Backyard Revolution: Urban Strategy Booklet [Słupsk, 2015]

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0. introduction

The following project is a Urban Strategy Thesis for the MArch course at Plymouth University School of Architecture, Design and Environment.

The document consist of the analysis of the city of Słupsk (economical, political, social, environmental) and problem analysis. This project proposes an urban transformation strategy or a ‘story of change’ –with description of interventions in the built and natural fabric as a response to the problems and the city’s identity. Finally the theoretical analysis is distilled into a visual expression of this strategy that is communicated through a series of diagrams, sketches, models, photos, supported by a range of precedents.

This project would not have been possible without the feedback of the tutors: Simon Bradbury, Alex Aurigi, Bob Brown, Andrew Humphreys, and Alona Martinez Perez. A special acknowledgment to Robert Biedroń, Beata Samborska, Beata Maciejewska, Piotr Daczkowski, Tomasz Maciejewski, and members of Centrum Inicjatyw Obywatelskich in Słupsk for their contribution to this project.

Thank you for the time and dedication.

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3.1

manifesto

The main problems identified in SĹ‚upsk were the following: unemployment, vacant housing stock and open spaces within urban blocks, urban sprawl, marginalization of poor communities and a high coal dependency for domestic heating. This proposal suggests a sequence of direct actions that will utilize existing resources (material, social and cultural) as well as participatory processes to solve these material and socio-political issues that exist in the area. This strategy does not only aim to solve this issues based on their existing condition but rather to generate the social capital that is necessary to form a resilient community that can resolve and adapt to problems that may arise in the future.

Our approach is based on 3 distinctive typologies of spaces: Blocks, Allotments and Spaces of exchange. These typologies are common across not only SĹ‚upsk but Poland in general thus making the project easily adaptable to other areas.

Fundamental parts of the proposal are: opening secondary routes through urban blocks, creating community infrastructure within the blocks (i.e. community workshops, urban farms, repair and recycle laboratories), gradually redistributing allotment land so it can be used collectively, as well as establishing a network of decentralized biogas plants that will utilize organic waste to distribute heat to the housing through district heating systems.

This project does not only aim to resolve existing issues but rather to promote and test alternative models of coexistence, assembly and collective action; for communities to meet, share knowledge and evolve in opposition to the current neoliberal model.

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CONTENTS 0 Introduction Manifesto Contents 1 Context

1.1 Poland. Country background 1.2 Position in the region 1.3 Fuel poverty 1.4 Civic engagement 1.5 Urban Grassroots Movements 1.6 NGOs 1.7 Shortage economy 1.8 Spaces of exchange 1.9 DIY culture 1.10 Allotments 1.11 Waste management

2 Site analysis

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2.1 Site overview 2.2 Public consultation 2.3 Problems/Opportunities 2.4 Municipal development plan 2.5 Historical development 2.6 Land use 2.7 Movement on the site 2.8 Green areas 2.9 Institutional players 2.10 Gaps/opportunity areas 2.11 Backyards 2.12 Exchange spaces 2.13 Analysis of an urban block

CONTENTS 3 Urban strategy

3.1 Strategy 3.2 Key actors/institutions 3.3 Strategic timeline 3.4 City as a commons 3.5 Production in the city 3.6 Urban farming 3.7 Backyards/secondary routes 3.8 Spaces of exchange 3.9 Community workshops 3.10 Retrofitting of the housing stock 3.11 Material flow in the urban block 3.12 District heating

4 Masterplan

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

Prototype of the urban block Vision for the city- Facade retrofitting Vision for the city-Filling the gaps Vision for the city-Recreational spaces Vision for the city- community workshops Vision for the city- urban farming Masterplan

5 References

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1. CONTEXT 1.1

Poland. Country background

1.2

Position in the region

1.3

Fuel poverty

1.4

Civic engagement

1.5

Urban Grassroots Movements

1.6 NGOs 1.7

Shortage economy

1.8

Spaces of exchange

1.9

DIY culture

1.10

Allotments

1.11

Waste management

Poland

1.1

Poland Political/Economical conditions

Despite being considered a winner of post-Communist transition, Poland has experienced very uneven development; vast amounts of wasted human capacity, social dislocation, and poverty coexist with pockets of wealth and success . In parallel, the transition has produced a small upper-middle class and a much larger class far behind, leading many young Poles to emigrate in search of something better — that is the largest single emigration in recent European history .

After the events of 1989, Poland’s capitalist transformation has been marked by a relatively unbroken sequence of reforms — carried out by everyone from ex-Communist apparatchiks to Catholic arch-conservatives — that have ushered in not only capitalism but its harsh neoliberal variant. The country’s initial transformation began with a heavy dose of “shock therapy” in the early 1990s, while the past two decades have brought a more measured pace of reform that is slowly completing the neoliberal revolution.

In this 25 year period, the level of civic engagement has dropped low. Typically the Constitution provides for the establishment of a civil society but in reality, issue advocacy-related organizations have had a difficult time affecting social change because important figures involved in Poland’s social dialogue are reluctant to adopt progressive stances.

Administrative divisions

Poland covers 3,127,000 sq. km with a population of 38,7 million inhabitants. The binding territorial division in Poland comprises a voivodeship, a powiat and a gmina. The voivodeships are subdivided into powiats (often referred to in English as counties), and these are further divided into gminas (also known as communes or municipalities). Major cities normally have the status of both gmina and powiat. Poland has 16 voivodeships, 379 powiats (including 65 cities with powiat status), and 2,478 gminas.

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100 km 60 mi

Słupsk Pomorskie Warmińsko-Mazurskie Zachodniopomorskie

Podlaskie

Kujawsko-Pomorskie

Mazowieckie Lubuskie

Wielkopolskie

Łódzkie

Lubelskie

Dolnośląskie Świętokrzyskie

Opolskie Śląskie

Małopolskie

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Podkarpackie

1.2

SLUPSK

Position in the region

Pomerania is a historical region in north-central Poland. Outside its urban areas, Pomerania is characterized by farmland, dotted with numerous lakes, forests, and towns. The region was strongly affected by post–World War I and II border and population shifts, with most of its pre-war inhabitants leaving or being expelled after 1945.

The region contains 42 cities and towns. The capital of the Pomeranian region is Gdańsk with 461.935 residents.

Agriculture primarily consists of raising livestock, forestry, fishery and the cultivation of cereals, sugar beets, and potatoes. Industrial food processing is increasingly relevant in the region. Since the late 19th century, tourism has become an important sector of the economy, primarily in the numerous seaside resorts along the coast. Key producing industries are shipyards, mechanical engineering facilities (i.a. renewable energy components), sugar refineries, paper and wood fabricators. Service industries today are an important economical factor in Pomerania, most notably with logistics, information technology, life sciences/biotechnology/health care and other high tech branches often clustering around research facilities of the Pomeranian universities.

Słupsk Słupsk is a city that is located in the northwestern part of present-day Poland, near the Baltic Sea on the Słupia River. With 98,757 citizens, Słupsk is the 3rd biggest city of the Pomeranian region and occupies 43.15 square kilometres, being one of the most densely populated cities in the country according to the Central Statistical Office.

Divided into two almost equal parts by the river, Słupsk is hilly when compared to other cities in the region.

About 5 square kilometres (1.9 sq mi) of the city’s area is covered by forests, while 17 square kilometres (6.6 sq mi) is used for agricultural purposes.

Słupsk developed from a few medieval settlements located on the banks of the Słupia River, at the unique ford along the trade route connecting the territories of modern Pomeranian and West Pomeranian Voivodeships.

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1.3

fuel poverty

Poland bases its energy policy mostly on non-renewable energy sources. Coal produces around 93% of Poland’s electricity and the industry employs more than 100,000 people. It’s a cheap way to produce energy but it provides an enormous headache for any government trying to maintain economic growth and also meet ever-stricter EU greenhouse gas emission targets. Much of that power - around one-fifth of the country’s electricity - is produced from just one plant, Elektrownia Belchatow, in central Poland.

It is Europe’s largest thermal power plant and its biggest polluter, emitting the equivalent of close to 39 million tonnes of CO2 last year, a rise of 31% from 2010 thanks to the commissioning of a new unit in September. It burns lignite, also known as brown coal, the cheapest fossil fuel, which produces energy at half the cost of hard coal and a quarter the cost of natural gas.

Poland signed up to the EU’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

However it has blocked a proposal to increase that cut to 25% by the same date, saying it would cost the country about $1.45bn (£900m). It has also agreed the EU’s longer-term target of reducing emissions by 80-95% by 2050, but in March Poland vetoed proposals setting out milestones to achieve that goal on the grounds they would harm its economy.

Currently only 11,9% of energy is renewable, mostly extracted from biomass giving Poland 19th position in EU. Domestic Material Consumption in total, places the country on the 3rd place in Europe with 685 790 000 tonnes in 2013 which is 10,3% of the whole EU while being 6th most populated country with 38,5 millions people - 7,6% of the whole EU. (Eurostat). 

