ENACT 15mC

ENACT15mC will (re)imagine urban public spaces and streets to make them more walkable, cyclable, and pleasant to spend time in. We will engage residents coming from diverse backgrounds and ability, property owners and local municipalities in thematically distinct urban living labs (ULLs) to co-create ideas for street and neighbourhood transformations. The living labs will address spatial and functional issues that currently challenge walkability in Trondheim, Gdansk, Valencia and Oxford. These cases each have different cultural, climatic and geographic contexts that design thinking must respond to. Iterative design processes through the living labs will be supported by novel Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies. While these tools are not uncommon, their use by the Enact 15mC consortium will address critiques that they are functionalist in approach (versus design oriented), that they are manipulative and that they create barriers to involving people who are unfamiliar with or otherwise unable to use them. Visualising technologies will be made available to the public, along streets, in public spaces and during co-creation workshops. We aim to break down barriers with coaching and to compare use of these tools alongside others, including tactical urbanism, mapping and physical modelling. These comparisons will lead to new knowledge around co-creation processes.