, brownfields, urban areas in decline. The regeneration process will be focused in each city around one of the following thematic clusters: UNUSED/ UNDERUSED AREAS as public spaces’ potential (Valuation of unused public spaces, open and built, as social, educational and/or cultural service hubs; etc.), LARGE-SCALE (post-) INDUSTRIAL AREAS (Recovery and economic valorization of large-scale post-industrial heritage in private or public property), UNUSED/ UNDERUSED AREAS (buildings) (Matchmaking between vacant commercial / business spaces in the city and potential users;). The paper will focus on the outputs of WorkpackageT3, part of the AGORA project. The main outcomes that WPT3 wants to achieve refer to the activation all of the local AGORA Communities and CPs set-up in previous Work packages, and involve them in the co-creation process of conceptual development visions for their city. It will be carried out in parallel in all participating cities and will result in defining the process, tools and roadmap employed for the Co-Design of context specific Regeneration Agendas. A critical analysis and comparison of best cases, examples from cities in Danube region, but also Western examples from Europe is done and gathered in a Co-creation Digital Library. WP T3 activates the local networks and engages them in consolidating their city-building visions upon the knowledge gathered from the Digital Library. Cities produce strategic roadmaps through the adaptation of solutions from the policy instrument to design public services, protocols, methodologies, and instruments supporting the redevelopment of un/underused vacant spaces (post-industrial, public open spaces, and public/private built heritage).
