How can cities evolve, grow and innovate when urban planning policies are constraining? How can we design the unexpected? How can we experiment in planning?
Considering that placemaking is to zoning what creative bureaucracy is to red tape, this session will showcase a conversation between Charlot Schans from Placemaking Europe, Robin Abad Ocubillo (San Francisco Planning Department), who shaped Places for People, SF’s Placemaking Ordinance, and Pablo Sendra (UCL – Bartlett School of Planning), co-author with Richard Sennet of the recently published book Designing Disorder, Experiments and Disruptions in the City (Verso, 2020)
Login or Register
You need to login!
Learning from… Disorder
Charlot Schans is an urban sociologist and anthropologist by training, with years of experience in developing and coordinating international networks, events and projects in the field of urban development and social innovation. Her work starts from the understanding that the most livable, sustainable and equitable cities around the globe are the result of effective co-creation between a variety of stakeholders. She is fascinated by processes that enhance collaborative city-making, cross-cutting barriers between disciplinary silos and public and private domains. In her current position as advisor at STIPO she translates this vision into longterm projects in the field of area and real estate development, placemaking and urban regeneration, co-creating better cities and places with innovative partners and professional friends. In September 2020 Charlot has been appointed as Director of Placemaking Europe, a network of over 3.000 placemakers, from civic innovators to politicians and real estate developers, working together to improve our collective public spaces in European cities.
Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. Co-Founder and Director of the urban design practice Lugadero, which works on co-design processes, and co-founder of the CivicWise network. At UCL, he is the programme Director of the MSc Urban Design and City Planning and the coordinator of the Civic Design CPD course. He carries out radical teaching and action research in collaboration with communities and activists in London. Pablo’s main areas of research interest are collaborative planning and urban design processes, social housing and community activism. He is co-author of Designing Disorder (2020), Community-Led Regeneration (2020) and co-editor of Civic Practices (2017).
Robin Abad Ocubillo is a dedicated public servant with a passion for civic innovation in public space design, planning, evaluation, and policy. He is currently the Director of Shared Spaces in the city and country of San Francisco, helping communities leverage the public realm for economic recovery, civic and psychological wellbeing. Shared Spaces program builds on Places for People, the first placemaking ordinance of its kind in the country to streamline government processes and lower barriers for communities creating and stewarding public spaces in underutilized streets and lots.
Over the last decade, Robin has led several of the City’s placemaking programs during a periods of intensive growth; doubling the parklet population, expanding partnerships to cultural and community institutions, and overseeing the development of an award-winning Parklet Manual. Robin has also extensively developed research methods and metrics for human-use evaluation of public spaces, manages the City’s Public Space – Public Life Program, and is co-author of the Global Public Life Data Protocol.