Our work at Urban Mode Is focused on the relationship of people with place. We support place-oriented, people-centred development.
Below please find overviews of some of our projects over the past five years. Please get in touch if you would like to learn more.
We helped ten small cities from ten countries in the European Union to work together in the City Centre Doctor Project with the aim to learn from each other and develop action plans to revitalise their city centres. We supported the partner cities with methods to conduct place analyses in their city centres, from which they identified challenges for further action. We helped them to develop ‘beta’ actions, or prototypes, to test the possibilities and impact on their city centre. We facilitated the evaluation of their actions leading to ‘permanent’ actions. The project was co-funded by the URBACT Programme. It started in September 2015 and ended in May 2018.
We worked with the Arts Office of Dublin City Council to develop a proposal for an EU Project to train educators and museum curators in Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) as a way for children to gain their own insights in art works as well as to develop their critical thinking skills. The Permission to Wonder Project was successful in receiving co-funding from the Erasmus+ Programme. It started in 2017 and is a three-year project with partners in 6 European Union member states with Dublin City Council as the lead partner. We helped the partners to agree their methodology and to develop a project plan for the project period. The intended outcomes include a network of educators in the participating cities who will be able to train others to implement the VTS teaching methodology in schools.
The URBACT Programme together with other programmes such as the EU Urban Agenda identified the need to support stakeholders in smaller cities to deal with change and collaborate to sustain the vitality of their cities. These challenges are often portrayed in the media as cities who are ‘being left behind’. URBACT has decided to examine the existing challenges and supports for small cities with the aim of developing a Framework for Support of Small Cities. The project started in July 2019. We will work with lead experts from other European countries to research and consult on possibilities and to propose new interventions and supports.
In September 2019 we start to support a new project co-funded by URBACT, the iPlace Project, where ten small cities will investigate ways to find niches for new local economic development while also learning from each other to enhance and improve their local innovation ecosystems.
We were co-organisers of URBACT’s Vitality of Smaller Cities in Europe Conference which was held in Barcelona in October 2018. We helped cities prepare case studies for presentation at the conference and participated as moderator for Session 2: “Building attraction through community engagement in placemaking”. We co-wrote the report and conclusions from the conference.
In April 2019, the Association of Cities in Croatia hosted a conference on Integrated Urban Development titled Merging the Split: Converting Spaces into Places. We assisted with the concept development for the conference and moderated the Session: “Placemaking in Public Spaces as a Practical Approach to Create Momentum for Integrated Urban Development”.
At the inaugural conference of the European Placemaking Network titled the Cities for All Conference held in Stockholm in April 2018, we moderated a session on “Gentrification and Liveliness of Small Cities and Towns”.
Our work as facilitators included the organising and facilitating of the following workshops:
A workshop to explore place branding to promote cities as ‘playful cities’ took place during the transnational meeting of the Playful Paradigm Network in Udine, Italy on 24th May 2019. Participants from eight cities across Europe gained insights how a clearly defined and supported city place brand informs and directs a range of creative branding activities.
Workshops on participatory placemaking where participants explore core tools that help them to take on the challenge making public spaces into places which people enjoy using regularly and with a range of activities and amenity that enhance the quality of life in a neighbourhood. These workshops were held in the neighbourhood of Őrmező in Budapest, Hungary on 5 May 2019 as part of the Come In! Network’s transnational meeting; in the old town of Zadar, Croatia on 26 April 2019 during the international ‘Merging the Split’ Conference on Integrated Urban Development; and in the Campo Mártires da Pátria, Lisbon, Portugal on 13 September 2018 during the URBACT European City Festival.
A workshop on urban mobility held on 17 June 2017 in Pécs, Hungary as part of the transnational meeting of the RetaiLink Project, specifically to assist participants from ten cities in Europe to explore the effect and influence of urban mobility on retail in their city centres.
We supported Fingal County Council with the successful development of a proposal for the regeneration of Balbriggan submitted to the first call of Ireland’s Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) in September 2018. The proposal was the product of inter-departmental collaboration under the leadership of the Economic Development Department.
