REIMAGINE THE EMPTINESS: COMBINING PLACEMAKING AND POP-UP SHOP INITIATIVES (by Daniele Terzariol, Urbact Ad-hoc expert)
Empty commercial spaces can be understood as urban supplies for the experimentation with collective dreams, not just places for relaunching trade. Which point of view do we have to adopt to reinterpret abandoned places and to give them new life and shape? How to combine and integrate temporary uses into longer term urban regeneration processes? How to rekindle interest or provoke debate on the tools, policies, laws and practices of reactivating marginal, degraded and underutilized spaces? How can we make them accessible again and capable of answering society's housing, leisure and work needs? Some recent design experiences in Europe, many of which are funded through URBACT encourage experimentation with practices that reuse places by extending their use to a plurality of actors, fertilizing abandoned spaces with new activities and uses. Than can trigger new economic activity that combine architectural conversion with public art, creative urbanism, activism and social design. These reuse projects will be the result of continuous selection and settlement processes.
Commercial services maintain and amplify a socially aggregating function: they aren’t a “public cities” in the strict sense, but they represent places where a plurality of "public life" activities take place and, with very different forms, they continue to connote spaces potentially and variously "central” in local settlement systems. Temporary informal spaces near small commercial realities can be considered places of participation and sharing, places where you can experience forms of community and where you can take control and management of spaces, even if for a short time and with limited purpose activities.
The Urbact “Re-growCity” network is experimenting with the creation of pop up shops. These are temporary uses of vacant retail property by local entrepreneurs, artists or community groups. Deepening the dynamics of temporary reuse for the revival of trade placemaking is an important element for successful cases. Below we will analyze some examples, which are inspirational.
