Smart...What has been the question again? – Documentation

PROF. FLORIAN PFEFFER WORKSHOP 13.11.2017 - 17.11.2017

NEW KALK DOCUMENTATION Alessandra Sara Cutroneo

“Smart...what has been the question again?”

How it all began To talk about what I did, I’d like to start with one of the first sentences that professor Pfeffer said to us during our first meeting:

So, if it’s not technology that makes a city smart, what is it instead?

That’s what we tried to figure out the first day: we did some brainstorming and narrowed down our ideas to five big topics: opportunities, interactions, safety, mobility and resources. Then, every group chose one of these areas and went taking photos around Cologne of what was smart and what could have been improved.

My area for this task was “safety”.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?�

Five big topics On day two, all groups shared their information and everything was discussed with the professor and the class, sharing thoughts and opinions. After that, the brief was given.

Focusing on one or more areas, we had to come up with some ideas and concepts that can make a city smarter.

Since the other members of my group where mainly interested in public transportation and UI/UX design, I decided to go on with the project by myself and follow a different path.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?”

Walking around Kalk My aim was not to focus on just one of the five areas, what I tried to do instead was to connect all of them to find a possible smart solution. That’s how I came up with the idea of New Kalk.

Kalk is where I live, a multicultural, kind of poor and unsafe district on the “wrong” side of the Rhine. Walking around my neighborhood I’ve

always noticed all the buildings and factories which are there, empty and abandoned for different reasons: redevelopment stopped by economic crisis, buildings kept voluntarily empty by speculation, structural vacancy increased by interests of real estate industry, places abandoned for constant emergence of new needs and so on.

At the same time, Cologne is famous for its difficult rent situation — very few places to stay, expensive rents.

I put myself in the shoes of these people who struggle to find a place to stay (actually, I was part of this group until the end of November) or start their activity and I thought that these empty buildings could have been the perfect solution to solve a big problem.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?�

My concept

So my idea was taking shape in my mind.

What could we do with all these abandoned places in poor areas of the city?

What if we can matchmake people with ideas and people with empty spaces?

Where both sides win, but the most important one, the neighborhood community, wins more?

After doing some researches, I found out that this idea is not as utopian as it seemed1.

5 see page 11 for the researches.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?�

Feedbacks and suggestions On the day after, I proposed my idea to the professor and he liked it, but he also told me to be careful and mind the problem of gentrification: a process by which middle-class people move in a traditionally workingclass area of a city, changing and improving the character of the area, but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.

Basically, he told me to avoid what already happened in Cologne in the Ehrenfeld district, which was poor and unsafe less than 20 years ago, but is now the most gentrified and hipster district of the city.

His advice was therefore to find something that could prevent this phenomenon to happen and made it possible for this project to last in a long-term period.

To avoid the risk of gentrification, I decided to turn the use of these buildings temporary.

Since the workshop was really short, I had just one day left and I was alone, he suggested me to produce a manifesto as an outcome of my concept, where a list of rules or commandments was written.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?”

How the concept works Let’s imagine an empty property or one that has not been used for a long period of time: the owner cannot find any use for this space at market rate, while on the other hand a project initiator is looking for a place at an accessible price.

A contract is signed between the owner and the project initiator and the project initiator is given this property for temporary use.

The contract states the commitments of the project initiator, which are: responsible and respectful use of the space, contribution to maintenance and light renovation, possible ideas and opportunity for long term use, organization of periodic events involving the community.

While for the owner, he must offer a preferential rent, define the exact duration of the temporary use, define the exact monthly rent which can’t change over time, prevent two similar activities to be in the same building.

To involve the community more, I decided that the members of the neighborhood should have been the ones to decide, through a voting system, who was allowed to stay in the buildings.

The vacancy is therefore revived in the form of a mutual benefit for the owners, the project initiators and the neighborhood community.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?”

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“Smart...what has been the question again?”

The manifesto

NEW KALK 10 ESSENTIAL RULES FOR TEMPORARY USE OF ABANDONED PLACES

owners 1

they must offer a preferential rent

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exact duration of the temporary use previously defined

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the monthly rent can’t change over time

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no similar activities at the same time

tenants

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they must be chosen by the neighborhood community

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temporary stay no longer than 3 years

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responsible and respectful use of the building

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contribution to maintenance and light renovation

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possible ideas and opportunities for a long-term use

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they must organize periodic events involving the community

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“Smart...what has been the question again?�

Aim and possibilities What I wanted to do is linked to the concept of distributed system and SLOC (Small, Local, Open and Connected), where everyone can bring his own strength and work on a possible solution, repacking already existing things in a smarter way. I wanted to enhance the importance of a mixture of cultures, which can break the city barriers and connect people to each other, involving the whole community.

And what could happen next?

What are the potential benefits of this idea?

For the owners it ensure soft maintenance of their properties; for project initiators it means lower barriers to accomodate their initiatives; for residents and merchants it promotes a lively and dynamic neighborhood; for the community it’s a booster for cultural and economic activities; for the neighborhood itself it means more equity and social integration and more democracy. Hopefully it could also be a way to clean up and develop a poor and kind of isolated area of the city.

Of course this is just a concept and it is way far from concrete, but I think it has some potential and it could work in the future.

A web platform could be a useful tool for the whole process, where technology is just a mean, and not the aim.

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“Smart...what has been the question again?”

Links and sources 1. http://medea.mah.se/living-lab-the-neighbourhood/ 2. https://theplaidzebra.com/how-medellin-used-urban-planning-as-a-weapon-to-fight-violent-cartels-and-won/ 3. http://www.phillyihub.org 4. http://www.strategicdesignscenarios.net/city-eco-lab/ 5. https://www.crowdbuilding.nl 6. https://newrepublic.com/article/144260/stop-gentrification 7. https://www.alternet.org/culture/20-ways-not-be-gentrifier 8. https://shelterforce.org/2014/05/23/7_policies_that_could_prevent_gentrification/ 9. http://marketurbanism.com/2015/01/28/2-ways-fight-gentrification/ 10. https://freeriga.lv 11. http://bigthink.com/think-tank/immigrants-are-crucial-to-us-economic-growth 12. “Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to social innovation” by Ezio Manzini

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