Interview Erik Wieërs: "Public space as a meeting place and not simply as an intermediate space to get from A to B"

It is gradually happening more and more. You see pieces of space being transferred to residents who then take care of management and maintenance. Municipalities saying: this place is now yours. Not only does this mean more responsibility, people also deal with it differently. They make agreements together and connect with each other in this way. Public space as a place to build a relationship with your neighbourhood and your neighbours. I think that is a fine evolution.

Verleerd not perhaps. The idea of making encounter central actually predates corona. Only that pandemic made things even sharper. For the design of space, we define what is private, collective or public. This works its way into the social dimension of architecture. With a surge in virtual encounters during the corona crisis, people are now realising how important real, physical encounters are. And therefore also how important it is to design public space as a meeting place and not just as a middle space to get from A to B.

Herewith a clear invitation to policy. How we design our space touches on many aspects of our lives. In many places, we can still gain space and certainly soften and green. You then couple that with an operation for more facilities and services. We would have to abandon the economic model of mass production in large centres or large supermarkets or shops where you go for a pot of paint and are tempted to do so by car.
In a fragmented landscape such as in Belgium, it is much more difficult to ensure a good spread of local shops, services and facilities, unlike in Paris, for example. And it is even harder for a remote village versus a medium-sized city. Let's already start making our cities more liveable. That seems like a great idea to me. And that can only be done by making the city less car-intensive, more traffic-free and greener too. That way, you ensure that living in the city becomes attractive. And that people's 'dream' or ambition to live (far) outside the city dies out. Simply because it is more practical and pleasant in the city.

There is a lot of local knowledge you don't know about as a designer. If you involve residents, you bring them into the debate and automatically create support. Thanks to participation, you can make people realise that there are limits and that the possibilities are not endless.
Participation also works both ways. On the one hand, you give someone the feeling that you are taking their concerns into account. On the other hand, people suddenly realise that not everyone has the same priorities and that you have to look for a compromise or common denominator. I often hear from people involved in such change processes that the opposition wears off after a while. So pilot projects are an ideal way to get people to look at their neighbourhood differently. With pilot projects on living neighbourhoods, for instance, our team creates examples for other municipalities so that they in turn see new opportunities to rethink the function of public space, to make it more qualitative and people-friendly again.

I think there is some trepidation on the part of the government, that they don't really know how that fits into their whole policy pyramid. On top of that, there are legal hurdles in Flanders to properly set up a cooperative. The government still has some work to do there to get that right. When you consciously involve people in such a public transformation process, I think you can get far. One example is a new open call in Genk where outdated social housing needs a new master plan. An anthropologist has done extensive preliminary research there. Many local residents were thus able to help think about what is needed in their neighbourhood to better connect people. When such a spatial and social issue is addressed in the same breath, I think a lot is possible to work together on cities, neighbourhoods and streets on a human scale.