Making slow travelling beautiful and each middle stop of long journey into a destination
I am travelling by train from Copenhagen to Bologna. I have a two hours stop over at the station of Hamburg. What to do? Two hours are not enough to venture into what the city has to offer. Two hours is too much time to be spent doing nothing at the station. Thankfully there’s a way-finding system guiding me to an art exhibition at the station - a whole new format, designed for people like me, in transit-. I get in, enjoy it, and get out refreshed and inspired, ready to catch my next train.
Cross-border/international
Denmark
Italy
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Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
The main idea behind Liveability in transit is to make the NEB values – beautiful sustainable together - into something tangible that can be enjoyed on-the-go by passengers travelling all across Europe as well as locals.
Thanks to their centrality, stations could be the pulse of the city, favouring positive encounters among travellers and locals. However, stations are often designed as merely functional and soulless places, mainly associated with unpleasant experiences. But what if stations were not only places where you sit and wait to catch the next train? What if they also were places for art and culture, inspiration, community building or reflection?
The question that I would like to explore through Liveability in Transit is what it takes to establish a sense of belonging around stations. What kind of initiatives and formats can give travellers short but meaningful experiences on-the-go? How can stations facilitate positive interactions among travellers and locals? Maybe it could be a 15 minutes performance, you can experience in the lobby. Or a catchy light installation. Maybe a social dining experience with other travellers arranged by local volunteers. Or a whole new library format to read your book in peace before you catch the next train?
The idea is to work place-based with cities - and their respective stations - and pilot-test new initiatives, design solutions, social interventions, etc. setting quality of experience for both locals and travellers at the center.
In this initial phase of the project, I intend to involve three selected cities from different EU-countries, which will be the test beds and epicenters for a bigger movement involving more stations across EU. In a large-scale stakeholder engagement process I will invite the municipality, local cultural institutions, local artists, citizens and train operators, to develop ideas and implement intervention that will turn their station – and its immediate surrounding – into spaces of belonging.
Slow-travelling - a desirable and sustainable option
Liveability - safety, comfort, enjoyment
In-transit - quality of experience on the go
Re-purposing and re-functioning stations
Cohesion - meaningful encounters and belonging
Objective: To make train-based travel in Europe a desirable alternative to flying or driving cars by significantly improving the quality of experience for passengers. According to the European Environment Agency, the aviation sector accounts for approximately 3% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions. According to Eurostat, the number of people travelling by car in Europe has increased in recent years.
While there is no doubt that better train connections and affordable ticket prices are necessary to make train-based travel more attractive, I believe that significantly improving the quality of experience travelling by train would also yield great results. Quality of experience is in fact a determinant factor in people's choice of means of transport. To illustrate this, consider the case of a family with young kids, living in Denmark, who decides to travel by train to Italy for their summer holidays instead of taking the plane, for sustainability reasons. Crossing all Europe by train, the family will be met with all kinds of challenges related to poor user experience - e.g., being dropped off at stations for a couple of hours in environments that feel dirty, unsafe and impractical. Despite all good sustainability intentions, next year the family won't choose the sustainable alternative again.
This project will be exemplary as it will show that by rethinking stations not only as points of passage, but also as beautiful, inviting and inclusive meeting places for both travellers and locals, we will be able to offer a truly attractive alternative to travelling by plane or car. Hereby opening up new markets for citizens that ware willing to travel slowly and sustainably.
To travel sustainably across Europe is not only expensive and less convenient than flying. It is also often associated with negative experiences. Ask travellers crossing Europe by train or bus. Most of them will tell you that stations are often smelly, unclean and feel unsafe. Ask locals and they will tell you a similar story. Stations and their surroundings are generally places where you would like to spend the least possible time.
The objective of this project is to make stations liveable and enjoyable spaces for both locals and travellers.
To illustrate this, imagine you are travelling by train from Copenhagen to Bologna. You have a two hours stop-over at the station of Hamburg. What to do? Two hours are not enough to venture into what the city has to offer. Two hours is also too much time to be spent doing nothing at the station. Thankfully there’s a catchy way-finding system guiding you to an art exhibition at the station - a whole new format, designed for people like you: in transit-. You get into the exhibition space. From another entrance at the opposite side of the space a local family with kids comes in. They smile at you, you smile back. You enjoying the exhibition and then get out again, refreshed and inspired, ready to catch you next train. When you have found your seat on the train, you send a picture of the art exhibition to a dear friend. The stranger next to you accidentally looks at your phone, and tell you that she has also seen that exhibition. You start talking with her until she reaches her destination.
Above is just an example of how a beautiful experience in transit could feel like, but many more are possible. They are only waiting to be designed and tested out. Liveability in Transit is exemplary as it will show that designing arrival, waiting time and departure from the station as pleasant and memorable experiences, will have positive effect on stations and their surroundings while strengthening the social and cultural fabric of Europe.
