Wijkvernieuwing? Ja! Maar hoe organiseren we dat?

Wijkvernieuwing? Ja! Maar hoe organiseren we dat?

And then, one day the moment comes when a neighborhood demands for renewal… There might be a physical cause, an economic cause, or (most times) a combination of causes. A plan is needed. How to define that optimal and resilient future that is addressing the current challenges? What should be the plan’s ingredients? After years of work on various transitions, I asked myself these questions when for the very first time I got to work on a neighborhood transition in a Dutch town. Intuitively and based on previous experience I developed an approach. I added more neighborhood transition experience and research to it. In this article I articulate my perspective on how to create a strategy or future plan, honoring the complexity of the neighborhood. I share my typical integral approach to initiate more dialogue about transitions in neighborhoods and jointly become better at it.

Let me propose a structure to move through the strategy process, which is also the structure for this article. I have experienced that it makes sense to walk through five distinctive steps to reach a comprehensive strategy. First is obviously to analyze the current situation in the neighborhood by a thorough assessment. Next is to take a step back and also analyze how societal transitions impact the neighborhood, both now and in the emerging future. Third is to establish the fundamental values that guide your vision, because strategizing a neighborhood’s future is also based on personal, professional and societal values.

The fourth step: identify how the neighborhood can enhance its resilience to become futureproof. These four steps or pillars jointly form the foundation. The fifth step is the creative part of the strategizing process: it is a synthesis of information of the previous steps leading to a vision and a set of guiding principles that serve as a framework while executing the renewal. This is crucial because this vision and principles allow others who are less involved, to contribute, to identify potential blind spots, and to engage in discussions about alternative approaches, enriching the overall process.

The content table of a future plan, based on these five steps, would then contain the following chapters:

1. Analysis of the neighborhood
2. Impact of societal transitions on the neighborhood
3. Values for the neighborhood

The points 1 to 4 are in fact the four pillars on which the strategy in step 5 is built. In this article all five chapters will be covered, one by one. I will finalize with a paragraph that firstly covers the main requirements for the process of creating a strategy and then briefly touches upon the execution paragraph of the strategy, because no strategy has any value without being executed.

Meeting a
neighborhood
from a systemic
perspective

To start off, what exactly is a neighborhood? It is a part of a city, edged on a map, and sometimes these edges are palpable in the streets. While reading the work of Lewis Mumford (1961) and Ben Wilson (2021) on the history of cities, it is obvious that from the first settlements to the first city of Uruk, to current cities like Barcelona or Mumbai, neighborhoods are dynamic and complex systems with recurring elements.

I distinguish six key elements, functions or domains that integrate within a neighborhood: co-habitants, basic needs, housing, public space, facilities and the neighborhoods environment. Whether a neighborhood is thriving, or habitants live in terror, these elements are a constant. The forms may differ, their function remains the same. Let’s briefly go over them one by one; their integrated whole defines the character of a neighborhood.

Co-habitants

• How many people live in the neighborhood (or visit the neighborhood), for how long have they lived there and what is the size of the households?
• What is their age, education level, general happiness, health, work and financial situation (income distribution and wealth distribution indicators can be insightful)?
• Where do children go to school, where do adults work, where is leisure time spent?
• Where do people meet others, do they know many others in the neighborhood, what do they share, are they organized, and what do they contribute to the neighborhood.

Zeg nog eens iets leuks

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