Case Study: Konsthall Ur & Skur and the Råby Table
Simon Lindblom
Case overview and context configuration
Konsthall Ur & Skur (Art Hall Rain or Shine) is an artist-driven, open-air community art space located in the Fredriksbergspark, within the socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhood of Råby in Västerås, Sweden. Driven by the non-profit organization Konstfrämjandet Västmanland in collaboration with the Västerås Art Museum and the local housing company Mimer, the initiative set out to challenge traditional, exclusive definitions of cultural spaces for civic society. Operating entirely without a building, the project established a "third place" (Oldenburg, 1999) under the open sky.
The physical and social heart of this outdoor art hall is the “Råby Table” a 10-meter-long wooden table co-created by a local immigrant carpenter and the neighborhood children. To define the "space" of the art hall, cultivation boxes (planter beds) were built and cared for by neighbors and artists, acting as the conceptual "walls" of the gallery. This radical, weather-dependent approach meant practitioners and children engaged in artmaking, shared meals, and community dialogue year-round. Ultimately, the project's grassroots presence became so undeniable that when the surrounding park underwent a major renovation, the property owner (Mimer) officially integrated the Råby Table and its cultivation boxes into the permanent architectural blueprints of the new park.
References:
Oldenburg, R. (1999) The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. 3rd edn. New York: Marlowe & Company.
Case Study: Santa Rosa Community Gardens
Stella Schroeder
Case overview and context configuration
The case study examines an informal community gardening initiative in the Santa Rosa settlement in Piura, Peru. Beginning around the 1960s and continuously evolving over time, residents transformed the underused public park “San Judas Tadeo Sector 5B” into 18 community gardens without formal municipal support. The intervention is primarily spatial and governance-based, involving the informal appropriation, design, and maintenance of public space through community self-management. The initiative emerged in a context of rapid urban growth, informal urbanization, limited green infrastructure, and weak governmental maintenance. Its main objective was to improve the local urban environment by creating green and recreational spaces for food cultivation, social interaction, and community well-being. The case demonstrates how grassroots and community-led practices can contribute to more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient forms of urban development.
The intervention developed within an informal and community-driven institutional setting, where residents appropriated and managed public space outside formal urban planning frameworks. Governance was largely decentralized and based on self-management, with neighbours collectively organizing the design, maintenance, and everyday use of the gardens, while municipal authorities played only a limited and mostly absent role. Key actors included local homeowners, families, neighbourhood groups (juntas vecinales), gardeners, and community users of the park, with potential support later identified for municipalities, educational institutions, and sustainability programs.
The socio-spatial context strongly shaped the intervention. Santa Rosa emerged through processes of informal urbanization linked to rapid population growth, migration, and limited public investment in green infrastructure and recreational spaces. Residents faced environmental deficiencies, weak maintenance of public areas, and unequal access to quality urban amenities, which motivated collective action. At the same time, the context also created opportunities: strong neighbourhood ties, local ecological knowledge, and traditions of gardening among rural migrants enabled residents to transform vacant land into multifunctional community spaces. These conditions directly influenced how the gardens were created, maintained, and valued as spaces of environmental improvement, social cohesion, and local resilience.
Case study: Floating Greenhouse, Samborondón - Ecuador
Francisca Tapia
Case overview and context configuration
The Floating Orchard (also described as a floating greenhouse/orchard equipment prototype) is a small scale, climate adaptive food production infrastructure developed on the coast of Ecuador in Samborondón canton (peripheral rural area; approx. 19,000 inhabitants). It responds to a floodable geography shaped by seasonal inundation: local hamlets can become isolated for ~3 months during the winter season, and between January and May food production on land can become impossible for families living on created islets. The intervention is conceived as a micro floating + piled device that enables planting and harvesting while the territory remains flooded and access shifts from land based to riverine routes. The prototype combines a lightweight greenhouse enclosure with modular structural elements to support replicability, rapid construction, and adaptability over time. The project was developed through collaboration between YES Innovation, Natura Futura Arquitectura, and Juan Carlos Bamba, in coordination with the municipality’s risk management department, and was executed in roughly two months as part of a wider Nature Based Solutions (NbS) pilot program. It illustrates how low-cost, vernacular-informed design can operationalize adaptation by reconfiguring the spatial and temporal conditions of production and learning under hydrological uncertainty.