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Pólnoc Power Station

Północ Power Station, also known as the North Power Plant, is a proposed 1,600-megawatt (MW) coal power plant by Polenergia for the Pomerania region of Northern Poland. It is one of the largest coal projects in Europe. It is planned to be opened in 2020 and it will be running on hard coal, and emit 9 million tons of CO2 annually. This power plant alone will emit more than what entire neighbouring Latvia does.

There is huge mobilization against this proposal. The campaign STOP Północ Power Plant started in 2011.

First and foremost, local and national environmental NGOs engaged in legal proceedings concerning granting permits to the investment. The Association Workshop for All Beings, Client Earth Poland, Greenpeace Poland, WWF Poland and two associations of local citizens teamed up. They argued that the project has been flawed from the very start of the planning stage, and they managed to challenge Północ on environmental and procedural grounds. Granted conditions of water waste discharge to the Vistula River would have irretrievably resulted in a destruction of its wildlife, in particular of migratory fish species. The complaint was successful and the authorities affirmed partial invalidity of the permit.

The campaigners have been successful in raising public awareness of the negative impacts of the plant and alternative scenarios for developing energy system in the region. In 2014 they organized debates and street actions in a few cities in Pomerania, explaining the numerous benefits of renewable sources of energy to citizens and tourists.

“In the era of climate protection and rapid development of renewable energy building, a new coal-fired power plant is simply unprofitable. Current economic reality makes coal history, which the shareholders are perfectly aware of. It is high time that the investors abandon projects harmful to both, humans and the environment, and instead support energy of the 21st century. Energy that is clean and safe for the region,” says Radosław Ślusarczyk from the STOP Północ Power Plant campaign.

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1.4

civic engagement

In Poland after its capitalist transition, there is the issue of a cultural and participatory void that is there because of the lack of civic education for people and especially the youth, due to the weak civil sector.

In late 2007, a group of residents of the Rataje district in Poznań, western Poland, organised to defend their right to have a say in the planning of their neighborhood. The mayor of Poznań and the city council had proposed to transform the derelict post-industrial zone of the neighborhood into a new residential and commercial area. Local residents, on the other hand, insisted on building a park and a recreational area.

They mobilized the community, organized protests, wrote petitions and publicized the issue in the media. The resulting negative publicity made the situation uncomfortable enough for local officials to concede to public pressure and withdraw their commercial development proposal. This was the first sign that a new social force was emerging with the potential to affect urban policies in Poland through civic engagement.

Grassroots activities began to surface in other Polish cities around that time. Activists from Sopot in northern Poland started calling for participatory budgeting following a model set by the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the early 1990s.

In Łódź, central Poland, an informal group of active citizens organized themselves around the issue of cleanliness of public spaces. Gradually, these groups merged into a movement calling for citizen participation in the transformation of the post-industrial area of the city, just like in Poznań. Łódź was an important industrial center up until 1989, when its textile industry collapsed and many industrial buildings lay abandoned and derelict.

In Warsaw, urban activists organized demonstrations for the preservation of green areas in the center of the Polish capital, against hikes in public transport fees and against privatization of municipal buildings.

In the last few years, groups like Right to the City, Inhabitants’ Forum, and the Housing Movement have emerged in almost every Polish town, bringing together individuals of various ages, social, and cultural backgrounds. These groups were involved in a variety of campaigns to re-assert residents’ rights to their neighborhoods and towns: from writing petitions to organizing protests, from pickets and demonstrations to occupying vacant buildings, setting up squats and blocking evictions. Their political appetite grew with time. In 2010, Poznan activists formed “We, the Inhabitants of Poznan” (My-Poznaniacy), a social electoral committee to contest local elections. They received almost 10 percent of the votes, but with an electoral law favoring big political parties, they failed to get a seat on the council.

Inclusivity, engagement and action are fundamental elements of cultural animation practice. Now the question is how do urban issues gain the cultural importance or emergency in order to attract civic engagement? And what is the role of the architect or the activist when in the position of a cultural animator that stands against capitalist neoliberal practices?

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1.5

urban grassroot movements Formulating the urban commons This electoral experience facilitated the 2011 launch of an informal coalition – the Urban Movements Congress (Kongres Ruchów Miejskich) – comprising urban activist groups from all over Poland.

The congress was tasked with formulating a programme to provide a common foundation around which urban activists would build their campaigns in local communities. The programme was focused on three main pillars: policies to stem and reverse the growth of socio-economic inequalities and exclusion; sustainable environment-conscious urban development in the interest of all residents; and promotion of direct democracy practices such as social consultations, participatory budgeting and referendums.

On the national level, the congress managed to pressure the Ministry of Regional Development to include some of its policies in its 2012 National Urban Policy (NUP) programme. On the local level, urban activists also managed to reap a number of victories. »With the 2015 elections approaching, the Urban Movement hopes to have an even larger political impact« In 2011 the mayor of Sopot agreed to implement participatory budgeting in the city. Residents now can decide how to spend 5 million złotys (about 1.2 million euros), or one percent of the municipal budget. Other mayors soon followed suit.

In Łódź, residents decide on how to spend 40 million złotys (about 10 million euros). The mayor of Łódź also invited local activists to advise the city council’s Revitalisation Bureau on specific policies for the socio-economic development of the city. The reason that Łódź became more accepting of the urban movement’s demands was because its previous mayor, Jerzy Kropiwnicki, was removed in a popular referendum in January 2010. The mayors of Częstochowa, Olsztyn, Elbląg, Bytom and Ostróda were also removed in the same manner for introducing policies regarding privatisation and commercial development that went against the will of their electorates.

The urban movement has a long way to go in order to occupy a permanent place on Poland’s political map. But its public presence, successful campaigns and increasing social support show that there is a definite shift in Polish people’s socio-political attitudes. There is clearly growing support for sustainable and environmentally conscious development, which aims to level out inequalities and exclusion and usher in effective practices of direct democracy.

We, the Citizens: the rise of the Polish urban movements, Author: Igor Stokfiszewski

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1.6

Ngos

According to the Klon/Jawor Association, there are over 36,500 associations and over 5,000 foundations (NGOs) registered in Poland. At east 58% of the total number of NGOs registered are active. In the case of 10% of the registered NGOs it was found that theyare not engaged in any activities. 91% of the NGOs were founded after 1989, whereas 30% of the NGOs are less than three years old. 49% of the total registered NGOs have their seat in large towns(current and former voivodship capitals).The largest number of associations and foundations indicate sport (59.3%), education (48,2%), health protection, rehabilitation and assistance to the disabled (32,6%), as well as culture and the arts (27,4%) as their most important fields of activity.

In 2003, Poland joined the small group of ex-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have created innovative financial instruments, generally known as percentage systems, to support the NGO sector’s development.

The Polish instrument, commonly called the 1% system, allows taxpayers to transfer 1% of their income tax to organizations of their choice that serve the public good.

The new Polish percentage system is intended to encourage citizens to play an active role in resolving social problems by contributing to the financing of such organisations.

Only NGOs that are registered as public benefit organisations can be beneficiaries of Poland’s 1% system. Applying for PBO status is voluntary and open to NGOs that are interested, and the related conditions are not very burdensome.

NGOs will be able to obtain the status of “public benefit organisation” providing they satisfy additional legal requirements ensuring the transparency of the organization’s activities and finances. An NGO (or church or religious group units providing public benefit activities) may apply for public benefit status if it carries out activities serving the good of all of society or a specific group of individuals, providing that the particular group in relation to society at large faces extremely difficult financial or living conditions. In addition, the law sets out other specific conditions protecting the organisation’s property in respect of its members, employees, etc.

An institution can be qualified as a Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) solely when at least 90% of the institutions efforts are focused on the general good. As a result, sports associations, staff associations and commercial organisations do not generally qualify as PBOs.

However, a combination of mobilization burnout from the communist era, lackluster outreach of political parties, and distrust of politicians have contributed to an under-representation of voices in Poland’s social dialogue. The non-profit sector, whether in culture, advocacy, or service provision, is a client of the state rather than a partner (Murzyn-Kupisz 2010; Kozuch & Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek 2013). Non- governmental projects led by either individuals, collectives or NGOs depend heavily on state funds because the government has not promoted the concept of private sponsorship as a viable source of funding (Ilczuk 2001, 82). As a result, all these actors have to ‘compete’ with one another, for the little money that is available for fresh projects, in a context where the more a project is likely to promote a positive face of Poland, and the less likely it is to reflect on or critique Polish society, the more likely a project is to be funded.

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1.7

shortage economy

Shortage economy [in polish: gospodarka niedoboru] is a term coined by the Hungarian economist, János Kornai. He used this term to criticize the old centrally-planned economies of the communist states of the Eastern Bloc. In his article Economics of Shortage (1980), János Kornai argued that the chronic shortages seen throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1970s (and which continued during the 1980s) were not the consequences of planners’ errors or the wrong prices, but rather systemic flaws.