The widespread perception that travelling by train is unpractical, discourages many travellers from opting for the most sustainable alternative, when travelling long-distances. Anybody would feel vulnerable, arriving or passing by a station, whose surroundings are perceived as unsafe. Think of solo-travellers, think of elderly people or family with small kids. As it is today, travelling by train for long distances is an experience for the few.
The objective of Liveability in Transit is to make long-distance travelling by train and bus accessible, by designing a comfortable, safe, and inviting experience at stations for everyone.
What is common for all travellers is that they typically are carrying heavy bags, they need to eat, they need to use the toilet, they need to rest and lastly, they are eager to experience new things. So how can the design of the experience at the station be comfortable, practical and satisfy their curiosity to explore at the same time?
In one city, the focus of a place-based initiative could be on designing the waiting room at the station as if it looked like a gigantic living room in a private home, with comfortable places to sit and stretch your legs.
In another city, we could try out a pop-up restaurant just outside the station, run by local volunteers and refugees, that offers quick and affordable meal to travellers and local workers.
In a third city, a local music school and a local street musician could organise a series of night concerts for whoever is at the station at 11 pm.
In a fourth city, we could experiment with a model where local young people get trained - and paid - to help elderly travellers arriving at the station with carrying luggages.
Liveability in Transit is exemplary as it gathers people visiting stations and people living in cities around meaningful albeit short-lived experiences.
Three pilot cities from three different EU-countries (and their respective stations) will be selected to participate. Once they are onboarded, a local call for applications will be launched in each of the three cities. Here local designers, artist etc, are encouraged to submit their idea for a place-based intervention to be implemented and tested out at the local station. This can be an art installation, a pop-up concept etc. A requirement for being selected is to provide a convincing explanation for how fellow citizens will be engaged in co-designing the place-based intervention. Prize for being selected is 1500 €, to facilitate the co-design process and implement the intervention.
A crucial condition for creating a sense of belonging around stations is that the experience is designed for both travellers and locals. To achieve this, I will organise a kick-off workshop, where all three pilot-cities (and relevant stakeholders) will participate. This way the perspectives of the "hosts" and the "guests" are involved in the concept, as those who represent the local citizens of one pilot-city are potential travellers in the other two pilot-cities, and vice versa.
Once the common framework for the project is set, the co-design process starts. The following workshops will be executed locally. The focus will be on ideating and rapid prototyping. Citizens will be involved in co-design by the local designer/artist. The impact of the involvement is that citizens and designer/artist will have a sense of ownership towards the project. The pride of having improved their city by co-designing the intervention, will make them ambassadors for the project among their family and friends - both local and internationals. This will create the first small ripple for scaling up the concept to other cities. Lastly the personal and professional connections created with the other pilot-cities, will give participants the curiosity to visit the place-based interventions in the other cities.
In this section I will review the set of stakeholders that will be engaged in the design and development of the concept.
Stakeholders at European level - as a consultant on two different NEB projects (the first one, DG Regio - support to local place based initiatives; the second one, DESIRE - Designing the Irresistible Circular Society - Lighthouse Demonstrator), I already have close contact with many different cities across Europe, which are already very familiar with the New European Bauhaus. In this first phase of the project, I will tap into this network as well as reach out actively to other cities, encouraging them to apply to be one of the three pilot-cities.
Stakeholders at local level - In each of the three pilot-cities, the municipality, the train and/ or bus operators, people working at the stations and other relevant stakeholders, will be involved in the design and implementation of the place-based interventions. They will contribute with 1) knowledge about station (e.g. data about in- and outbound travel, flow of people at the stations etc...), 2) ensuring practical, financial and administrative support to the place-based interventions, 3) input during the co-design process, 4) broader communication of the project locally 5) linking the project to regional, national and European transport network, 6) establishment of cross-city collaborations 7) rewarding citizens for participating in the project e.g. by offering them free train tickets to travel in the two other pilot-cities.
The engagement of these partners will root Liveability in Transit more solidly in the local territory and increase its international visibility.
Throughout the project I will support the three pilot cities, the three selected designers and relevant stakeholders and together we will reflect and learn about challenges and successes encountered during the project. The added value is the development of a common methodology for working with Liveability in Transit.
First and foremost, the knowledge of myself as a common citizen of Europe, is reflected in the design and development of Liveability in Transit. I was born and I grew up in Italy. The past 7 years of my life I have been living in Copenhagen, Denmark. For family, work and leisure reasons, I travel to other EU cities, 3-4 times a year. More often than one should - and than I personally would want to - my travelling around Europe, happens by plane. When I travel long distances by train, I wish the experience could be more pleasant, to say the least. Especially when I travel alone. Liveability in Transit is my attempt to transform this pain, which I know I share with a lot of other people, into a transformative movement for all stations in Europe.
