Prototyping

• Facilitates Exploration: Prototyping bridges the gap between concept and reality, enabling cities to experiment with potential solutions in a low-risk, iterative manner.
• Encourages Collaboration: It fosters dialogue among stakeholders, including residents and citizens, urban planners and ecologists, and policymakers, to co-create solutions tailored to the citizens and city’s needs.
• Enhances Problem-Solving: By visualising and testing ideas, cities can identify practical, life-centred and human-connected solutions to complex urban challenges.
• Supports Contextual Innovation: Prototypes can be adapted to specific local contexts, ensuring that interventions respect and enhance the surrounding environment.
• Builds Community Engagement: Hands-on activities engage the community, increasing ownership and support for proposed changes.

1. Define the Focus: Identify specific urban challenges or opportunities for improvement that prototyping will address.
2. Generate Ideas: Collaborate with stakeholders to brainstorm innovative concepts that align with the city’s vision.
3. Develop Prototypes: Create tangible representations of ideas, such as models, mock-ups, or temporary installations, using accessible tools and materials.
4. Test in Context: Deploy prototypes in real-world settings, gathering feedback from users and observing their impact on the urban environment.
5. Refine and Iterate: Based on feedback, improve the prototypes to better meet user needs and align with the city’s goals.
6. Scale Up: Once validated, successful prototypes can inform larger-scale implementation, ensuring they remain grounded in tested, effective solutions.

Prototyping is a vital step in transforming urban spaces into inclusive, dynamic, and resilient environments, offering a structured yet flexible approach to innovation.

Here below examples from three pilot cities, including

PROTOTYPING IN BRASOV, RO

• Design Kit Manual – “A Companion for a Teacherless Learning Experience”.

The Design Kit Manual is a hands-on guide that fosters problem-solving and creativity through co-design activities, encouraging participants to explore urban design using play as a serious learning method.

Key takeaways:

• • Creativity and Imagination: The manual deliberately avoids strict instructions, instead presenting enigmas and partial truths to inspire participants to interpret and innovate independently.
  • Trial-and-Error Learning: Promotes a judgment-free environment where participants can explore, make mistakes, and refine their ideas without fear of failure.
  • Human-Scale Design Game: The Design Kit offers tools to create a wide range of objects, from functional benches to symbolic installations, enabling users to think big and experiment with design.
  • Contextual Adaptation: Emphasises adapting designs to the urban environment, considering spatial placement and how creations enhance or solve problems in the city.
  • The City as a Canvas: Participants use the city itself as the “game board,” merging creativity with real-world application to reimagine public spaces.

For download on the top right.

• The City as a Classroom – Manual

The City as a Classroom is an innovative educational program that empowers students, teachers, and mentors to revitalise underused spaces in Historic Urban Areas (HUAs). Through hands-on workshops, creative design, and collaboration, participants transform urban environments into accessible, educational, and cultural hubs.

Key takeaways:

• • Purpose: The program aims to revitalise HUAs by fostering creativity and collaboration among students and teachers, transforming neglected spaces into community assets.
  • Learning Approach: Activities focus on design thinking and trial-and-error processes, encouraging participants to explore, prototype, and test innovative ideas for urban spaces.
  • Workshops & Activities: Includes treasure hunts, mapping exercises, a week-long Summer School, and practical 1:1 scale design projects using the Design Kit.
  • Mentorship & Skills Development: Participants receive tailored guidance from architects, urban planners, and educators while learning practical skills in urban design, regeneration, and entrepreneurship.
  • Impact: Projects are showcased in public spaces, demonstrating how adaptable designs improve accessibility and meet community needs.

For download on the top right.

PROTOTYPING IN NICOSIA, CY 

• Nicosia Hub-In Platform

The Nicosia Hub-In Platform offers self-guided walking tours linked to the city’s Digital Twin, making Nicosia’s cultural and historical heritage accessible through an immersive, interactive, and inclusive experience. It supports the Nicosia Action Plan by promoting community engagement and tourism.