During this time in Poland people had to adapt and find solutions to the everyday problems in the situation of the product shortage. This way several small production started to occur. Here are some examples:

SMALL REPAIR (repasacja): hand-made repair of women stockings between 60’s and 80’s because of the high price of a new pair. Very popular one-person business, allowed by communistic state.

BOMIS - OFFICE FOR REDISTRIBUTION OF WASTE: National Institution, mediating between enterprises interested in getting rid of byproducts and the others which wished to purchase. From 70’s and 80’s selling defective products to everyone interested.

SMALL CRAFTMANS: Cinckiarz (eng. change cash), a person in PRL who illegally exchanged currencies. A type of one-person �irm. Even if working in black market, unoficially not chased by the law.

SMALL PRODUCTION AND SERVICE: Another type of one-person enterpreneurship.

Manufacturing and repeairng of daily use-objects such as umbrellas, shoes was hard in soviet time, nevertheless possible. Products often were cycling between consumer and producer, who gained experience over time. Locksmiths, watchmakers, goldsmiths etc., were small, often family enterprises with specific type of craftsmanship, taughted across generations. Still visible on the market, slowly displaced by cheap mass production .

KLUB RUCHU: Common place for people interested in reading books, watch tv or play board games. Based on sharing devices and objects. Creating bonds in society. Popular especially in countryside.

SATURATORY: Movable device saturating a liquid with gas. Popular in summer, belonging to former folklore. Characteristic for staurators was the use of multi-use glassess. After transformation, disapperead from lanscape due to appear- once of cheap bottled gas water. Recently reappeared in Łódź City.

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1.8

spaces of exchange

During the times of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), polish people compensated shortages of goods on the market by shopping in the bazars.

The PRL markets(also called bazars) were a place of small businesses, so disliked by the authorities. They traded virtually everything. Only there you could buy farm eggs, chicken or duck. It was there that flowed smuggled from the West jeans, cosmetics and electronics. For hundreds of thousands of Poles on Saturday or Sunday march on the market was an essential part of the day. Warsaw’s most popular shopping destination was the bazar Różyckiego.

After 1989, markets and bazars have become a hotbed of Polish capitalism. It was a time of rapid enrichment and the formation of large fortunes on the bazar trade. In many places, the exchange culture survived in largely unchanged form from the communist era.

Currently the importance of markets weakened and bazars deal mainly with the elderly people, who are already retired or people with a low income. Young people are not interested in bazaars, because it is not cost-effective and future-interes. Opening a small stand (4 m2) at the market costs about 100-500 zł per month (depending on location).

As traders say, virtually none of their ranges does not guarantee success. Bazaars simply running out of clients. The observations of the merchants that for urban markets usually appear person approx. 40-50 years of age and older who still remember how shopping was getting in PRL, and come mainly out of habit. There is a lack of young people who prefer shopping in supermarkets and shopping malls. According to statistics, the number of buyers in markets declined over the past 10 years by 5 percent.

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1.9

DIY

[CULTURE of kombinowac’]

Polish tradition of kombinować – an untranslatable term that encompasses ‘making do with what’s available’ and ‘finding a way around the official regulations.’

An ability to kombinować used to be a prerequisite to survive both in communist regime as in today transformation ruthless period of free market reality. It is to see how laws are made and can be over-passed, how to make connections, use ones social capital, how to be flexible. Some who is good at it is called a kombinator. However this term might also have a mixture of both negative and positive connotations.

Today polish people maintained some of these traditions of kombinowac’ in the field of home repairs, however it is related to the financial situation, rather than a rigid political system. The current situation around the derelict housing makes people find ways of repairing it with what can be found in the backyards, from the neighbors or around the city.

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HOW IT USED TO BE

WORK IN PROGRESS

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outcome

precedent [POWIŚLE DIY] – Warsaw, Poland

“POWIŚLE DIY is a project of self built skate park located in an old building abandoned for twenty years near the center of Warsaw. Construction was started by three people and then quickly more people joined to work and to raise more money for the materials. The spot is totally illegal but the project had a tacit approval from the city and the police, so it can be expanded.

“...We are pretty sure that we impressed a lot of people with our work, and the whole idea, so that nobody even thought to protest about that illegal construction. The whole idea was crazy but we knew the place is right.

It’s really far from any residential areas close to the train station in a building which was abandoned many years ago with many unsettled law cases, so we felt like that was the perfect place to start building.”

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1.10

ALLOTMENTS

[ogródki dziaLkowe}

There are zones in every Polish town and city where time has stood still, sectors screened by hedges and rusty gates where you can easily believe it’s still 1954. These are Poland’s garden allotments (ogród działkowy) – over one million plots of land nationwide set aside for the health and wellbeing of the urban masses.

There are several aspects of Poland’s ogród działkowy that irresistibly evoke the days of the People’s Republic.

There is the hodgepodge of styles and building materials used to construct the shed-cum-garden-retreat, without which no allotment is complete. Some of them are brick-built two-storey affairs, some are ramshackle odds and ends nailed together, others are the severed remnants of buses, all are there to keep the spades and the barbecue and the inevitable jars of homemade kompot out of the weather. It would be hard to find a more perfect illustration of the Polish tradition of kombinować – an untranslatable term that encompasses ‘making do with what’s available’ and ‘finding a way around the official regulations.’

And officialdom is the other source of that nostalgic whiff. Every collection of allotments has a ‘community house,’ painted in institutional green and tan and pinned with laboriously complex rules and regs subdivided into countless paragraphs. Allotments feel like old fashioned, monolithic state institutions. In fact, the Polish Union of Allotments (Polski Związek Działkowców, PZD), the umbrella body responsible for the management of Poland’s 45,000 hectares of ogród działkowy, was created in the Communist era, in 1981.

While the tradition of allotments started over a century ago, they flourished particularly during the Communist era. Communist authorities wanted to indulge rural folk who flooded into the cities for work after World War II and to forestall food shortages. At a time when private property did not exist, the gardens offered a desirable substitute, owners grew vegetables to make up for the shortages of food in the shops. Meanwhile, the gardens have become more of a pleasure than a necessity for most users.

Today the PZD that finds itself in the spotlight following the Constitutional Court’s decision. The court’s primary objection to the law as it stood was that PZD had the monopolistic right to manage the land under its control in perpetuity. The majority of this land belongs to local authorities, some to the nation, and a smaller fraction to private landowners. As the law stood, none of these groups would ever have the right to dispose of or profit from this land.

Many of those who benefit from the use of an allotment regard this as an admirable idea, but it cannot be legally reconciled with property rights enshrined in Poland’s more recent constitution.

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1.10

ALLOTMENTS

[ogrĂłdki dziaLkowe}

Threat to the polish allotments

Two decades after Poland threw off Communist rule, this relic of a more sedate past is colliding with a modern reality: the appetite of the market for space to build new apartment blocks, offices and retail parks.

The fight over the garden plots has become a proxy for a bigger conflict being played

out in Poland, between the desire for modernity and living standards on a par with the rest of Europe on one hand, and on the other an attachment to older values of family and community.

In the years since the Berlin Wall fell, Poland has embraced the market so enthusiastically that it is now more capitalist than some countries in western Europe. So it has grown harder to resist the intrusion of the outside world.

Twenty years of economic growth have left real estate developers with a dwindling supply of prime sites where they can profitably build.

However developers cannot YET touch the allotments, also known as community gardens, because they have special protected status under Polish law. But the country’s constitutional court ruled in early July that this status had to change, a decision the gardening fraternity says will be exploited by property developers to pick them off one by one, buy up their plots and build on them.

If the garden will be put up for sale, the allotment holders might get some kind of pay-off but not enough to buy anything comparable. The state owns the land under the plots, so it would receive the bulk of any compensation from the developer.

[ In the picture on the right: The members of the Polish Association of Allotment Holders protested outside the court, and gardeners vowed they would not surrender their plots without a fight.]

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waste distribution

1.11

waste management

With Poland generating over 12m tons of waste per year, the country ranked 6th in the EU regarding the amount of waste produced in 2011, behind countries with greater populations such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom. At the same time, the economy achieved one of the lowest rates of waste generation per inhabitant (315kg) among EU member states. The disparity may come from the lower level of wealth and consumption of Polish people as compared to Western European countries.

However, in terms of the waste-to-energy process, Poland’s market appears to be untapped. As will be shown, merely 1% of municipal waste is currently thermally treated in Poland, whereas the majority of waste is landfilled.

Waste management in Poland is a far cry from the models observed in Western European countries and Scandinavia. It is one of the countries where modern methods of waste disposal are used only to a limited extent. In 2011, the percentage of waste deposited on landfill sites dropped from 78.2% (2009) to 70.9% (2011). Despite this fall, only 16.7% of waste was biologically treated, 11.4% recycled and only 1% thermally treated (GUS, 2012). The numbers differ considerably from the norms designated by the European Commission target for 2013 (in accordance with Directive 1999/31/EC on the storage of waste in 2013, deposited waste should not exceed 50% of total waste generated). In comparison with other European countries, Polish landfills contain by far the highest amount of waste. By comparison, Sweden incinerates roughly as much as 48.9% of waste, recycles 35.7% whereas land filling accounts for roughly 1.4% (Deloitte, 2011).