Secondly, my discipline as a concept developer, process designer and facilitator of large-scale participatory processes. The past five years I have been a consultant within democracy innovation, participatory methods, urban development and urban regeneration processes, collaborating with various cities across Europe. As such I want to involve my network and use my competences to coordinate and facilitate the collaboration of municipality, citizens and stakeholders in a common transformative project. However, my competencies fall short when the task becames the actual design and production of an art exhibition or a design intervention. I do not have the local knowledge of problems that should be solved in a specific station or a specific city. That's where I want the discipline of local arts, designers and citizens to step in. For this reason I developed the concept of Liveability in Transit to be so iterative and adaptable to the culture of each place. I want to provide a common framework, so those who decide to engage in the project feel they are working for someting bigger, new and transformative. But I also want them to interpret the project their own way, and make it unique. I want them to feel it is their project.
Attempts to improve the user experience of travellers and passangers at stations have previously been made. However, they have been designed ad-hoc, scattered around Europe with a common denominator. Additionally, these attempts were designed by very limited stakeholder groups - e.g. retail shops at the station willing to increase sales; public authorities wanting to prevent theft by playing classical music in stations elevators etc. Lastly, the stations and their surrounding environments are often left separate from the discourse around the cultural development of the rest of the city. It seems like we have given up on stations and parked them as if they were functional ghost towns within the city.
Liveability in Transit is innovative in the following four ways.
Firstly, it will create a strong network of cities - and stations - under the same common framework of New European Bauhaus as well as a new narrative promoting slow travelling across Europe and sense of belonging in stations. Secondly, place-based initiatives that aim to improve the quality of experience will be co-designed by heterogeneous groups of people and stakeholders. Thirdly, Liveability in Transit will set the quality of experience of both locals and travellers at the center of the design process, with the intention of creating connections among them. Finally, in this project, stations are revalued as a asset for the cultural and social fabric of the city. From the current source of many social problems e.g. criminality, vandalism, squatting, homelessness etc, stations are turned into a sources of solutions through arts, meaning, integration, creation of alternative form of employment, etc..
After Erasmus and Interrail, Liveability in Transit can become the next mobility project bringing cities and people across Europe together at large scales.
One of the greatest achievements of the Erasmus and Interrail, have been to strengthen ties across people in Europe. Thanks to these projects, people have made new friends, met their life partner, learnt new languages, broadened their horizon, found work abroad.
I imagine how difficult it must have been for the very first Erasmus students, feeling lost and insecure in a new country at the beginning of their period abroad. Since then a lot of initiatives have made the experience of living temporarily in another country smoother for exchange students. Host students have also become better at welcoming visiting students. The result is that years and years after their exchange, people still remember Erasmus-times as among the best of their lives. And the country, which hosted them, will always somehow feel like a "second home".
Liveability in Transit will be dedicated to designing, testing out and consolidating methods to make the experience of slow travelling more comfortable, meaningful and memorable, bringing visitors and locals together. A short final report from this phase will be redacted to inspire more cities to also experiment with their concept of Liveability in Transit.
Starting small from three selected pilot cities in the first phase, the network of cities will expand incrementally to include more geographies.
New slow-travelling routes will be developed. Here each one of the middle stops on a long-distance journey becomes a mini-Erasmus experience - a story, a feeling, an idea, an encounter, a series of existential questions - packed in a "to-go" or "on-the-go" format, that you can bring home with you. Last but not least, this beautiful experience in transit, will give you the curiosity to visit that place, you just briefly stopped by, another time. For a longer time.
In this section I review some of the global challenges, that Liveability in Transit is addressing locally.
Firstly, global warming - Demand for plane-based travel connecting cities across Europe is increasing. Car ownership and travels in Europe are also increasing at the expenses of more sustainable transport forms. At the same time, the train infrastructure in Europe is a great resource, which is already well developed and widely distributed. However we need well-designed initiatives to boost sustainable and collective transport, so that it becomes a desirable option for both shorter and longer distances.
Secondly, tensions between liveability and visitability. Frictions and potential conflicts between locals and tourists is a global challenge in many cities. One could argue that in some cases, turning stations into liveable and enjoyable spaces could conflict with their functionality, hereby reinforcing the divide between visitors and locals. For example, a possible risk could be that long-distance travellers hanging out in the middle of the station, would be on the way of the busy local commuters, who just want to find the shortest way to their train. The consequence could be that the collective transport becomes less attractive for local commuters. However, the idea behind Liveability in Transit is to design the experience of stations from the premise that passengers will be smoothly guided to the right place, on the basis of the amount of time they have to spend at the stations. Thus, minimising unnecessary frictions and disruptions in the flow.
Lastly, EU-skepticism - EU has for the past year experienced a favourable momentum of unity and cohesion. But waves of EU-skepticism are potentially always around the corner. These can be reduced by long-term investment in the creation of bonds among people across countries, as among others the Erasmus program has shown. Liveability in Transit would be a new initiative to foster cross-cultural encounters.
