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Description
Făgăraş, a small town in southern Transylvania, lost over 30% of its residents in just two decades (from approximately 44,000 to 31,000 between 1992-2011) and over 15,000 jobs. The town’s-built environment is currently over-sized, with much abandonment, degradation and disconnected with the community needs. Children jump the fence of School no. 2 to play football in the school yard, although the city is full of useless lands. High school students walk ‘near the dam’, along the channel for the release of household waters, among garbage and sheepfold dogs although the fences of abandoned former factories hide green oases awaiting new functions. But most of all, demographic decline and economic restructuring left behind civic apathy and discouragement. Youth can''t wait to leave Făgăraş. Throughout their becoming, they were disconnected of the fundamental democratic exercise of reflecting on the state of one’s town and actively contributing to its revitalization. “Lively Făgăraș” is a project that aims to shake youth from Făgăraș out of their lethargy. The project will support youth to see not abandonment, but potential, to understand the decisions that underpin the town development and to engage them in such decisions. The project’s team will capitalize on latent spaces in Făgăraș to develop a youth work methodology called DIG (Discovery - Ideation - Governance). They will map spaces with reconversion potential, co-design ideas for revitalization tied to local community infrastructure needs, mobilize community resources to intervene on them and develop co-governance tools for their maintenance. Make Better as an Applicant association contributes with know-how in urban regeneration, Făgăraș Country Community Foundation mobilizes youth and community resources to carry out interventions and the Norwegian partner, Open Transformation, helps with transfer of know-how in developing the work method.
Summary of project results
Through the project "Lively Fagaras", Association Make Better aimed to support the young people of Făgăraș to see potential, instead of abandonment, to understand the decisions that underpin the town`s development and to contribute to such decisions. In this sense, the project tested a method of working with latent spaces: DIG (Discovery – Ideation – Governance). In this last stage of the project, continued the process of participatory mapping of needs for new spaces and functions in the city, respectively of spaces with reconversion potential, were drew up ideas for their revitalization starting from local needs, were mobilized resources from the community to intervene and activate them and were developed co-governance tools for their long-term maintenance. This approach resulted in, among others: a methodology and tools for participatory mapping and ideation, over 100 young people with consolidated knowledge about their city and its development mechanisms, interventions to transform 3 latent spaces, 2 governance tools developed for the partnership between citizens, public institutions and private actors for the maintenance and capitalization of abandoned/under-utilized assets of the city and a Kit describing the implemented process, accessible to any organization willing to activate latent spaces in their city. The project also resulted in the increased capacity of the organizations involved to design and implement processes of civic participation and co-governance of public goods, this project being a great learning opportunity for all involved. The project was very visible, both locally, nationally and internationally. In addition to the constant communication activities carried out during the project, `Lively Făgăraș` was presented in Sibiu, during the Architecture Biennale, and was included in an exhibition of good practices in Brussels.
Summary of bilateral results
Volunteers and experts from the Norwegian partner participated in all the joint meetings that took place online with the project partners to think about the methodology of the workshops implement in Fantanele. The role was to provide methodological support to the Make organization Better to think about the format of the ideation sessions by contributing specific know-how in the methods participatory design, respectively to think and carry out interventions to activate spaces selected within the project The Norwegian partner was actively involved in the development of the kit description of the DIG method - Discovery, Ideation, Governance. The Norwegian perspective was a big plus project value, because through OpenTransformation, the promoter access to the methods work and innovative tools for engaging citizens in the design and activation of spaces incity, which have been successfully tested.