Out of the total amount of municipal waste produced in Poland in 2011 (12.1m tons) as much as 70% was generated in the urban areas with the remaining 30% in rural areas. Similarly, the share of biodegradable waste was higher in cities and constituted (57%) of all waste compared to (48.8%) in rural areas. In terms of municipal waste composition, kitchen and garden waste (32.1%) constituted the biggest share, to be followed by plastics (12.7%), paper and cardboard (12.6%), glass (10.1%), metals (2.3%) and wood (0.4%) (Deloitte, 2011).

Crucial investment plans for the upcoming years include construction and modernisation of 87-97 composting and fermentation plants, 28-30 mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plants (with processing capacity of 1.2m tons) and 27 sorting plants (with processing capacity of 1.8m tons). The projects are on the list of KPGO 2014 and the funding for most of them is planned with a significant involvement of EU subsidies under the Operational Programme of Infrastructure and Environment.

Energy recovery from waste is gradually gaining recognition in the waste management field in Poland. Given that every inhabitant produces approx. 1kg of waste daily (7MJ/kg calorific value), of which 95% is land filled; the enormous potential of chemical energy contained in waste is squandered. The same amount of waste treated in modern incineration plants and processed into alternative fuel may constitute a valuable source of renewable energy, especially for waste producers.

From “Rapport S-GE: Waste Management in Poland�, 2013

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2. Site analysis 2.1

Public consultation

2.2

Potentials

2.3

Problem statement

2.4

Municipal development plan

2.5

Historical urban fabric development

2.6

Land use

2.7

Movement

2.8

Green areas

2.9

Institutional players

2.10

Gaps around the city

2.11

Backyards

2.12

Markets

2.13

Analysis of an urban block

site overview

Our site incorporates the very heart of Słupsk city. On the east it is limited by the river Slupia, on the west by the railroad. This is the area that the local municipalities are particularly concerned about and it is included in the “Urban Development Strategy for the City of Słupsk 2014-2020 “. After visit to the site this area was selected for our future development because of its central location, availability of empty housing stock, and because our strategy wants to prioritize compact dense city and bring back life to the center.

This project will propose a development strategy for an urban block that could be applied to the rest of the city. For this reason we will concentrate our analysis and proposal on the block between Długa, Polna and Ogrodowa streets, in close proximity to the city allotments. The other block is situated along Wojska Polskiego street and Wileńska and Stefana Starzyńskiego street. However as part of larger future proposal for the city development our masterplan will include a redevelopment of the main road node between Wojska Polskiego street, 21 road and Deotymy street.

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2.2

public consultation

During the visit to Słupsk our group met with the city mayor, local municipalities, planners, architects, NGOs, activists and local residents. Listening to different perspectives on the city development helped us identify the main problematics of the air, their connection and start thinking on the possible ways of solving them.

We were able to get different kind of information through the workshops, discussions, interviews with the residents, visits to the site and institutions like Słupsk Technology Incubator and Centre for Non-Governmental Organisations and Social Economy, and we recorded our findings through sketches, photos and notes for further analysis.

Here are some main points that came up through the consultations: “Mayor’s plan is to make of Słupsk a city with sustainable development: economically, environmentally, politically and socially” “Polish society is not a participatory society” “Słupsk is facing urban sprawl, city center lacks activities and people presence” “The houses in Słupsk are coal reliant because of this cheap price and availability” “People need up-skilling to face the future jobs” “Polish society has a car culture, car becomes a symbol of welfare” “People do not trust their municipalities”

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2.2

public consultation

Visit around the DĹ‚uga street area with Tomasz Maciejewski-city conservator/restorer, that brought us on a tour through the backyards of the city center and provided some historical facts of the city development.

Visit around the DĹ‚uga street area with Tomasz Maciejewski-city conservator/restorer, that brought us on a tour through the backyards of the city center and provided some historical facts of the city development.

Consultation with the vice-president and city planer of Ustka.

The conversation included the possibilities of the DUAL CITY Strategy between Ustka and SĹ‚upsk.

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2.2

potencials/assets

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2.4

municipal development plan “Urban development strategy of functional area of Słupsk for 2014-2020” These are some of the tasks included in the regeneration Task 1: Modernization of townhouses: • restoration of the facade, insulation of walls • renovation and thermal insulation of roofs, replacement of gutters and downpipes, • repair of common areas, including repairs staircases, • connection of buildings to the city heating network (if the consent of the owners will be obtained).

Task 2: Development of the area around the apartment buildings.

Task 3: Construction of access roads, paths and free parking for local residents and people using public facilities.

Task 4: Construction of pedestrian and walking - cycling and reconstruction of roads.

Task 5: Construction of infrastructure for sport, recreation and strengthening social ties.

Task 6: The conservation work and restoration related to the protection of monuments in the revitalized.

Task 7: Construction and reconstruction of cultural infrastructure in the revitalized area: • the site old building belonging to the New Theatre in Slupsk(building of an old coach house) plans to build and equip building a three-storey with a total area of approximately 1000 m2 with the possibility of development of the attic. The newly built facility will find a common room workshop and testing, a tailor, store costumes, store props, offices, theatre, guest rooms.

• management of the yard belonging to the Polish Philharmonic Sinfonia Baltica - arranging the area, allowing event shows on the outside.

Problem 8: The creation of the Neighbourhood House of Integration, organizing centers for children and young people and adults and the disabled and the unemployed.

Task 9: Installation of monitoring equipment in the revitalized area, particularly dangerous and newly created infrastructure.

Task 10: Creation of different types of classes, workshops, training sessions and meetings for upgrading residents skills, as well as proving space for leisure.

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2.5

Historical development

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2.5

Historical development

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N

2.6

land use

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to Ustka

Bus Station (Dworzec PKS) Railway Station (Stacja PKP)

train station bike & ride bus station main pedestrian arteries

2.7

movement on the site

Polish culture as it was mentioned before has very much car-oriented society. This can be seen in how car roads and parking spaces are being privileged over pedestrian routes. Car in polish culture is also a portrayal of the well-being. Another reason for the high use of the cars is the fact that people mainly live outside Słupsk and public transport does not provide good service. However, more and more people choose bicycle to move around the city.

Bike & Ride station.

Opened in 2015 there is a bike&ride station next to the train station providing 24 bike spaces, security cameras and maintenance workshop. The aim of the project is to support bicycle culture in Słupsk and gives possibility of leaving bike on the monitored, covered and glazed bicycle parking and go by train to another town without worrying that something will happen to the bike.

Pedestrian roads.

The main pedestrian artery of Słupsk is situated along Wojska Polskiego street that runs from the train station towards the historical city center(see picture on the right). The alley is covered in trees and has a high street typology with active commercial frontage and courtyard space on the back. See diagram on the left for other pedestrian routes around the city center of Słupsk.

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Rodzinne Ogrody Działkowe “Zjednoczenie” (allotments) Public Park Private empty green area (development site)

Public Park

Skwer im. „Pierwszych Słupszczan”

Private empty green area (development site)

Ogrod im. R. Luksemburg (allotments)

River Slupia Public Park im. J. Waldorffa

Large green area in the backyard of the urban block

2.8

green areas

Parks.

Słupsk is very rich in the green areas within its boundaries. The most important are the Park of Culture and Leisure (Park Kutury i Wypoczynku), the Northern Wood (Lasek Północny) and the Southern Wood (Lasek Południowy) on the edges of the city.

Allotments.

The allotments tradition in Słupsk goes back to the beginning of the last century, and is still very much popular among the residents of Słupsk, specially the older generation. Allotments provide to the people both recreational and food growing space, which for many people is a source of an additional income.

In Słupsk there are about 7000 tenants plots. There are two large allotments allocated in the city center(see the map on the left). If you already have a plot, you have to pay a one-time enrollment fee. It costs from 12 to 153 zł, depending on the garden. Once a year there is also approx. 100 zł fee for the plot.

The allotments are private and are only open to the owners of the individual sites. The fence is delimiting the allotments from the general public, mainly because of the residents complaining of the homeless people and burglars trying to get on the site.

Because of the central location of the allotments, the land has a very high value, which puts the allotments to the risk of bing removed.

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Bus Station Shopping centre Railway Station (Stacja PKP)

Church Shopping centre Main post office

Shopping centre

SĹ‚upsk Town Hall (Ratusz) Theatre (Nowy Teatr)

Shopping centre

2.9

institutional players

The area and its urban interior must serve a number of primary functions to ensure its long-term endurance and identity within the neighborhoods of Slupsk.

Institutional players have the potential to support an active public realm over long periods of the day and week, a necessity not just in social and economic terms, but also in contributing significantly to the passive surveillance and use of small open spaces. It is important to resist seeing these highly specific and self-interested institutions as autonomous, and to understand how they can each contribute to a “common” programme for the public realm and social engagement.