Key takeaways:

• Interactive Exploration: Provides self-guided walking tours enhanced with multimedia content like photos, videos, and 3D models linked to the Digital Twin, offering an enriched view of Nicosia’s landmarks.
• Cultural Tourism: Appeals to locals and tourists alike, highlighting the city’s history and culture while fostering local tourism.
• Community Engagement: Encourages residents and visitors to connect with Nicosia’s heritage in a meaningful, accessible way.
• Inclusive Design: Features user-friendly navigation and accessibility options to accommodate all participants.
• Action Plan Alignment: Directly supports Action 1 of the Nicosia Action Plan by combining digital tools with real-world exploration to deepen public understanding of the city.

Participants can access the platform, select a themed walking tour, from currently 10 routes, and explore the city with guided directions and historical context, all at their own pace. CLICK here or the images below to visit the platform.

PROTOTYPING IN UTRECHT, NL 

• Governance in Cultural Hubs – DOs and DON’Ts

For Hub Governance Models Utrecht has been studying existing hubs in Utrecht to learn lessons and develop good practice for Hub governance.

Governance structures and blueprints are very early-stage interventions in Hubs – they affect the upstream organisation principles and decision-making that can later impact on projects that themselves can later impact on results. In the wider context of rapid growth in the number of creative businesses in the Werkspoorkwartier, this led to a desire for the Municipality to learn from hubs implemented in Utrecht to understand their context and challenges, and align goals and resources in setting up a hub.  

Take aways: 

• In the contemporary landscape, municipalities serve as coordinators, actively participating in collaborative policymaking with both internal and external stakeholders. The effectiveness of this approach hinges on the engagement of robust, knowledgeable external partners attuned to the nature and scope of the task at hand. Failing to meet this criterion may result in opportunistic or risk-averse behaviour, posing a threat to collective interests. 
• The process of crafting policies entails establishing goals, allocating necessary resources, and defining a coherent timeline. The feasibility of a goal relies on the seamless interconnection of these elements. Inadequate alignment, such as misalignment of financial resources and timelines, can render a task unachievable for intended collaborators.  
• Initiating transformative endeavours requires appointing a project manager tasked with steering the process. However, success requires decision-making authority. If a project manager lacks control this compromises the effectiveness of the initiative in addressing underlying issues. 
• Governance encompasses structures and processes for managing responsibilities within an organisation. Designing an appropriate governance structure aligned with goals, collaboration, and organisation is crucial. A lack thereof can lead to conflicts of interest and neglect of responsibilities, diminishing organisational effectiveness. Adherence to the Code of Governance Culture supports cultural organisations in establishing effective governance. 
• All involved parties should approach complex collaborations with patience and meticulousness. Hasty decisions can lead to issues surfacing later in the process. Collaboration involves pursuing a common goal through resource deployment by involved parties. Trust, a clear governance structure, and aligned goals and expectations are fundamental for successful collaboration. 
• Establishing a solid foundation through a feasibility study is vital to ensure that task frameworks are adequately defined. The absence of such a study led to an organisational impasse due to insufficient resources. Transparent communication and a well-organised administrative structure are prerequisites for successfully executing complex tasks. 

Further lessons on coordination, feasibility, change agent, internal alignment, scale and capacity, governance, good practises, thoughtful planning, strong foundations, transparency, observations on collaboration in the ‘Governance in Cultural Hubs in Utrecht – DOs and DON’Ts’.

For download on the top right.

PROTOTYPING IN SLOVENSKA BISTRICA, SL 

• Second open call in the Crouzator 2.0 program

Slovenian creators have been encouraged to submit their ideas for the transformation of the city center with the second open call for participation in the Crouzator 2.0 program.

This example of a public call has selected up to six creators from the municipality of Slovenska Bistrica, who have received a financial incentive, specialised training, mentoring, and other support from the Center for Creativity. They have developed prototypes of products or services that innovatively showcase, preserve, enhance, develop, and valorise the local heritage and creativity in the Slovenska Bistrica area.

CLICK here or the images below to see further details of this open call example.

Note: This open call example is currently in Slovenian language only.

For further guidance around open calls and engaging with and supporting innovators – See Match & Ignite, which is part of the HUB-IN Academy Learning Offer that covers strategic topics and features in the design, implementation, and monitoring of regeneration of historical urban areas including “Co-creating your offer for innovators” Match & Ignite.