Urban Rooms
SPATIAL DESIGN | WORKSHOP
How can the Urban Rooms engage youth in shaping the Local Plan, and what strategies can enhance their contributions?
In 2019, as part of the engagement programme, London Borough of Croydon piloted an Urban Room; a physical space specifically set aside for the community to come together to learn and imagine the future of Croydon. This Urban Room is the hub for the first stage of the consultation and engagement period, and aims to serve as an ideal testing ground for new engagement techniques.
OVERVIEW
ROLE
Team: Migrant’s Bureau & Future Cities Catapult
Status: Completed
Client: Croydon Council
Location: Croydon, London
The Croydon Urban Room is an ongoing project, first piloted in 2019. In its second phase, we’re researching the following themes:
New Bureacratic Processes
Building upon an existing collaboration between Croydon Council and Migrants Bureau, we will explore how new forms of collective beyond the traditional structures of local government can agitate and accelerate alternative nstitutional processes.
Could council processes be faster and should they be? In exchange, what can private practice learn from bureaucratic working?
Innovative Engagement
Concepts of ‘the future’ and ‘the past’ are often as abstract and impenetrable as the planning process. We will seek to untangle more creative forms of engagement; to instigate genuine and sustained public participation and civic agency in the planning process.
Live Feedback Loop
We describe the project as a ‘work in progress’; overlaying research, practice, and evaluation live in process. Embracing incomplete ideas in local government is a radical approach.
De-institutionalised Governance
The project is designed to be shared and co-authored. How does this work in practice? How can the project have a life of its own, beyond the Council? Our methodology seeks to inspire sustainable civic agency for the long term through the establishment of a new system of governance in the form of ‘Board’ and membership programme.
Programme
The purpose of the youth surgeries, and LB Croydon’s expectations of Migrant’s Bureau, was to begin introducing and engaging the youth of Croydon with the Local Plan review.
The intended outcome was to receive and record opinions and suggestions from the youth on:
The big picture vision for the development of Croydon
Suggestions related to the policy options as set and questioned in the public consultation ‘Issues and Options’ document.
Surgeries
The purpose of the workshop was to generate more in-depth discussions than the surger-
ies, leading to deeper qualitative data for LB Croydon. Key issues and topics of interest that
were discussed in the surgeries are expected to take front and centre in the workshop, allowing for more focused discussion about specific topic areas from the Local Plan review rather than covering the review in its entirety.