RE-CITY: Reviving Shrinking Cities

Systems Thinking – a New Approach to Global Challenges: Notes from an Inspiring Summer School in Rhineland-Palatinate

by Bozhidar Ivanov, ESR at TU Kaiserslautern

September 2019 started with a really beneficial and inspiring event for me: I took part in the 6th Trifels Summer School, organized by the University of Koblenz-Landau. Twenty PhD candidates from different disciplines and universities in Germany and Switzerland gathered in the beautiful small town of Annweiler am Trifels for a 4-day intensive and productive programme, focused on systems thinking – an innovative approach to the complexities and challenges of today’s world.

Credits: Christian Dorsch

The traditional way of analyzing problems by breaking them down to key elements is contested by systems thinking. Instead, it offers a more flexible perspective on embracing complexity and focuses on the interrelation between the different factors that affect a certain issue. On the first day, we quickly grasped this innovative approach with the keynote speech by Martin Lees from the OECD. Lees took us on a journey through the global challenges we face today – from climate crisis, through the ever increasing world population to the continuing dependence on fossil fuels. With his inspiring talk, Lees constructed a web of interrelations between these daunting issues that we need to overcome.

As we continued our journey, we acquired some theoretical knowledge on systems thinking, gamification, and interdisciplinary research with guest speakers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, University of Koblenz-Landau, and TU Darmstadt. This led to the biggest highlight of the event – a social simulation game, based on the systems approach, in which all participants had to step into the roles of governments and world leaders to tackle the global challenges outlined on our first day.

Credits: Bozhidar Ivanov

For me, the game was an enriching and fascinating experience. I have always been critical towards different policies and decisions on government level in various countries, so stepping into the shoes of the minister of economy of one of the countries in the game was a completely new perspective. And, as it turned out, it was not an easy role: I found myself having to balance between providing the food and resources my country’s population needed on the one hand, and an energy transition project that we initiated in order to phase out from coal on the other! Navigating through endless negotiations with other ‘states’, the ‘world future organization’ and sustainable development scorecards, all of us had to deal with the consequences of our decisions for the environment, displayed by ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and fish resources depletion.

After a long day of ‘playing’ with those serious issues and a fruitful reflection on how the game unfolded, I started thinking about how this new knowledge can be put into practice when it comes to shrinking cities and my research.

My conclusion is: It’s not that easy. The global issues we face put countries in a dire situation which will also affect shrinking cities. What’s more, the decision making process in the context of governance is more complex than I expected. One of the main takeaways for me is the necessity to always take into account the financial aspect of a certain decision. In my fictitious role of economy minister, I had to ensure the basic needs of the ‘population’ and only after that could I think of spending on long-term or improvement initiatives. The limitations before any decision are countless. Navigating and negotiating in a ‘real world’ context proved to be challenging for and underestimated by many participants. Last but not least, as the immediate consequences our decisions had for the environment were visualized on the playing board, we were confronted with the immense scale of the problems we face today.

With that said, providing recommendations for ‘smartening’ shrinkage – as I plan to do in my research –must incorporate all those additional factors in order to be truly applicable for cities facing challenges.

Curious discovery:

As I spent some time in the town of Annweiler, I came across a narrow street junction named Schipka Pass. As it happens, the Shipka Pass is actually one of the most important historical locations in Bulgarian history, marking a 1877 key battle in the Liberation war.

Credits: Bozhidar Ivanov, Bozhidar Ivanov and Jeroen Kransen (f.l.t.r.)

Further Links:

Example of systems thinking causal map on risks by World Economic Forum: http://www.sigeneration.ca/making-systems-thinking-slogan/

More on OECDs approach to global challenges through systems thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjxGkAEqls0

Why plan in a cultural way? Insights from the UrbCulturalPlanning conference in Kiel

Last month I attended my first conference in my new early-stage researcher role within the RE-CITY International Training Network. The first edition of the Baltic UrbCulturalPlanning conference named “Urban transformation through art and culture” was a three-day event packed with interesting plenary sessions, insightful workshops and artistic city walks in Kiel – a port city on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast.

