Theme 1 – Building Belonging

Placemaking helps people connect, trust each other, and feel at home in their city. As societies face conflicts and rapid changes, we are rethinking how we want to live together in the future, and belonging means more than physical presence: it is the feeling that the city is part of your daily life, that your voice and culture matter, and that you can help shape shared urban life. Belonging emerges through relationships, trust, and everyday interactions, making public space a place for everyone.

This theme explores how public spaces, local initiatives, and cultural activities help people connect and strengthen social bonds across communities, cultures, and generations. In Wroclaw, projects like the Passage of Dialogue, a social service centre in an underground tunnel in the city centre, and Local Community Centres (Centra Aktywności Lokalnej) across neighbourhoods turn everyday spaces into hubs of interaction, learning, and cross-cultural exchange. Cultural events, creative activities, and shared spaces transform ordinary moments into opportunities for connection and collective identity. This remains especially meaningful today, in a city that was rebuilt by people from all over the region, following its destruction during WWII. These spaces help combat loneliness, connect different generations, and integrate diverse cultures into everyday urban life. Squares, parks, and community rooms become places for people of all ages and cultures to meet, exchange, and take pride in being part of the city, bringing the idea of the right to the city to life.

This theme asks:

• How can places, programmes, and cultural events give everyone the right to the city and build real belonging, for newcomers and long-time residents alike?
• What helps people feel included, cared for, and a part of a community, and how can we use public spaces to fight loneliness?
• How can cities support everyday encounters that turn streets, squares, and community spaces into places where people truly belong and can actively contribute to the city’s life?

Theme 2 – It Takes a Village to Shape a City

City-making is a collective endeavour, and collaboration goes beyond consultation: it emerges from how municipal departments, cultural organisations, private partners, NGOs, and residents work together to care for shared spaces. Co-creation allows communities to participate meaningfully in shaping the city, turning ideas into action while fostering local responsibility and ongoing commitment. Meaningful engagement and innovative collaboration are essential, particularly in fast-growing cities facing development pressures, where co-creation must balance diverse interests and foster shared responsibility.

This theme explores how co-creation can be built into the DNA of a city. In Wroclaw, residents shape their environment through initiatives like the participatory budget, which turns neighbourhood ideas into real projects, and ESK Parks, where cultural programmes involve local communities in transforming public spaces. Together, these efforts demonstrate how collaborative models nurture care, stewardship, and shared responsibility for streets, squares, and parks, turning public space into a living reflection of community priorities while strengthening local identity and a sense of stewardship.

This theme asks:

• What tools, processes, and collaborative models help communities take responsibility for shared resources while keeping spaces inclusive and adaptable?
• How can cultural activities and public-private partnerships foster meaningful engagement in co-creation?
• And how can we learn from each other’s experiences to make co-creation a lasting standard?

Theme 3 – Sandbox City: the Courage to Experiment

City-making is often a leap of faith – a long-term endeavour that thrives on experimentation, testing, and learning in real time. This theme explores how cities can experiment in real spaces, learning as they go, with a “lighter, faster, cheaper” spirit that aligns with our bigger goals. Short-term experiments become most valuable when we observe what works, what surprises us, and what can stick, feeding lessons into long-term strategies. Experimentation should also be supported through organisational structures, adapting city-making processes to encourage testing, iteration, and learning.

In Wroclaw, streets, squares, and neighbourhoods act as living laboratories. Projects like Popowice Tram Depot and Leśnica use playful installations, pedestrianisation trials, pop-up greenery, and cultural interventions to allow residents to shape, experience, and give meaning to public space while providing feedback. These experiments show how temporary actions can spark long-term transformation, turning ideas into lasting improvements that respond to community needs, build trust, and foster a culture of experimentation – both from the residents as well as from the municipality – that support creative approaches, cross-department coordination, and flexible processes, so that testing, learning, and adaptation become embedded in city-making rather than one-off initiatives.

In this theme we explore questions such as:

• How can experiments feed into long-term strategies and lead to systemic impact?
• How can cities create a culture where testing, learning, and adaptation are embedded into everyday planning and decision-making, while remaining reliable in public service?
• What organisational practices and processes are needed to support experimentation while keeping it aligned with the bigger vision for the city?

Theme 4 – Rooted in Resilience

Resilience is about preparing for and adapting to change – whether social, environmental, or economic. It is built not only with people but alongside nature itself, combining ecological systems, social networks, and cultural life. Strong, resilient cities are those where communities, organisations, and infrastructure can respond, recover, and evolve in the face of challenges. In this theme we follow the path where culture, nature, and community come together, exploring how everyday places and strong networks can grow into living hubs of human connections, care and resilience.

In Wroclaw, resilience has been shaped through both crisis and opportunity. The city has faced conflict, floods, rapid demographic change, and the recent arrival of over 200,000 Ukrainian refugees, yet each moment has strengthened social bonds and inspired innovative approaches. Initiatives link ecological solutions, public space, and civic engagement: rainwater gardens, urban forests, re-greened squares, and riverfronts work hand in hand with cultural centres, NGOs, and local networks. Neighbours supporting each other, organisations sharing knowledge, and institutions coordinating resources all contribute to a city where adaptation, preparedness, and daily life coexist – demonstrating that resilience is strongest when multiple partners actively shape solutions together.

This theme asks:

• How can cities integrate green and blue infrastructure, social networks, and cultural programming to strengthen resilience?
• How can public spaces and neighbourhood hubs nurture daily life while helping communities prepare for and recover from crises — whether climate-related, health, or safety?
• And how can collaboration across residents, organisations, and institutions ensure resilience is inclusive, effective, and mutually reinforcing?