Słupsk train station(Dworzec PKP) is situated on the west from the city center and is currently under the redevelopment programme, which aim is to create major transportation hub, as well as create better connection between two parts of te city.

Galeria Słupsk is a large shopping mall in the in the very strategic central area of the city next to the Town Hall. Shopping malls have a great importance for the residents of Słupsk and other smaller towns around. This area is well connected by the main roads, however lacks any open public space.

Słupsk Town Hall(Ratusz) is the heart of the city. It is situated in between historical city center and central part of Słupsk on the west. In front of the Town Hall there is currently a large parking space that together with a highly trafficked road cuts the two parts of the city and creates a buffer zone for pedestrians.

Stary Rynek is a historical city market sqaure. It used to be the heart of the city life.

Today this square has a large open space, it is very empty and lacks any activities. In the center of the square there is a large supermarket(ex cinema) and other minor shops surrounding the square.

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1

2 3 5

4

6 7 8

9

11 12 10

13 14 15

2.10 1 2 3 4 5

gaps/opportunity areas This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city next to the bus and train station, between Adama Mickiewicza street and Wileńska street.

Approximate area- 10400 m2

This area is situated in front of the Town Hall and is currently occupied by the large parking space.

Together with the trafficked road in front of it, they cut the historical city center off the rest of the city center in the west.

Approximate area- 8500 m2

This site is situated on the corner of Juliana Tuwima street and Przemysłowa street, next to the railway station and entrepreneurship incubator.

Approximate area- 4260 m2

This site is situated next to Galleria Slupsk shopping centre on the Deotymy street.

Approximate area- 2850 m2

This empty lot is located on the corner of Jana Kasprowicza street Przemysłowa street. It is situated close to the city allotments.

Approximate area- 2850 m2

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6 7 8 9 10 66

This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre, on the Deotymy street.

Approximate area-800 m2

This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre, on the Deotymy street.

Approximate area- 1400 m2

This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre and community allotments, on Ogrodowa street.

Approximate area- 1170 m2

This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre and community allotments, on Ogrodowa street.

Approximate area- 350 m2

This empty site is located in the city centre in front of and community allotments, on the corner of Ogrodowa and Polna streets. There is an old fountaing and a playing ground present on the site.

Approximate area- 2350 m2

2.10 11

gaps/opportunity areas This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city center next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping center, on the Długa street. There are recycling bins and parking currently present on the site.

Approximate area-700 m2

12 13 14-15

This empty lot is located in a strategic area of the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre, on the Deotymy street.

Approximate area- 650 m2

This empty lot is located in the city centre next to the Galleria Slupsk shopping centre and community allotments, on Długa street. There are recycling bins, greenery and parking spaces currently present on the site.

Approximate area- 1040 m2

This sites are located in the city centre, next to shopping centre and community allotments, on the corner of Długa and Płowiecka streets . There is some greenery and parking spaces currently present on the site.

Approximate area- 2300 m2

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2.11

We found very interesting the situation around the backyards in the city center of Słupsk. They are very important for the residents of the housing buildings surrounding them. These backyards are mainly occupied by the one-storey shed type buildings, parking spaces, recycling bins or other informal constructions.

These one-storey internal buildings are used for services, coal storages, and warehouses, the area available for residents to relax is very small. These courtyards also includes trees, plants, and lawns with a mesh of footpaths. In some places there is some recreational equipment like a sandpit, swings or benches.

Most of these yards are being taken care of, as the residents are using them for their needs. However, they are exclusive for the non-residents of that urban block, because the internal space is dedicated for private activities.

backyards

Example of the backyard in the central part of Słupsk between Stefana Jaracza and Długa streets.

Example of the backyard in the central part of Słupsk between Ogrodowa and 69 Długa streets.

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precedent

Podwórko Kulturalne, [Słupsk]

The backyard project Podwórko Kulturalne is situated between Zygmunta Krasińskiego, Wojska Polskiego and Adama Mickiewicza streets. It was launched in 2015 and is called “cultural” for a reason. Children will find numerous activities,providing both spaces for play, but also development. In the area of 4000 m2 there are two tables courts, three chess tables, a small covered stage, ceramic laboratory, a playground and an fitness equipment for older children.

Podwórko Kulturalne provides space and activities for everyone. Talented young people are able to unleash their artistic tendencies on the open, roofed stage, or create artworks in the ceramic laboratory. Older people can use chess tables, parents can keep their kids entertained in the playgrounds, adapted to their needs.

The redeveloped courtyard encourages children and young people to choose alternative, active forms of leisure.

It is also located right next to the Słupsk NGO centre[Słupskie Centrum Organizacji Pozarządowych i Ekonomii Społecznej] which could benefit for the future initiatives and collaborations.

before

after

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Existing open-air local markets Existing supermarket chains/ shopping centres

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Existing buildings

2.12

The open air markets(rynki), in polish culture have a great importance. Ever since the times of the shortage economy with a centralized economy people were finding ways of trading goods that were not available in the stores. After 1989, markets have become a hotbed of Polish capitalism. Currently the acclamation of the markets has weakened, but there are still present in the city life in the form of pop-up flea markets, local food markets or simply street vendors.

Słupsk has historical market square Stary Rynek(“Old Market”) , which used to be the heart of the city, however has lost its prominence and function, mainly due to the presence of the large chain supermarket in the square.

There are several other independent open markets in Słupsk(see diagram on the left) which are mainly used by the people with a lower income, however the supermarket chains and large shopping malls have replaced them.

Open-air local market in the area of Marii Konopnickiej and Wileńska streets in Słupsk.

exchange spaces

Pop-up flea market next to rynek Rybacki in Słupsk.

Pop-up flea market on the Stary Rynek square in Słupsk.

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2.13

analysis of an urban block

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3. urban Strategy 3.1

Strategy

3.2

Key actors/institutions

3.3

Strategic timeline

3.4

City as a commons

3.5

Production in the city

3.6

Urban farming

3.7

Backyards/secondary routes

3.8

Spaces of exchange

3.9

Community workshops

3.10

Retrofitting of the housing stock

3.11

Material flow in the urban block

3.12

District heating

3.1

strategy 1. Reclaim empty housing stock

2. Professionals are invited to move in

Professionals with necessary knowledge and skillset are invited to occupy the empty housing stock in exchange for their services to the local community through the following series of projects. Equity of these spaces can be gained gradually in stages through this process.

Changes in the existing regulations are necessary in order to gain access to the derelict housing stock. The local authorities in co-operation with local citizens will initiate this process.

3. Opening Secondary routes through blocks

4. Recyc worksho

Professionals and local residents with the permission of the authorities start appropriating the secondary routes through the blocks. This process will be carried out through participatory design practices and can have the character of a self-build project as any help is welcome. Local institutions such as schools, businesses and community groups can also participate.

Creating the 3

1. Recycle Lab allotments etc

2. Retrofit Wo the existing ho

3. Urban Farm produce that c community pr

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es

3.1 4. Recycle Labs / Retrofit workshops / Urban farms

strategy 5. Community workshops + Production spaces

6. C back

ssion of the tes d out an have elp is inesses

After th worksho been tes resident the desi their da

Community workshops and production spaces for collectives are built in the backyards as well as in gaps in the urban fabric. These spaces play an important role in the generation of social capital as well as in sharing the skillset and knowledge that has been developed through time across the community.

Creating the 3 spaces that will generate the starting energy for change to happen in a larger scale.

1. Recycle Lab: A laboratory where waste materials (i.e. domestic, commercial, hemp produced in the allotments etc) will be processed into construction materials.

2. Retrofit Workshop: A workshop where waste or recycled construction materials are utilised to retrofit the existing housing stock, spaces of exchange and public parks and create new innovative infrastructure.

3. Urban Farms: Productive landscapes that will generate organic waste for heating and also local produce that can be sold in spaces of exchange in order to generate capital that can be utilised in community projects.

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3.1

strategy

s

6. Collective transformation of backyard spaces

After the recycled material flows and community workshops have been established as well as skills have been tested and shared across the community the local residents can start experimenting on their own with the design of the common spaces in otder to fulfill their daily needs.

for in gaps in tant role in sharing the oped

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7. Biogas plant + District Heating

8. Biogas plant + District Heating

By this stage a great part of the allotments is already utilised by the local population collectively.

In parallel, there is a great number of urban farms developed in backyard spaces. All these green infrastructure, combined with organic waste from households are able to heat enough households sustainably in order to justify the creation of decentralised Biogas plants where possible. District heating systems will be installed wherever necessary and connected to the biogas plants.

Through the spatial experimentation that took place in the previous stages, the social capital generated and the synergies that have been established now the people can participate in designing central public spaces of the city: parks, parking lots, event spaces and even primary traffic arteries.

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3.2

key actors/institutions Who is this project for?

NGOs and active initiatives Existing initiatives and NGOs that are looking for actual interventions and alternative proposals in the city. In addition, for the youth movements that are fighting for their right to Education, jobs and housing.

