Join us Thursday January 20th 16:00 – 17:00 CET for our second event with The City of The Hague in our ‘City Network’ collaboration - ‘Placemaking: Mobility and Liveable Neighbourhoods.’

The session has the honour to be kicked off by The Hague's very own Alderman van Asten, and subsequently, we will be joined by The City of Milan, represented by Demetrio Scopelliti, and author and international adviser Charles Landry. Throughout the session we will come back to the case study of the ‘Bomenbuurt’, presented to us by Lilian Verkleij, Innovation and Experiments Policy Officer from the Mobility Department of The Hague.

Interestingly, The Hague is experimenting in the ‘Bomenbuurt to replace parking spaces,  install bicycle platforms, introduce benches, playgrounds or even a small city garden. Additionally, the number of inhabitants and traffic gridlock are increasing, but the available spaces are limited. In this session, we will address how do we deal with road safety, heat stress, flooding, air quality and the energy transition to achieve liveable and mobility friendly neighbourhoods.

The session will host the city of Milan, Italy to present their experiences working on mobility with a placemaking approach. Milan will present their learnings from the ‘Piazze Aperte’ (Open Squares) Project, which involved giving public spaces back to pedestrians through tactical urban planning interventions. Our second guest speaker Charles Landry will provide a broader perspective on how European cities are organising placemaking with mobility issues in mind. We are excited for a cross-pollinating exchange between Milan, The Hague and Charles where each will share some experiences and discuss how we can bring learnings and inspirations into future work.

Following the exploration of Milan and a broader European perspective on placemaking in mobility, a local case study from The Hague’s ‘Bomenbuurt’ will be discussed. Lilian Verkleij, Innovation and Experiments Policy Officer from the Mobility Department of The Hague will present the Bomenbuurt case study, moderated by Placemaking Europe’s own Ramon Marrades.

The City Network is based on the shared principle to incorporate placemaking into citywide strategies in order to bring out better quality of life with and for inhabitants. We are very excited to be growing this network with a second event which will focus on how public space strategies, in combination with locally oriented participatory processes, can motivate active commuting, trip linking, and physically active and healthy communities.

The session aims to highlight how trailblazing cities have organised placemaking with the inhabitants of residential areas; specifically where the claim of cars in public space is being re-prioritised with the human experience in mind. We hope to explore best practices in participation strategies and mechanisms to create ownership and mobility behavioural change by and for residents.