The greenhouse is situated in a context shaped by recurrent river flooding and high variability in water levels, which constrains conventional ground based agriculture and disrupts everyday routines. The institutional setting is hybrid: the project is designer led but oriented toward community benefit, with an implied partnership network that includes local residents, educational actors (students/learners), and local builders. Governance is not primarily municipal led; instead, coordination appears to rely on project leadership combined with local participation and knowledge exchange for operation and use. The socio spatial conditions include exposure to climate hazards, limited protective infrastructure, and the need for resilience oriented public/collective assets that can function during and after flood events.
Case study: Bostanie, Skopje, North Macedonia
Sanja Avramoska
Bostanie is a community urban garden in Skopje, North Macedonia, initiated in 2019. The initiative is rooted in prior experimentation with urban gardening which started more than a decade ago. Bostanie is designed as a participatory, collective space where citizens grow food for personal use based on permaculture principles with mixed planting (polyculture). The garden operates on principles of ecological sustainability (no chemical inputs, use of compost, polyculture planting) and is spatially organized as a collection of small individual garden plots arranged within a shared enclosed area. Alongside productive plots, the garden includes composting areas, irrigation systems and shared communal and social spaces.
The community garden is located on publicly owned land, used with municipal approval and led by the civil society organization Green Ark. The governance structure is decentralized where the Green Ark acts mainly as a facilitator and users collectively follow agreed rules and share responsibilities. The relevant actors included are the NGO, the community of gardeners, and municipal institutions.
The initiative takes place in a context where the urban population has limited access to land, participants often lack prior gardening experience, and there is an the instability of available space. These factors actively influence the initiative on how it spatially developed, how it is maintained, and in its adaptability and learning. Nevertheless, the insecurity of permanent land leads to a flexible governance model, and limited participants' knowledge creates opportunities for learning and participation.
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons, The Green Ark Bostanie (CC BY 4.0).
Case study: Wege Park – Warsaw, Poland
Kinga Kimic
Case overview and context configuration
Wege Park in Warsaw, Poland, is the original name of the ecological initiative and formula for a publicly accessible space that combines environmental education, ecological urban gardening, and neighbourhood integration, initiated in 2016 (Wege park, 2020). It was submitted by the district councillor on behalf of Wilanów residents as a project for the 4th edition of the Warsaw Participatory Budget, to be implemented in 2018, and to obtain funding from this popular placemaking tool (Smaniotto-Costa et a., 2024; Polko et al., 2025). It represents a collaborative practice between the city government and the local community. The project was selected in a public vote and introduced in 2020 (Kimic & Błaszczyk, 2026). The main idea of ecological cultivation stemmed from the park's location at Radish Street and other streets in the area named after vegetables. Covering approximately 3,000 m², it is a publicly accessible, participatory local green area where residents grow edible plants (fruit trees and vegetables) for their own use and share gardening knowledge. Other park features also foster social integration, including benches, paths, and exercise equipment made of natural wood. It can be accessed primarily by foot or bicycle since the park is located on the outskirts of the city.
The park is located on public land designated by the city authorities. It was created as part of a public initiative, selected for implementation with funds from the Warsaw Participatory Budget, and is managed and maintained by the Wilanów District Authority. Public participation is currently limited to cultivating useful plants and organising bottom-up educational initiatives. One of the key uncertainties related to the park's long-term operation is its maintenance in subsequent years, as funds for this purpose were not included in the participatory budgeting formula and are drawn from municipal resources. The main costs include cleaning, the care of ornamental plants, and the maintenance of paths and rest equipment, all of which require support from the district government. Only the cultivation of useful plants is mostly supported by the local community.
