Hyperlocal Public Landscaping
a bottom up approach to governing the public space
Public spaces should be public!
Their purpose should be to serve the public, not to be convenient for planners, investors and developers. Often, our common ground and imagination of urban landscapes doesn’t go further than a bench, a lawn and, if lucky, a bin.
This project explores how public spaces can be governed and organised by the people around it by empowering them to be in the centre of the planning and be able to make decisions and shape their habitat according to their needs, wishes and imagination.
What happens if citizens become responsible for their local surroundings? Would spaces be neglected and hostile?
Or would people take initiative and make the places their own, utilising them the way they suit best?
We should see public spaces as ours. Ours to shape, to utilise and to occupy, but also to take responsibility of.
The project invites people to look at the public space with a critical eye and to question the status quo of urban planning, development and landscape architecture. During this project I was actively engaging in the community and trough the initiative and resources of this project, it was possible to unite different actors and to spark interest in shaping the public sphere by fostering community activities and a sense of neighbourhood.
For this project I developed and designed several resources, including a guide on how to claim and shape one’s local public space together with the community. The guide can be used as a tool to take initiative in the public space.
In other explorations of the project, I supported people in interacting with the space around them by claiming it through, among others, stickers and pop-up exhibitions.
The project was also exhibited at the Southern Sweden Design Days in Malmö in 2022, where visitors had the opportunity create their own pop-up exhibition and engage with the topic.
The resources can be found through the Instagram page: @our.public.space