Unemployed, Untrained & Young ones For the unemployed and untrained to acquire the skills and in parallel the work experience. For students that are interested in alternative education and employment and Activists that need a space to assembly and organize.

Professionals( manufacturers, engineers, architects, environmentalists, IT specialists) This project is seeking to bring the manufactures and production back to the city. The unoccupied spaces in the city centers could contain offices, the backyards will accommodate production spaces. Beyond establishing a visual awareness of production processes among urban consumers, some forms of industry can also allow for social engagement through economic exchanges between makers and buyers. The visibility and presence of industrial activities in the spaces of everyday life can provide rich and distinctive experiences for city dwellers, as well as strengthen local economies by orienting consumer spending toward local manufacturers rather than multinational corporations.

Local Authorities Collectives are promoting active participation of the locals to the commons of the city and also political participation.

Local authorities support the initiatives by providing partially the funds and the spaces.

Incubator Centre & innovative start-ups The Incubator Centre helps to invite innovative professionals on the site which are essential to kick-start the project by helping the local community to gain professional skills.

Polish Association of Allotments Currently the allotments community is very exclusive and closed. By introducing new urban farms and allotments in the city, the community will grow, claiming a more important role in the city life, opening them to the public whilst the character of the allotment culture is kept intact.

Educational institutions The educational institutions, specially Technikums(Technical upper-secondary schools) are invited to collaborate with communities and professional manufacturers based in the backyards through collaborative projects and practical internships for the students.

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physical changes

Small s Re-arrangement of the Allotments Open secondary routes through the blocks

Community production spaces + Community wo Refurbish existing housing Recycling + Retrofitting Labs Proffesionals move in empty housing stock

0

2

4

6

8

10

Local authorities + Local Residents Professionals + Residents + NGOs Professionals + Residents + NGOs Local Residents + Educational institutions + Professionals Local authorities + NGOs

Local Residents + NGOs

Allotment community + Local authorities + NGOs

actors 84

+ Unemployed / Untrained + Local residents

After the redistribution of spaces the allotments are treated as a

3.3

strategic timeline Central public spaces and traffic arteries are transformed collectively

Small scale biogas plants are installed in allotments and urban gardens + District heating systems are installed within the backyards

ion spaces + Community workshops are built in the backyards

housing

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

YEARS

nts + NGOs

yed / Untrained + Local residents: After the completion of community workshops these spaces are made a lot more public.

e allotments are treated as a common resource as is the production process.

Professionals + NGOs + Local Residents

Local authorities + Local Residents + NGOs + Professionals

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3.4

city as A commons

Urban commoning neither simply “happens” in urban space, nor does it simply produce urban space as a commodity to be distributed. Urban commoning treats and establishes urban space as a medium through which institutions of commoning take shape.

Emergent new forms of resistance are importantly connected to acts that shape urban space in order to create new social bonds and build forms of collective struggle and survival.

Practices of this kind lead to collective experiences that reclaim the city as a potentially liberating environment and reshape crucial questions that characterise emancipatory politics. In this context, the city becomes not only the setting but also the means to collectively experiment with possible alternative forms of social organisation. Moreover, the sharing of space becomes a crucially important stake, both as a means of experimenting and as one of the goals of such experiments.

[Stavros Stavrides, On Urban Commoning, in Make_Shift City: Renegotiating the Urban Commons]

Commoning is the collective ownership and management of resources. It is currently being reimagined across social, political and economic debates as a response to this challenge facing all cities today. Commons are not just static pieces of architecture. We are treating Słupsk in a way which the social act of commoning could take shape, by enabling citizens to co-produce urban resources from culture & knowledge to housing and agriculture, energy or democratic processes.

On the scale of the urban block, residents of Słupsk start reclaiming the common ground between private and public, through collective ownership of spaces such as backyard workshops, urban farms and spaces of exchange, they manage to produce for themselves and start to raise a social capital that will allow this network of collectives to flourish and also give the individuals a pragmatic chance to improve their current living conditions.

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Buildings designated for production Existing buildings

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3.5

Bringing production back to the center, specifically to the empty lots in the backyards is one of the most important aspects of our project. Industry in the city will create multistructure society which is able to sustain its living and stabilize materially. The proposed model is associated with the idea of re-industrialisation – understood not as a return of factories into the cities, but as a socio-economic project, inspired by the ideas of industrial ecology, comprehensive use of waste, optimised consumption and synergistic coop eration between different actors.specifically to the empty lots in the backyards is one of the most Bringing productioneconomic back to the center,

production in the city

important aspects of our project. Industry in the city will create multistructure society which is able to sustain its living and stabilize materially. The proposed model is associated with the idea of ​​re-industrialisation – understood not as a return of factories into the cities, but as a socio-economic project, inspired by the ideas of industrial ecology, comprehensive use of waste, optimised consumption and synergistic cooperation between different economic actors.

CURRENT SITUATION - Vacant spaces around the city centre VACANT

VACANT

- Unemployed, unskilled residents - Municipality provides subsidies and economic advantages for the companies in the Special Economic Zone

OUR PROPOSAL - Mixed use development in the city centre - Occupying vacant areas in the existing buildings - Employing local people - Professionals upskilling local residents through collaborative workshops - Collaboration with the Technological Inkubator to involve innovative startups

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3.5

production in the city

Post-industrial cities

Currently, urban manufacturing businesses often occupy locations that are far from ‘conspicuous’. While advanced ‘reshored’ manufacturing may return to urban rather than rural areas, it will most likely occupy sheds in segregated industrial zones. Artisan manufacturing may be similarly hidden, using low-cost spaces in dilapidated remnants of nineteenth century industrial buildings. Against this invisibility, a built environment that explicitly prioritises public connections to industry can bring benefits in raising awareness of production processes, enabling social engagement between producers and the public and enriching everyday experiences of being in the public spaces of the city.

Industry that is publicly visible supports a range of connections between consumers and producers of manufactured goods. For example, a furniture maker with its production process open to a busy street, or even a car factory with manufacturing visible to passing motorists, can connect passers-by to the processes of manufacturing. This visual presence of production can prompt understanding of the human labour, mechanical processes and energy required to produce the often taken-for-granted material goods of our industrial society. Eco-localists refer to the IMBY (in my back yard) effect of local production in establishing an everyday awareness of the human and environmental costs of production,11 and the possibility of more considered consumption behaviours.

Social/economic engagement

Beyond establishing a visual awareness of production processes among urban consumers, some forms of industry can also allow for social engagement through economic exchanges between makers and buyers. The direct connections with makers can strengthen local economies by orienting consumer spending toward local manufacturers rather than multinational corporations.

Rich and distinctive urban experiences

The visibility and presence of industrial activities in the spaces of everyday life can provide rich and distinctive experiences for city dwellers. Stronger connections between productive processes and public space can contribute to a fuller sensory experience of urban life that counters the “erosion of the perceptual sphere” accompanying too much ‘sanitised’ urban re- development.14 The activity of industry, including the noise, smells and rhythms of human and mechanical production can be celebrated for the diversity and interest that they bring to city streets. A re- industrialisation that celebrates what Jane Jacobs termed the ‘jumble’ of the diverse and truly mixed-use street,15 can contribute to more distinctive and intriguing urban experiences. Visible forms of urban industry can further make everyday experiences of being in the city more meaningful by connecting public life with the activities going on ‘behind the scenes’ of building frontages.

“Conspicuous production: valuing the visibility of industry in urban re-industrialisation strategies”, Karl Baker

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Renovated existing allotments Proposed community gardens/urban allotments Experimental farms/aquaponic farms/food production spaces Recreational pocket parks/community spaces

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Existing buildings

3.6

Urban farming GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

CURRENT SITUATION - Good amount of existing large urban parks and allotments - Lack of infastructure or activities present in the parks - Allotments are isolated to the citizens that don’t own allotments -Allotments, because of their central location are threatened to be redeveloped because of the high price of the land on the market

OUR PROPOSAL - Open up and renovate the existing allotments for its wider use of the public - Design new productive agricultural areas in the existing gaps around the city - Create a network of pocket parks inside the urban blocks for commoning and recreational use - Use some of the community gardens for educational use: experimental farming, aquaponic farms, urban beekeeping, cooking classes.

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precedents Prinzessinnengärten, [Berlin]

Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green) launched Prinzessinnengärten (Princess gardens) as a pilot project in the summer of 2009 at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland for over half a century. Along with friends, activists and neighbours, the group cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots and reaped the first fruits of their labour.

The Prinzessinnengarten is more than just a place to grow vegetables in the city. It is a space for diverse activities. Through the opportunity to contribute and to participate in open workshops, through the garden café and a variety of cultural events, the Prinzessinnengarten has become a lively meeting place with appeal far beyond the neighborhood. At the same time, it is an example of a new type of gardening in the city.