References:
Wege park, 2020. Budżet Obywatelski Warszawy. https://bo.um.warszawa.pl/processes/na-rok-2018/f/4/projects/10972?component_id=4&locale=pl&participatory_process_slug=na-rok-2018 (04.06.2026)
Kimic K., Błaszczyk M. (2026). Urban Agriculture and Participatory Budgeting for Sustainable Cities: Evidence from Vegetable-Related Projects in Warsaw. Sustainability, 18(6), 2981. https://doi.org/10.3390/su18062981
Smaniotto Costa C., García-Esparza J.A., Kimic K. (2024). Participatory Budgeting and Placemaking: Concepts, Methods, and Practices. Urban Planning 9, 7162. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7162
Polko, P.; Mehan, A.; Kimic, K.; Tappert, S.; Suter, A.; Petrovski, A. Participatory Budgeting as an Inclusive Placemaking Driver: Different European and American Practices. In Placemaking in Practice, 1st ed.; Rotondo, F., Djukic, A., Hansen, P., Manahasa, E., Fathi, M., García-Esparza, J.A., Eds.; Engagement in Placemaking: Methods, Strategies, Approaches; Brill: Leiden, The Netherlands, 2025; Vol. 2, pp. 42–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004691919_005
Case Study Ołbiński Ogród Otwarty (Ołbin Open Garden – OOO), Wrocław, Poland
Agata Pięt
Case overview and context configuration
The Ołbiński Ogród Otwarty (OOO - Ołbin Open Garden) was a community-led urban intervention in Wrocław (2017-2023) that transformed traditional, restricted Family Allotment Gardens (pol. ROD) into a community garden. While standard ROD plots are private and individually used recreational plots, this project “removed barriers” to create a shared community hub for local residents regardless of age, gardening experience, or formal membership. Through gardening activities, workshops, cultural events, educational programmes, and informal social encounters, the intervention functioned as a community hub that combined ecological, social, and cultural objectives. It was situated in the Ołbin district that is characterised by a dense urban fabric with limited green areas, so the intervention addressed broader questions of environmental justice and access to urban nature. It was initiated by organisations operating in that district, whose goal was also to draw attention to that complex of allotment Gardens, as one of the oldest ones remained in Wrocław. They applied for funds for activities under the city’s Microgrants programme and organised workshops, guided walks and e.g. carpentry activities that led to the construction of planting boxes (Jankowska, Celiński, 2024). Their goal was also to protect the whole allotment gardens area from being developed into the built area (as it was designated in the land-use development plan). One of the conditions set by the city authorities for maintaining the area as allotment gardens was to open it up slightly for public use.
OOO located within Family Alottment Gardens area operated on a hybrid model, using a special lease to host workshops and outdoor events instead of private gardening. This approach created a dual evaluative context which frameworks coexisted from the beginning and shaped the decisions: (i) institutional evaluation regime: compliance, individual use, rule adherence, bounded access; (ii) community evaluative regime: openness, participation, inclusivity, collective care, social value.
References:
City of Wrocław. (2023, May 27). Ołbiński Ogród Otwarty został zamknięty. Wrocław.pl Rozmawia. https://www.wroclaw.pl/rozmawia/olbinski-ogrod-otwarty-zostal-zamkniety
Jankowska, J., & Celiński, A. (2024, May 24). Był największym ogrodem społecznym we Wrocławiu. Dlaczego go zamknięto? Architektura-Murator. https://architektura.muratorplus.pl/realizacje/byl-najwiekszym-ogrodem-spolecznym-we-wroclawiu-dlaczego-go-zamknieto-aa-Zxoc-CMUF-T19G.html
Integration Gardens. (2020, November 22). Integration in Wrocław allotment garden – an interview with Ołbiński Ogród Otwarty. https://www.integrationgardens.com/articles/integration-in-wroclaw-allotment-garden-an-interview-with-olbinski-ogrod-otwarty
Case study: the Centre, Bristol, the UK. Blue-Green Infrastructure in immersive environments
Kwok Chun
Case overview and context configuration
Urban planning in Bristol is increasingly challenged by shifting climate conditions, which introduce uncertainty for climate-sensitive design and sustainable urban living. Scenarios developed using convection-permitting models create opportunities for co-produced pathways in shaping common urban spaces. These approaches encourage more flexible, collaborative, and bottom-up processes for developing sustainable blue–green infrastructure, bringing together researchers, communities, and decision makers.