UrbCulturalPlanning is a cross-border project organized between 14 partners in nine countries of the Baltic Sea region. Many cities in the Baltic Sea region are challenged by emerging societal and demographic changes, including urban shrinkage, while facing financial struggles. The UrbCulturalPlanning project uses the ‘cultural planning’ approach, which focuses on using culture and creativity to improve living conditions in city neighbourhoods and rural areas. This is implemented through local projects and Urban Labs with active co-creation among citizens, and between citizens and authorities. The project aims to harness the expertise of public bodies and local NGOs to address regional problems such as social exclusion, gentrification, stigmatization and conflicts, and develop a toolbox of good practices for other cities.

The content of the conference was enlightening due to a good mix of participants with diverse experience: architects and city planners, politicians and civil servants, academics, community and NGO leaders, artists and activists.

On my way there I had quite high hopes for this conference because of its theme being closely related to my research topic, ‘The role of culture-led regeneration strategies in shrinking cities.’ In addition, the keynote speakers were some of the most established scholars and practitioners in the cultural planning field, with Franco Bianchini, Charles Landry and Lia Ghilardi among them. But even then it really exceeded my expectations! Instead of being held in a convention centre, the plenary sessions took place in a church with great acoustics and an intimate atmosphere. The workshops were located in abandoned buildings, with projectors placed between graffiti walls and old staircases. It definitely helped create the right mindset to reflect on neighbourhood decline and social problems. The city walks I attended represented interesting case studies, like ALTE MU – the former building of the Academy of Art taken over by a community of young sustainable entrepreneurs.

The keynote speakers reflected on the changing realities of modernity and how culture can help to address the major political, social and economic challenges of today. In his plenary speech, Charles Landry, the inventor of the Creative City and Creative Bureaucracy concepts, introduced the Civic City, a new kind of city where space, place and time are reconfigured, aiming to address major issues if our time: inequality, environmental distress, multicultural tension, shrinkage and shared lives. According to Landry, there are certain things we can do to rethink urbanity. First of all, in order to respond to urban problems, planning should address soft issues, paying more attention to how people can mix and organize themselves, instead of focusing on physical conditions. Second, the process should be based on shared commons, eco-consciousness, cultural literacy, inclusivity, inter-generational equity and an invigorated democracy. ‘The city affects us, and we affect the city, it’s bloody obvious – everybody is a citymaker,’ says Landry.

Charles Landry delivering his plenary talk

After attending the workshops, I realized just how many systemic obstacles municipalities face in adopting novel planning mechanisms. As the main issue, the majority of actors identified the lack of integrated policy at the city level, and cultural concerns not being given equal importance compared to other areas like economic growth, education and health. In addition, local governments struggle with a lack of professional knowledge and expertise to work with cultural planning methods and lack of synergies between different departments at the local and cross-scale levels. The major question was: who could take the leading role in the process – who has the necessary contacts and trust in design, political and urban networks?

Another workshop I attended was organized by the strategic department of the Riga city council. Riga, the capital of Latvia, is a shrinking city that has experienced a population decline of almost 30 percent since 1989. I hadn’t thought of digging into Riga as a case study before, but after learning more about its shrinking patterns and cultural regeneration strategies, it turned out to be a great case study for my research. Fortunately, at the workshop I met community and NGO leaders, artists and museum curators who are potential informants for my future interviews. At this point, I have already planned my first field trip to Riga in October. I look forward to sharing that experience in my next blog post.

About the author

Anastasiya Ansteeg is an urban planning graduate from Russia based at the TU Dortmund, Germany. Within the RE-CITY network, she is working towards her PhD by conducting research on culture-led regeneration strategies in shrinking cities.

