Incubator for Place-based Ecosystems for the revitalization of latent spaces in shrinking areas
In my country, scarred by three tough decades of demographic decline and transition to market economy, a new generation is emerging. My generation of those born after the Revolution, understanding that place transformations have to be imagined and led at local roots. IPbE is built on my drive to empower place-based collaborative ecosystems, rooted in mutual trust and belonging, to lead transformational regeneration initiatives, benefiting community cohesion and entrepreneurship.
National
Romania
I started testing and developing this concept in two medium-small towns in Romania, namely Făgăraș and Reșița (30 and 75k inhabitants respectively) since 2016 gradually building networks of trust, bridging local organizations with outside expertise and sparking small scale demonstrative acts, to lead to critical yeast of ideas and successful collaborations of a network of now ready to assume longer term and higher scale aims.
Since 2022, I have set the grounds to replicate this type of catalyzer work in other small urban and rural communities in Romania, engaging with a first cohort of 7 local organizations to initiate revitalization processes of space relevant for local tourism and community development.
While I do intend to continue work with our basecamps, we also want to expand to a broader cohort of such networks.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): MKBT: Make Better Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Ana-Maria Last name of representative: Elian Age: 30 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Female Nationality: Romania Function: Program Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Popa Petre 23 Town: Bucharest Postal code: 020802 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 720 671 080 E-mail:ana.elian@mkbt.ro Website:https://mkbt.ro/
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Yes
email from previous collaborator within the World Bank
Romania ranks 11th worldwide in terms of prospected demographic decline, a top it shares with all other Eastern European countries. What's left behind? An abundance of rural and small urban areas with larger 'clothes' than they actually need, shabby and crumpled, but also civic apathy, discouragement and alienation. The country’s built environment is currently over-sized, with much abandonment and degradation, as well as disconnected from community needs. Moreover, Romania’s recent and complicated property transfer processes – communist mass nationalization followed by fragmented privatization and lengthy restitution – made that many properties have been neglected and left vacant throughout long years of ownership uncertainty.
During my past 6 years of grass roots work, I have encountered what seems to be not just isolated actions, but a movement of civic action - of curious youth, or elderly with love and passion for their past, of NGOs and local authorities alike - interested in revitalizing some of their most emblematic latest assets. This is not about saving all that’s in ruin, but appropriating spaces essential for local identities and meeting true local needs.
Unfortunately, the prevalence of European funding only address investment-ready sites, of clear, all-paper solved ownership regimes, with very little support and resources allocated to facilitate the process that precedes these investments (eg. how to form a local initiative group, document the heritage value of such assets, coagulate the key actors and local resources to initiate this transformation etc.) and then sustain in the long term the functioning of these spaces through sustainable co-governance models.
It takes an ecosystem to revitalize declining areas. The concept addresses the need for process design and assistance for the development of local place-based ecosystems aiming to appropriate and revitalize latent assets in declining areas in line with current community needs.
place-based ecosystem
revitalization
latent assets
appropriation
systems practice
The concept addresses the sustainable regeneration and reuse of the built environment, by targeting latent spaces - abandoned, derelict, unused/ underused built environment. Reusing and revitalizing such built environment elements generates multiple socio-economic and ecological sustainability benefits: catalyzing entrepreneurial and cultural activities, heritage preservation, landscape improvements, circularity, local pride and social capital enhancements.
Small-urban and rural areas in Romania are confronted with the paradox of lacking vital community spaces, while experiencing a fundamental mismatch between the abundance of unused/underused built environment and unmet local needs and opportunities. This, in turn, exacerbates the demographic decline and, consequently, the physical and economic degradation of these territories.
In such slack market conditions, space initiatives need a wider, and more diverse and innovative array of resources, including - as a critical basis - community finance and sweat equity resources. Sustainable place-based regenerations in such contexts are limited in replicating the mostly black and white examples of Western Europe wealthier economies, whereby such places are transformed given more dynamic market forces and/or more generous public body budgets.
Furthermore, sustainable place-based regeneration initiatives challenge the bias of conventional planning and investment policies based on growth and new development, with little understanding of the particularities of declining areas.
My concept is to help support such emergent ecosystems of people and organizations that run place-based initiatives, to gain knowledge resources, inspiration and courage to overcome these barriers.
The ecosystems built through IPbE are networks of community groups, civil society, entrepreneurs and public entities that have the know-how, resources and capabilities to appropriate latent spaces and revitalize them in a way that contributes to heritage preservation, cultural opportunity and quality community spaces.
IPbE aims to facilitate contexts whereby local communities learn to see hope instead of abandonment and then collectively act for the transformation of the local built environment to better match community needs. The process supported through IPbE has multiple emotional and cultural benefits:
On one hand, it creates contexts to appropriate and redefine the relation to space by shifting the mindset of local communities from civic apathy and discouragement to seeing the places they inhibit as commons and becoming active actors for their transformation. IPbE builds on the process of bringing local actors together for the physical transformation of latent spaces as means for community healing and narrative change. The narrative of despair, prevalent in such declining areas, is a challenge in itself, proven by the local development theorists explaining the mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophecies and lock-in syndrome. Residents of such distressed communities are often trapped in apathy and are difficult to mobilize in collective endeavors. IPbE incubates local ecosystems that can catalyze declining areas’ transition to a positive collective self representation, centered around new perspectives on richness of place, trust and collaboration, healing of sense of loss and bridging of generations and social groups.