Nobody owns their own bed at the Prinzessinnengarten. Many people are involved voluntarily in order to make a place like this possible. As a framework for the different social, educational and economic activities here, there was established a non-profit company called Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green), with the primary aim of making the garden a place of learning. Since there are mostly amateurs and beginners, the emphasis is mainly on informal learning. Skills are gained through practical experience and the sharing of knowledge.

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Backyard spaces Secondary routes

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Existing buildings

3.7

backyards/ secondary routes BACKYARDS/MOVEMENT IN THE CITY

This project proposes revitalization of the urban block’s backyards in the city center of Slupsk. This will be done by opening them up the rest of the city by a network of secThis project revitalization of the urban block’s backyards in the city ondary informal proposes routes cutting through the backyards.

This will also facilitate the connections betweenofthe important social in theby city.opening them up the rest of the city by a netcentre Slupsk.

This willnodes be done

work of secondary informal routes cutting through the backyards. This will also facilitate the connections between the important social nodes in the city.

CURRENT SITUATION

PRIVATE

PRIVATE

PRIVATE

- Backyards are used only by the residents of the block (uninviting to the rest of the city) - Backyards are mainly occupied by the car parking, private storages, garages - Lack of activites and social infrastructure

OUR PROPOSAL PUBLIC

PUBLIC

- Creating more permeable urban blocks - Inviting people to participate in the community activities - Faciltating connections between urban blocks

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precedents CENTRUM REANIMACJI KULTURY, [Wrocław]

CRK is a complex of two buildings with an inner yard. The space is arranged in such way so as to get maximum practical usage out of it. There is still room for new ideas. At present in CRK You can find initiatives such as: recording studio “The Clash”, art gallery „23”, cafe “Utopia” where fair-trade coffee is served, a concert hall, a rehearsal room for bands, a welding workshop, a studio of an on-line radio “Sitka” and a guest room for artists performing on CRK stage and for travelers. People from CRK do all they can to create an atmosphere of inspiration and consistently seek alternatives for culture of consumption, with common denominator - the DIY idea.

CRK has been active for more than 13 years. In that time we’ve managed to create an independent, self-financed centre based on the principles of a collective. By means of our unpaid work, without any institutional financial backing, we have built a place for activities which involve various long-term initiatives. For many years we’ve been cooperating with local cultural instititutions and festivals of international coverage. We support non-commercial projects and non-subsidized initiatives. In 2010 our work was honoured with the Lower Silesian Animator of Culture prize, and have contributed to awarding Wrocław with the title of European Capital of Culture 2016.

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Renovated existing markets Areas designated for the new markets Existing buildings

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3.8

spaces of exchange

Markets will constitute the main exchange areas and activity nodes in the city. The places where people will be able to buy locally produced products at a lower price, find out information about ongoing initiatives and programmes and get involved in the city life. These markets should become open platforms for re-energizing forms of cooperation, social solidarity and self-provisioning.

CURRENT SITUATION - City is dominated by the chain supermarkets - Fragmented city -Small stores are not able to keep up with the competition - Gaps in the city centre that can be filled for the needs of people

OUR PROPOSAL - Promote locally grown and made products -Network or small scale markets around the city -Building resilient local economy, moving towards self-sufficiency at the local level

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precedent

CommonsFest is an annual event that happens in different cities of Greece to promote freedom of knowledge (or free knowledge) and peer-to-peer collaboration for the creation and management of the commons.

A philosophy that has spread through free software communities and extends to many aspects of our daily lives, such as the arts, governance, construction of machinery, tools and other goods. Through an exhibition, talks, screenings and workshops, the aim of the festival is to promote the achievements of this philosophy to the public and become a motive for further adoption.

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Proposed community workshop areas Existing buildings

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3.9

community workshops

Some of the community workshops will include: experimental urban farming, repair and recycling workshops, aquaponics and other programs that could bring resident participation and provide economical benefits.

CURRENT SITUATION - Lack of public participation - Fragmented city - Lack of quality spaces for community creative practices - Gaps in the city centre that can be filled for the needs of people

OUR PROPOSAL - Creating social infrastructures and necessary facilities for the workshops - Involve eduational institututions and startups to create professional synergies - Use of the strategic empty aeas around the city centre and in the backyards, which will allow the natural surveilance and resident involvement.

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precedent R-Urban R-URBAN is a bottom-up strategy that explores the possibilities of enhancing the capacity of urban resilience by introducing a network of resident-run facilities to create complementarities between key fields of activity (economy, housing, urban agriculture, culture). R-Urban initiates locally closed ecological cycles that will support the emergence of alternative models of living, producing and consuming between the urban and the rural.

To overcome the current crises (climate, resources, economic, demographic), we must, as philosopher Andre Gorz says, ‘produce what we consume and consume what we produce’. This balance between production and consumption through local sustainable sourcing can not occur without changes in the living and working lifestyles of citizens who must be involved in these changes through collaborative practices supporting each other through local networks. Flows, networks and circuits of production-consumption will be formed through these activities, with an emphasis on sustainability.

R-URBAN provides tools and resources to facilitate citizen involvement in this project, including accompanying emerging projects at local and regional levels that are working to meet the same ends. Agency R-URBAN was established to steer the implementation of the first pilot units of production. Currently four projects are being developed, an urban agriculture unit, a corporative and ecological residential unit and recycling lab for eco construction in Colombes, France as well as a mobile Re-cycling unit in Hackney Wick, East London, UK. The pilot units act as a catalyst for the formation of local networks and practices around recycling and ecological-construction, urban agriculture and cooperative housing. Currently a R-URBAN charter is being developed in collaboration with R-URBAN MICRO-URBANISM PRINCIPLES

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maker’s movement

[Makerspace as catalyst] [ If we believe in manufacturing as an important in an economy, then the distribution and diffusion of easy-to-use, powerful, and cheap access to the right tools are critical to the success of every industrialized economy, particularly ones that want to leverage the coming technological advances across so many industries.]

Access to tools is so fundamental to economic development, learning, start-ups, artists, research, and production that I can see it driving the development of entire communities. Much like how a university town can grow into a city, so could the well-placed development of tools, training, and access grow a vibrant creative cluster in a city. As a way to differentiate a city, county or region, the development of open access facilities in conjunction with schools, vocational training, and commerce will be huge.

At Techshop, people start companies that couldn’t get started any other way. First robotics teams come in and use our space, further cementing the career track these kids are interested in. Tools and infrastructure will become a key differentiator for some people in choosing where they want to live. Knowledge now flows through the Internet; coding, calculus, and chemistry can be taught and learned at any high school or university; but access to a CNC waterjet for all comers is not available on the Internet. Eventually it will be in some form, but it will be more expensive than operating it yourself. So right now, there are first-mover advantages to be had for the cities that develop these spaces and attract the talent to use them. True, because building these spaces is hard, physical and requires more than just desks and heat, there will be a slow build out. However, this trend, the third industrial revolution or hardware 2.0, the Maker Movement revolution, or whatever you want to call it is going to be bigger than the web. With the explosion of mobile, social, and gaming incubators being spun up around universities across the world, it will be easy to leverage that energy and infrastructure into a hardware renaissance- once the tools are available.

From : The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New WoHatch M., [2014]

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Buildings in need of refurbishment Existing buildings

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3.10

One of the first initiatives that should take place in Slupsk is house refurbishment. The retrofit of the existing buildings will allow residents to remain living in the central area of the city, retrofitting ofimprove theenergy housing stock close to their work. Retrofitting will also efficiency that will cut the costs of the heating. Use of recycling ma terials for refurbishments will reduce enviromental impact as

One of the first initiatives that should take place in Slupsk is house refurbishment. The retrofit of the well as the costs. existing buildings will allow residents to remain living in the central area of the city, close to their work. Retrofitting will also improve energy efficiency that will cut the costs of the heating. Use of recycling materials for refurbishments will reduce environmental impact as well as the costs.

CURRENT SITUATION - Good amount of existing under occupied dwellings -Municipalities lack funds to provide house refurbishment - Residents individually arrange for small repair works

OUR PROPOSAL - Use of recycling materials for house refurbishment - Encourage existing DIY culture through creation of the community workshops and recycling labs - Provide vacant spaces in the buildings to the professionals that would contribute to the resident’s upskilling

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3.10

retrofitting of the housing stock

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applying the principles of CIRCULAR ECONOMY The main principles of circular economy

The basic assumption of circular economy is that products needed to be designed in a way to flow in optimised cycles of use and dissassembly. That process set them apart from being disposed or recycled in short term. Waste in that sense does not exist, since can be turned into resource. Materials are kept in flow, thus the residual waste is close to zero (European Comission, 2014). Circularity defines strict difference between non-toxic biological commodities that are consumable compared to the durable technological nutrients i.e. electronics or machinery. The energy required to maintain the cycles is from a renewable source.

Circular economy replaces the idea of consumer by the notion of a user who can establish closer relation with industries, and through that improve (extend) the life cycle of a product. The major focus points of circular economy (minimazing the use of resources and energy) are archieved through four principles: 1) Inner cycle: minimalisation of the material usage.

