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.