Anastasiya Ansteeg, far left, at the UrbCulturalPlanning conference

Further links

Learn more about what the cultural planning approach is by watching a short video by Prof. Franco Bianchini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzwThwwnwk
Check out the cities involved in the UrbCulturalPlanning project and learn more about the local initiatives https://urbcultural.eu/demonstrators/

From Pen to Screen: Communicating Academic Research through Filmmaking

Have you ever wondered how to bring your research topic across to someone who is not working in academia or a person working entirely outside your field? Talking about the piles of scientific papers you’ve read is surely not the most enjoyable path to take (your listeners will agree). But what’s the alternative? Here is where academic filmmaking comes in!

John Grierson defined documentaries as “the creative treatment of actuality”

All 13 of us RE-CITY fellows gathered in Paris in early April for the workshop “From Pen to Screen” with filmmaker Roddy Cunningham and screenwriter Jim McRoberts, to learn how to translate our academic work in the field of urban studies into meaningful, entertaining stories.

To address the more pressing questions researchers faced with bags of camera equipment might have (“How do I turn this thing on?”), our crash course in filmmaking included a lot of practical advice. This ranged from camera positioning and handling (“Don’t let the viewer detect you and the camera in a reflection in one of the windows.” or “Each camera is different – familiarize yourself with your camera before entering the field”) to editing and interview techniques (“We discover our films three times: in writing, shooting, and editing.” and “When conducting interviews, start with soft questions to help your interviewees open up”).

However, beyond learning the importance of taking off the lens cap, we also discovered what filmmaking has to do with our research.

Jim and Roddy showed us that making a film has many parallels with writing a PhD dissertation. Just as a research plan helps us navigate through our projects, a film script makes sure that there is a meaningful story to be told.

“All documentary making is a construct.”
Jim McRoberts

It quickly became evident that filmmakers have the power to choose which truth is being told. This impossibility of objectivity within filmmaking seemed – at first – at odds with our role as early-stage researchers: our research is supposed to be factual. However, upon reflection, research is never truly objective either. Filmmaking and research share the common goal of shedding light on certain aspects of reality with an aim to understand them. Understood as completed thoughts, they can both help make sense of the phenomena around us.

However, filmmaking offers us some opportunities that are just not imaginable when writing journal articles: in film, we get to address the viewer’s emotions by choosing background music and accompanying our story with pictures. We are allowed to focus on certain aspects of research and open doors to create entertaining stories that would remain closed in an academic paper. Through this, our research topic comes alive. When considering how to present film material, Jim McRoberts shared a crucial piece of advice we’ve all heard when writing papers: “Stay away from the cliché!”

Filmmakers try to find ways into their characters’ lives. In film, we get to give agency to our research subject: We let the people and places we study speak and tell their own stories.

The short film ‘Doos and Don’ts’ is a documentary which – at first sight – deals with pigeons and their owners. Looking closer, though, it presents itself as a great example of a film that helps its individuals to tell their complex stories. Who would have thought that a film on “dookits” (a Scots noun for a pigeon loft or, sometimes, a pigeon-hole) in Glasgow could help tell the story of a post-industrial city and its people facing and tackling economic deprivation?

What we took from this workshop is not only confidence in the role of documentaries as a meaningful way to disseminate academic ideas, but also knowledge that filmmaking is a rather complex endeavor! Sharing the challenges of filmmaking and the workshop environment with our new PhD cohort helped shape us as a team and we look forward to three stimulating years of research together.

About the author

Norma Schemschat is a political science graduate from Hamburg based at the ENS in Paris. Within the RE-CITY network she conducts research on immigration in shrinking territories in France, Germany, and the U.S.

Further links

Visit us on our program website and follow us on social media (insert links to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn).
Watch The Baltimore Plan, one of the first academic movies made in the field of urban studies.
Just as with research, filmmaking needs funding. Learn more about funding opportunities for filmmakers here.

The Workshop From Pen to Screen took place in Paris from April 8^th to 12^th 2019. The team of organizers consisted of Professor Emmanuèle Cunningham-Sabot, Roddy Cunningham and Jim McRoberts.