Developed through workshops and focus groups between 2024 and 2026, the use of immersive environments is explored for planning blue–green infrastructure in Bristol, UK. The intervention is primarily spatial and evaluative, combining climate modelling, digital twins, and participatory engagement formats. The case's main objective is to support collaborative and adaptive urban planning under uncertain climate futures, particularly for sustainable green space design. By integrating scientific simulations with stakeholder knowledge, the process aims to enable co-produced pathways for climate adaptation. The approach shifts away from top-down decision-making toward more inclusive and flexible planning processes.
The intervention operates within a hybrid institutional setting that combines academic research, public policy, and community participation. Governance is polycentric, involving researchers, local authorities, and community stakeholders, with coordination emerging through workshops and collaborative platforms. Key actors include scientists developing climate models, policymakers responsible for urban planning, and local residents contributing lived experience.
Socio-spatial conditions in Bristol, such as climate vulnerability, inequality, and diverse mobility needs, actively shape the process. For instance, tensions between sustainability goals (e.g. reducing traffic) and accessibility concerns (e.g. for car-dependent households or disabled residents) highlight competing priorities. These contextual conditions influence both the interpretation of model outputs and the feasibility of proposed interventions.
Convection-permitting simulations, when combined with socioeconomic conditions and detailed information about the local built environment and landscape, act as virtual “boundary objects.” These enable stakeholders from different disciplines to work collaboratively and compare perspectives. They are crucial in making model outputs policy-relevant by providing a consistent information base across disciplines, supporting polycentric discussions about uncertain futures under changing environmental conditions.
Understanding factors such as population dynamics, economic conditions, and inequality is essential for informing urban planning based on participant diversity. This supports a shift from top-down planning approaches toward more bottom-up processes that integrate high-resolution (kilometre-scale) convection-permitting model outputs.
Case Study: JustHood / PROVIDEDH School Futures Lab — Co-designing a Social-Ecological School of the Future
Eveline Wandl-Vogt
Case overview and context configuration
This case differs from the long-term community-led gardening and stewardship cases because it represents an anticipatory and facilitated intervention rather than an already implemented community-managed space. Its analytical value lies in showing how community-based mechanisms can operate before implementation, when spatial, ecological and governance outcomes are still being imagined, negotiated and translated into planning knowledge.
The JustHood / PROVIDEDH School Futures Lab was a facilitated co-creation workshop and ideation session held on April 11, 2023, at the Open Innovation Factory in Vienna. The intervention involved 15 participants, including 14 students aged 12–18 and one representative of the school administration, and focused on the co-design of a future school building for SZGL Berndorf. The workshop was funded by PROVIDEDH and supported by ÖBB Open Innovation, Ars Electronica Research Institute knowledge for humanity, exploration space, and JUSThood.
The intervention was primarily spatial, educational, and evaluative. Its main objective was to use a futures-driven design methodology to enable students to generate ideas for a new school building and its surrounding environment. Unlike many place-based participatory interventions, this case did not focus on transforming an existing familiar site. Instead, it invited participants to imagine and evaluate a not-yet-built school as a future social-ecological learning environment. The case therefore provides an anticipatory example of how community-based mechanisms can operate before implementation, at the stage of imagination, sense-making, and design translation.
The institutional setting was hybrid. It combined a research project context, an alternative school community, an open innovation environment, and a design-driven participatory futures methodology. The process was facilitated by Tatiana Efremenko and Eveline Wandl-Vogt, with Tatiana Efremenko responsible for methodology development, facilitation, analysis and reporting, and Eveline Wandl-Vogt contributing strategic onboarding, group connection, space preparation, project funding coordination, and co-facilitation.
The main community consisted of students from SZGL Berndorf, an alternative school characterized by self-paced learning processes and pedagogical principles related to Montessori and “Schule im Aufbruch.” This school context shaped the intervention because students were already situated within a learning culture that values autonomy, mentoring, and self-directed educational pathways.
The socio-spatial condition of the case was unusual: participants were asked to co-design a future school building although they were not yet familiar with the final spatial layout or site conditions. This created a specific form of spatial and anticipatory uncertainty. At the same time, it opened a space for imaginative futures work, allowing students to articulate social, ecological, spatial, and pedagogical priorities without being constrained by existing infrastructures. The case is therefore not community-led in the strict sense of autonomous community initiation. Rather, it is a facilitated participatory futures intervention in which students were positioned as situated experts of future school environments.
