Co-creation
Rotterdam’s Mayor Ahmed Abu Taleb gave an inspiring talk at the graduation of the Urban Management and Development Masters programme at IHS, the Netherlands. The place was the Floating Pavilion, part of the city’s Climate Change Initiative. The participants of the course might have been focusing on getting their diploma’s, but the Mayor helped them on their way with some stimulating final lessons.
Co-creation is a popular concept in business management, but Abu Taleb promoted its use in city development. He spoke of his holding neighbourhood meetings where 9 out of 10 ideas typically come from local residents. He illustrated this with a story of two residents who had improved a run down house through a city scheme. In the scheme, a property in a difficult area is sold at a very low price on condition that it is thoroughly improved.
“I met two people who had an old house at a low price and had transformed it into a beautiful place. They turned their attention towards the public area. A piece of grass that was neglected by the community and government for a long time. They had an idea to transform that piece of land into a wonderful small park serving the neighbourhood. They used the opportunity of the presence of the Mayor to share ideas with me on the wall. I was really impressed ”
Having improved the property the residents used the Mayor’s visit to promote the transformation of an untended open space into an attractive and useable micro-park.
The Mayor simply said “please do it”, and offered €5,000 to get the work started . He invited himself to a barbecue there in a years time. This, he said, would make sure that his service departments would also give support.
Why not offer to have his departments take over the project? It would take too long and loose the energy of the initiators.
Diversity to go
The second lesson, linked to the first, was on diversity.
In the Mayor’s words “I used to look for someone who fits in the team. Now I’m looking for people who are not fitting in the team, who ask different questions and have new ideas, other ideas. With this friction of ideas, new things are born. Don’t be afraid of diversity”.
A timely message in a city which has a very diverse population.
This is the second time I have been inspired by a mayor(or former mayor) in two weeks. The other was the former mayor of Medellin – see my post from the World Urban Forum in Naples.
Co-creation is a dynamic way to describe participation – with the emphasis on generating an outcome and not only on going through a process. A strong leadership from the mayor is very important in ensuring that local government is responsive and follows up on the energy that can be generated through participative planning. The alternative is letting the enthusiasm cool and turn to frustration.
Congratulations to the graduates of the IHS class of UMD 8. I hope they take these lessons home with them.
For many different reasons, local government leaders still act as the initiator and lead their vision as if it was the best for their people. And for many years, citizens are being neglected for their ideas on how to improve their neighborhood the way they see and understand it. Irony and conflict on interests have become a daily meal. The way Rotterdam’s Mayor, Ahmed Abu Taleb, understand and encourage his citizen – to take the risk of making their vision into reality – takes a lot of courage and purity in his heart, giving the credits not to himself and to the city, but to his citizen.
I envy him as a person and as a leader of a multicultural city. Congratulation to Rotterdam’s Mayor and all the graduated participants.
Great article! In Rotterdam and many other Dutch cities, citizens have recently been taking the initiative in urban development. It started with people taking over the edges of streets and the soil around trees to plant flowers, where the city didn’t. Not destroying these unplanned flower beds was a first step. Now that government- and developer led projects have come to a standstill, citizens are finally seizing the opportunity that this gap in initiative offers. Community gardens have sprung up on empty building sites -more or less with the owners’ consent, and the Rotterdam scheme of fixing up run down houses has proved popular with middle class people who previously fled the city in droves (Rotterdam has by far the biggest income divide between city and suburbs in the country).
Some cities are actively creating new opportunities for citizens initiatives, in the form of self-build neighborhoods where people can buy a parcel of land to build on, instead of a ready built house. Self buiding was very rare here until now, especially in cities.
So, co-creation seems to be a way for energetic people to finally create the home and neighborhood they want. Let’s hope the poorest in society can benefit too.
Daniel, you are right, it is encouraging.
In Netherlands there seems to be an emergence of new thinking on the role of government and potential role of individuals and community. Some proposals for Almere, for example, are quite radical. And some individuals are willing to take initiative, though old habits die hard, and most still expect government to be responsible.
In the majority of the World’s cities the issue is not about how to have citizens participate, but rather on how to have government participate in a useful manner. In many cases 50-60% of urban development is “informal”.
The changes in thinking give an increasing potential of mutual inspiration and learning between developing and developed countries.
Netherlands, I think rightly, has a strong reputation for planning, but models need to change. It can lead and learn at the same time.