2) Cycling longer: products are meant to be reused, re-manufactured or recycled more times and longer 3) Cascade use: The components of products can be reused in a different way any time the initial product is worn out.

4) Pure cycles: respecting uncontamination of material flow.

The core point of circularity is design. Through standarisation and modularisation, products could avoid being damp in landfill, being moved between industries. The proper design of products accelerate chain of positive changes. Industries can gain profits from cross-chain collaboration. Eliminating waste and downsizing pollution will affect positively the environment.

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precedent Basurama

Basurama is an artist collective dedicated to research, cultural and environmental creation and production whose practice revolves around the reflection of trash, waste and reuse in all its formats and possible meanings. It was born in the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM) in the year 2001 and, since then, it has evolved and acquired new shapes. Our aim is to study those phenomena inherent in the massive production of real and virtual trash in the consumer society, providing different points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes. We find gaps in these processes of production and consumption that not only raise questions about the way we manage our resources but also about the way we think, we work, we perceive reality.

Far from trying to offer a single manifest to be used as a manual, Basurama has compiled a series of multiform opinions and projects, not necessarily resembling each other, which explore different areas related to trash. We try to establish subtle connections between them so that they may give rise to unexpected reactions. We are not worried about its lack of unity; moreover, we believe it as evocative and potentially subversive values. Besides the visual arts in all its formats Basurama compiles all kind of workshops, talks, concerts, projections and publications.

Basurama acts like a creative linking platform where different agents of the same social network come together. It has created more than 100 projects in the four continents.

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3.11

material flow in the urban block

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waste to energy PROCESS: -The mixing or collecting tank is used to collect and homogenize the liquid substrates, such as liquid manure and silage effluent.

-The dosing unit is used to introduce solid substrates, such as renewable primary products and solid manure, into the biogas plant.

-The digestion of the substrates takes place in the digester. The digester can be heatable, insulated, equipped with weatherproof cladding, can accommodate several agitators and has a double membrane roof for gas storage.

-The fermentation residue storage tank is a tank for storing the outgassed or depleted digestate.

-Electricity or biomethane: Various upgrading concepts are available for the biogas produced. Generating electricity from a combined heat and power plant driven by a gas-Otto-engine enables to use, besides the electric energy, also the engine’s thermal energy in local and DISTRICT HEATING SYSTEMS. Alternatively, biogas can be fed into the natural gas network after appropriate upgrading to biomethane and can be used in various ways – even as fuel for cars, trucks and buses.

GAS UPGRADING UNIT

HEATING SYSTEM

COMBINED HEAT AND POWER UNIT

FERTILIZER

ANIMAL + HUMAN MANURE MIXING TANK

ENERGY CROPS DOSING UNIT ORGANIC WASTE

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ANAEROBIC DIGESTER

FERMENTATION RESIDUE STORAGE TANK

3.12

district heating

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2 3

1

1

DOSING UNIT

2

ANAEROBIC DIGESTER

3

FERMENTATION RESIDUE STORAGE TANK

4

FERMENTATION RESIDUE STORAGE TANK

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4. MASTERPLAN 4.1

Prototype of the urban block

4.2

Vision for the city- Facade retrofitting

4.3

Vision for the city-Filling the gaps

4.4

Vision for the city-Recreational spaces

4.5

Vision for the city- community workshops

4.6

Vision for the city- urban farming

4.7

Masterplan

1:100 urban block+Context section model

4.1

Prototype of the urban block

1:100 urban block+Context section model 125

4.2

viSion for the city facades

Instead of demolishing buildings to open paths to the backyards of the block we suggest retrofitting the facades and creating open ground floor spaces that can link the backyards with the context of the block.

This can also be achieved with visual language i.e. by use of certain materials or graphics that differentiate a specific facade from the rest in the street in order to attract pedestrians to follow the route through to the backyard.

Many of the facades that are exposed to primary traffic arteries or pedestrian routes are listed thus we are suggesting the alternative of a front extension or plug-in lightweight structure that can be installed on the existing facade and act as a cover.

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4.3

viSion for the city filling the gaps

Gaps in the urban fabric are commonly found in the block typology in SĹ‚upsk. Depending on the uses accommodated in the internal of the block these gaps are treated differently.

- Open spaces leading to the backyard - Sites of community workshops or production spaces that extend into the backyard. Their facades, accessible from the street act as more private commercial spaces while the back of the site, accessible primarily through the backyard, is focused primarily on public activities and production.

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4.4

viSion for the city RECREATION SPACES

Blocks with particularly low density in their typology can be utilized collectively as recreation spaces such as playgrounds, public gardens, sports grounds and more. These projects can be self-build by local residents depending on a common agreement on how to cover their needs as a medium to achieve inclusivity.

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4.5

viSion for the city COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS

Knowledge and skills can be treated as a common good and shared across the community through workshops, seminars and performances.

Spaces that accommodate these activities will be based primarily in the interior of the blocks and pursue to form a synergy network across the city.

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4.6

viSion for the city urban farming

Currently the rights to the allotment spaces are reserved to only a small part of the public.

Re-structuring ownership rights is usually very complex. In this case the proposal suggests that this process can be done gradually, starting with a small part of the allotments being public and managed by local communities through a time bank system and slowly land additions being made to it until it can cover the needs of local residents.

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4.7

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masterplan

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4.7

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masterplan

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4.7

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masterplan

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site model 1:1000

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5. reFERENCES

Post-industrial cities:

“Conspicuous production: valuing the visibility of industry in urban re-industrialisation strategies”, Karl Baker The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World, Hatch M., 2014

Commons: Marcos L.Rosa, Ute E. Weiland, 2013“Handmade urbanism: From community initiatives to participatory models” http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/mar/29/wroclaw-poland-post-punk-arts-gallery-restaurants http://www.confuzine.com/2013/12/19/powisle-diy-warsaw-poland/ http://www.browar.wroc.pl/ http://www.ekonsument.pl/spacerownik/m163_centrum_reanimacji_kultury.html

Municipal development plans: http://www.powiat.slupsk.pl/plik,1024,strategia-rozwoju-miejskiego-obszaru-funkcjonalnego-miasta-slupska-na-lata-2014-2020zalacznik-nr-2.pdf [Development Strategy of the Słupsk functional zone for 2014-2020] bip.ustka.ug.gov.pl/Download/get/id,23784.html [Diagnosis of the Słupsk functional zone] https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwiUhc-nxtDJAhVCTBQKHSoWAQUQFggoMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbip.um.slupsk.pl%2Ffile%2F37320&usg=AFQjCNFAS5P6YGCmayWlUTUvdP_GeVRatw&sig2=G_ur4J3BaOruyuzPftUzfQ [revitalisation programme of the city centre in Słupsk] https://dle.plymouth.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/383119/mod_resource/content/1/prezentacja%20MOF%20ost.pdf

Grassroot movements/NGOs: Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces What surrounds us now: cultural animation and the participatory and cultural voids in Poland, Brendan James Daniel http://siosism.com/cultural-animation-definition/ http://kongresruchowmiejskich.pl/ http://www.uncubemagazine.com/magazine-31-15285563.html#!/page35 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/12/rise-poland-urban-movement-2014129899563822.html http://www.precariouseurope.com/power/poland-left-up-for-grabs http://joaap.org/press/makingroom.htm http://ourmediaindymedia.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/swomp4-direct-environmental-action-in.html http://poradnik.ngo.pl/wiadomosc/1445706.html https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/caeaac98-b933-412b-ac28-5e5cf35b94ab.pdf

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Markets: http://www.tvp.info/18948375/przyciagaly-marzycieli-milosnikow-motoryzacji-spacerowiczow-i-klientow-gieldy-samochodowe-i-bazary-w-prl http://www.zarzadcy.com.pl/audyt/aktualnosci/Bazary-wychodza-ze-stadionow/401.html http://polska.newsweek.pl/prl-kapitalizm-wolny-rynek-handel-na-bazarze,artykuly,364385,1.html

House retrofitting:

http://energy.gov/energysaver/adding-insulation-existing-home http://energy.gov/energysaver/where-insulate-home http://www.superhomes.org.uk/resources/whats-best-insulation-material/

Energy and waste management:

http://www.s-ge.com/sites/default/files/private_files/BBK_Waste_management_report_Poland_0.pdf Rapport S-GE: Waste Management in Poland�, 2013 http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/construction/green/10-things-to-recycle-at-construction-site.htm#page=1

Allotments:

http://www.pzd.pl/ https://uk.news.yahoo.com/polands-love-affair-allotments-050008853.html#XlF7LRb http://www.krakowpost.com/5617/2012/08/threat-to-the-future-of-polands-one-million-allotment-gardens

Precedents: http://r-urban.net/en/sample-page/ http://basurama.org/en/all-projects/ http://www.spatialagency.net/database/santiago.cirugeda http://prinzessinnengarten.net/about/ http://www.ekonsument.pl/spacerownik/m163_centrum_reanimacji_kultury.html http://www.confuzine.com/2013/12/19/powisle-diy-warsaw-poland/

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