IPbE curates and supports the democratic access and use of latent assets (seen as local resources) by fostering active citizenship, the collaborative transformation and co-governance of local territories as commons.
In terms of both accessibility and affordability, IPbE facilitates the access for local communities to currently derelict, latent spaces and infrastructure in their constituencies which, in the absence of a collective process and effort like the one catalyzed by this project, they would otherwise not be able to access and use due to high costs, limited human resources and ability to manage such transformation processes, especially in small urban and rural area.
The ecosystems created and supported through IPbE mobilize shared resources and efforts in collaborative processes that move the decision-making and governance power to those in need and willing to act for their territories’ revival. IPbE builds on urban commons frame of thinking and movement which challenges the very concept of ‘property’ and invites us to reflect and reimagine the city as a commons.
The work processes facilitated through this project also foster the repurposing of spaces towards positive intergenerational exchanges and community-building, as a response to increasing community divides in such declining areas, between the older generation that has experienced these places in its glory, and younger generations that grew facing dereliction and finds no reason for local pride.
The citizens and the civil society are at the core of the place-based ecosystem concept proposed by this project. In our experience, local ecosystems or initiatives around the revitalization of latent spaces are often organically sparked by passionate, involved citizens (profiles of local storytellers, community leaders etc.), but often lack the resources or know-how to strategically build on the long term, as well as exposure to other inspirational practices.
IPbE supports, offers learning tools and resources to such citizens to better structure their resources, provides a framework for systemic action and exposure to a community of practice that can help them scale up the impact of their initiatives.
I have developed and refined this concept building on years of experience in strategic planning with authorities and stakeholders on all levels (from local, regional, to national), as well as in policy review working with national and international entities. With the organization I represent, we have worked extensively at grass-roots level in over 30 communities in Romania as well as abroad, in other countries of the Eastern Europe, assisting local authorities, NGOs and companies to gain a better understanding of the communities in which they conduct their activities and to co-design strategies, programs, and services for their regeneration. All these previous experiences have sharpened my approach and understanding of key ingredients that are encompassed under the proposed project.
Working on place-based regeneration initiatives requires, in my experience, a highly interdisciplinary approach, blending expertise in the built environment with sound understanding and experience in community facilitation, multi-stakeholder communication and management, as well as storytelling, marketing and fundraising. Establishing such collaborative networks is challenging in brain-drained areas. For this reason, in our past work, exposing local citizens and civic groups to outside knowledge, and linking these groups to knowledge-sharing networks has been essential for them to gain the required skills and self-confidence to succeed.
The organization that I am part of, and under whose umbrella I have designed this concept is a highly interdisciplinary team, joining backgrounds in planning and community facilitation, urban economy, geography and engineering. We bring together a wide range of experiences in participatory planning, strategy and program development, field work and data analysis, gathered in years of grassroots work across all types of constituencies in Romania, rural, small and large urban areas.
We have gradually learned to listen, understand, negotiate and integrate the different perspectives and vocabulary of professionals of various fields, ourselves, and of the other collaborators in our network. And this experience sharpened our contributions as knowledge broker and curator of the various specializations that need to be, around the table, given the particularities of a space and the needs and profile of its ambassadors.
My work is inspired and rooted in a systems practice frame of thinking. We take on paths, and build networks following, perseveringly, long term aims. We disagree with, and do not follow a project-based thinking of actions starting and ending as per a grant agreement.
We do the often unseen, and too much underestimated work of vision setting and trust consolidation that precedes the more visible, brick and mortar regeneration works.
The methodology developed through this project, used for facilitation and process coaching for the local ecosystems, can be used and adapted to any declining rural and small-urban area. It involves participatory and co-creation tools, facilitated conversations and coalitions building and storytelling.
The community of practice also can be extended or adapted to include topics and international actors of relevance for other declining areas and/or latent space transformation processes.
Urban shrinkage and demographic decline are processes unfolding in many of the European states, resulting in an increasingly outsized and degraded build environment, but also civic apathy and discouragement. Romania ranks 11th worldwide in terms of prospected demographic decline, a top it shares with other Eastern European countries, which makes this issue more pressing than in other places, but with challenges of relevance at a global level (economic restructuring, physical decline damage to the social fabric etc.) .
IPbE develops and tests a process and coaching model for the appropriation and revitalization of latent spaces by local communities, by mobilizing and building capacity for an ecosystem of local stakeholders relevant for each local constituency. Although building on local resources, aims and ecosystems in practice, IPbE becomes a globally-applicable framework in declining areas.
