humankind

Since Monday we’re hosting in Rotterdam the students of the Summer School #RemakingTheStreet, our landmark summer project developed in collaboration with TUM Accessibility Planning and supported by EIT Urban Mobility. The first three days were filled with lectures, workshops and bike tours. Among others, we had Coding the Curbs visit us to give an interesting workshop about parking spots as public space; and Give A Bike, who literally put a spanner and a bike in our students' hands. Can you think of a better welcome to the Netherlands? With a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge, we are sure that the students will be ready to create an urban intervention in the next two days using the various tools they have been cultivating these days with us and last week with our colleagues at #TUM. Two more days to go!

Welcome back to our #humankindglossary, a series where we navigate in the sea of words that we use at Humankind. Today we’ll talk about Social Capital. Social Capital is the ingredient you need for any change process because it’s the result of ambivalent trust, such as between citizens and municipalities or even among people from the same neighbourhood. Concepts like trust, confidence and mutual respect build what we can call “social capital”. When social capital is missing in a process, a lot more time will be needed in order to move from the present situation to the goal. Change speeds up when there’s harmony, collaboration, a shared vision and a sense of community by the people who are the main characters of the transition.

Today's newsletter focuses on the concept of good public space, besides theory what can be good examples of public space? Head to the link https://lnkd.in/dd4W4Yzf and discover our takes 💡

Today our Summer School #RemakingTheStreet has started in Munich, led by our partners and friends at the Technical University of Munich and TUM Accessibility Planning. 25 students from all over the world – from China, the USA, Canada or Colombia, among others– are taking part in this edition, focused on the concept of super-blocks thanks to the parklets powered by WOW! Urbane Utopien. The following week Rotterdam will be our base, where alongside a focus on public space experiments, participants will also learn about the bike culture in the Netherlands. We’re thrilled to once again join forces with our friends at TUM and are grateful for the collaboration of EIT Urban Mobility. We can’t wait to host more young city-changers in our home city and learn, experiment and exchange with them! More infos can be found here: https://lnkd.in/dFykefGf

What if attachment and belonging were drivers of change? “Cities grow and prosper because people are attached to them. Residents who feel a genuine connection to their city are willing to make more of an investment in their daily lives and make things work” writes Rosemary Wakeman in the chapter ‘Ordinary Utopias’ in The Monocle Companion #4: Fifty Ideas for Building Better Cities. In planning for change in urban spaces, an integral part of transition strategies must be the city’s inhabitants. Building social capital and involving them is one side of the coin, the other one is understanding how they experience the places they live in, and what is important to them. What makes them tick, what they dream of, what they care for. In a nutshell, what makes them feel that they belong. Curious about our take on change? Head here: https://lnkd.in/eeV232H6

This post is the second of nine chapters where we dive into our approach to creating Good Public Space and explain the elements of our model - today we’ll analyse relaxing in our cities. What would the streets be like if we had relaxation in mind? Let’s take Doelstraat in Rotterdam, for instance. A small, mostly dark, side street in the heart of the city centre, with hardly ever any bustling, though all too often full of parked cars. Imagine redesigning this space with relaxation in mind. What could it become? Maybe a calm waterway park with benches? Want to know more about how we evaluate relaxing in our Good Public Space Analysis? Check here the blog post! https://lnkd.in/dvDY5nY5

We are looking for a facilitator with experience in the Theory of Change model, both Dutch and English languages are required. Any recommendations are welcome!

As we hope you already know, our newsletter is back! After Pride Moth left many interesting discussions (as usual) throughout June, we dedicate this newsletter to gender in public space. How to make cities move closer to inclusive change not based on obsolete norms? Which projects are setting the scene to achieve that goal? Head to the link https://lnkd.in/dbHe32v2 and subscribe to our newsletter to discover our takes 💡

Who said that to learn one needs to sit and listen? Certainly not us, quite the contrary in fact – we believe that learning is a dynamic and social process that can take many forms and that it works best through mixed teaching methods. This is our approach in our Masterclass Designing the Cycling City, taking place in Rotterdam September 18 - 20, a true crash course in cycling urbanism for professionals in the urbanism and mobility field. Expect 3 days of deep-dives into active mobility urbanism with presentations, lectures by well-known practitioners and researchers, cycling tours in the cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam and social events to better understand the Dutch model and learn in a hands-on way. See you in Rotterdam? 🚲🚲🚲 More information and registration here https://lnkd.in/d-8DmVtj. A few early bird tickets still available!

Posters, magazines, glossy pamphlets, handmade zines… We research, learn and read in diverse formats, and we want to bring you along. Today we’re sharing a pocket-sized favourite of ours, based in Athens: Desired Landscapes. Founded, edited and creatively directed by graphic designer Natassa Pappa, who also runs walking tours in her home city of Athens, this beautiful magazine brings together personal experiences of cities. It is filled with observations, tales and snapshots of places and people in places in many forms: photography, interviews, essays, city guides and more. On the editor’s note to the third issue of the magazine (there’s 7 out there already!), Natassa Pappa wrote: “This magazine started out as an experimental tool to analyze and document the image of the city. With this issue and our latest walking tours, I got to observe urbanities being replaced by new environments, tiny or massive, leaving citizens feeling frustrated. Falsely articulated as a call for nostalgia, this discontent stems in fact from a leap of a narrative growing unable to connect yesterday to tomorrow to affirm a sense of belonging”. What does it mean to belong somewhere? How does it feel to never belong anywhere? Can one be an eternal visitor in a place? Do you have other magazines recommendations? Send them our way!