Implementing the activities
Implementing the activities
For the on-site workshop, it is recommended to organise working groups according to the model explained in Implementing_the_teaching_and_learning_activities. It is important to have local students who are fluent in the local language (able to speak, read and translate) as members of every team.
To achieve the best results for the hosting municipalities and communities, and to ensure the highest motivation level of students stakeholders a successful principle is:
- every group works on a different spatial focus area; and
- every group works on a different thematic focus.
This helps to avoid too much competition between the teams and redundancies during the presentations and discussions with the local stakeholders. In typical academic study projects and design studios, students usually work competitively on the same study area to get the best results. But in these ISP workshops, the students and their tutors know each other, are more or less familiar with the planning context and there are no language barriers.
The following table shows the main themes of the four CO-LAND ISP workshops that have taken place. Depending on the particular spatial focus areas, additional concrete topics and sub-themes are reasonable, such as natural characteristics (dunes, volcanism, local habitats etc.), post-industrial landscapes or seascapes (brownfields, drosscapes, etc.) or tourism infrastructure (marinas, camping areas, holiday homes, beach bars and clubs etc.).
| Mangalia 2018 | Tallinn 2019 | Napoli 2019 | De Panne 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green and Blue Infrastructure | Green Infrastructure | Green Infrastructure | Green Infrastructure |
| Ecosystem Services | Ecosystem Services | Ecosystem Services | Ecosystem Services |
| Sustainable Mobility | Sustainable Transport | Sustainable Transport | Sustainable Transport |
| Heritage and Identities | Soviet Heritage | Archaeological Heritage and Identities | Heritage and Identities |
| Living on the Coast: Housing, working, community life and identities | Sustainable Urban Development | Sustainable Urban Development | Sustainable Urban Development |
| Productive Landscapes, Circular Economy and Landscape Protection | Accessibility | Urban Sprawl | Urban Sprawl |
| Nature-based Rural Tourism | Community-based Planning | Community-based Planning | Community-based Planning |
| Transboundary Strategies | Resilience | Resilience | |
| Coastal Landscape Design |
Table: The main themes of the CO-LAND ISPs
Against this background, the following activities are conducted in close cooperation with local stakeholders and the hosting municipalities:
- Identify local potentials by applying a holistic landscape assessment framework;
- Use the green and blue infrastructure approach to improve the connectivity and multi-functionality of fragmented and competing spatial layers and structures;
- Use people-centered and community-based planning and design methods;
- Apply scenario techniques for envisioning alternative futures and discuss their ideas with the local community;
- Use innovative communication and visualisation tools to support the community in envisioning alternative futures while ensuring a presentation and discussion in the local language;
- Document the projects and hand the results over to the community (service-learning); for every CO-LAND workshop, a report documenting the workshop is made available.