A SAFER ENEBORGSPLATSEN -From noisy and dull to a vibrant paradise around the corner
This is the success story of how we have turned a place around in the area that need it the most in Helsingborg. We have struggled with residents feeling unsafe in their neighbourhoods, affecting the most vulnerable groups whom are the least heard in planning processes. As Eneborgsplatsen also is burdened with heavy traffic, we took extra measures and added sound reduction innovations. We have also had an inclusive process to turn the park into a beautiful safe green haven the residents deserve.
Local
Sweden
City of Helsingborg
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-09-07
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): City of Helsingborg Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Moa Last name of representative: Sundberg Gender: Female Nationality: Sweden Function: Urban designer Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Järnvägsgatan 22 Town: Helsingborg Postal code: 25225 Country: Sweden Direct Tel:+4642105000 E-mail:moa.sundberg@helsingborg.se Website:https://helsingborg.se/
Eneborgsplatsen is a small neighbourhood park in the city centre of Helsingborg, bordering one of the most unsafe neighbourhoods in Sweden according to the Police’s annual safety survey. It also suffers from constant traffic noise from one of the busiest streets in downtown Helsingborg. The refurbishment of the park was therefore a joint effort between the Landscape Design and Traffic Department of Helsingborg, both aiming for innovative approaches when re-imagining Eneborgsplatsen. The traffic engineers wanted to try new solutions for dealing with traffic noise in urban environments which resulted in two new products;
Sound barrier brick walls
Soundshowers
The team from the Landscape Design Department responsible for the feeling of safety in public spaces were focusing on new approaches for designing safer places and developing new methods applicable on these type of parks. The places that are in abundance all over our world that is not on our top priority lists but so important to the people living next to it. We wanted to find a method that was easy to copy and sustainable in terms of materials, money and effort. Because we see so many projects that are amazing but the rebuild is too drastic and so much money and effort is put into the place that is just not approachable to most places. What we want to highlight in this project and our method is:
The measurement tool; how to measure if we have made the park safer based on factors that we know create safer environments.
The inclusion process; how we managed to get a representative group of people involved to make sure that the people who normally doesn’t get listened to was involved.
All of this has turned a run-down and noisy place into a beautiful and enriched park that the residents take a lot of pride in and love visiting. Eneborgsplatsen is today considered one of the most attractive parks of this size in Helsingborg and have truly reached its full potential.
Safety
Traffic noise
Participatory design
Neighbourhood park
Soundscape
For Eneborgsplatsen we follow a few principles we have as a standard in Helsingborg;
- Replace as little as possible; meaning we keep the trees and floorscape. We only add value to make it more social sustainable like new seating and playground that improves the social life.
- Change the lightning to LED and avoid uplights that only creates light pollution. We have made general decisions about when to prioritise wildlife and when to prioritise lightning (human needs). This park is the type of project where we prioritise the needs of humans, but on a larger scale and context we have moved more and more towards prioritising wildlife.
- Long term investments in good quality non-toxic materials and avoid trends.
- Add flowers, bushes and trees that promotes diversity in species and wildlife and which thrives in our climate.
Eneborgsplatsen is also on the border of the area Söder which has very few green areas but many children. It is also one of the most segregeated areas and the people that live here have fewer resources and fewer possibilites than the rest of Helsingborg. Tha’s why it’s so important to add value and beauty to the existing parks to make our part in making these areas more sustainable. And to make sure they stay as green lungs in the city and not pestered with traffic noises.
Social sustainability is central in all our safety projects. We try to strengthen the communities and social control, improve the identity and reputation of the places we work with and make the residents feel they have the right and a responsibility in the shaping and development of their neighbourhoods.
The traffic noise was analysed by a noise consultant and two approaches were developed and implemented in the design. The innovative sounds walls were designed for urban spaces protecting the space from traffic noise at the source in the road and at the edge of the park. We also developed three Sound showers that gives an instant relieving soundscape for individuals seeking refugee from noise. Together they created a calmer and more protected space. The design of the walls are following the architectural identity of the area with similar a colour scheme.
To improve the feeling of safety of the space we have followed the City of Helsingborgs action plan for safety and its design principals. These were mostly decided by the residents of the area:
- Removal of the inner circle of trees that opened up the space and made it possible to see what was going on in the park from the surrounding apartments. The trees were replaced by a low hedge (1.2 meter). The hedge defines the space better, creating an edge that encourage people to sit in the park protected by an edge in the back, without allowing “unwanted” behaviour such as drug selling.
- A new light scheme of the park with both ambient and accent lightning. The colour of the light was carefully chosen to create the perfect amount of warmth but at the same time gives the best comfort and ability to see other people’s faces from a distance (criteria to feel safe).
- Programming that invites more and different people to be in the park at the same time, at more hours of the day and year.
- Improving the identity and definition of the space with an unique aestethics, inviting boundaries/corners of the park and signing showing the history and information about the park.
Check attached pdf that shows the before/after scheme three methods that show added value and quality to the space. For example Jan Gehl’s 12 Quality Criteria which is based on people’s needs emotions of a place.
In every project we decide where on the scale of inclusion we will work on, in terms of who we need to include, how to reach them and how much effort we need to give this process. Every hour we spend here is one hour less spent in another place and with the residents there. As this is a small-scale neighbourhood park we were on the lower part of the scale in terms of time we could spend here. Sometimes this means you invite everybody to a meeting to discuss it all together. It sounds very democratic but in fact it’s not very inclusive. So we thought this time we would do in-depth interviews with the residents, on their terms when they were available. See the next text on the details of this.
Using the information gathered from the interviews and the placemaking method Power of 10 we have created a programming that suit many different needs, also the people that need it the most. One thing we for example miss all the time in Scandinavia is that we assume everybody want to sit in the sun. Not thinking about our elderly and women in hijab who more often than others need shade when the sun is too hot.
The design has been consulted by the City’s accessibility expert, but accessibility wasn’t raised as an issue in the dialogue with the community.
This public park doesn’t have any programming that cost anything. It is located in an area that is affordable and there are low budget shops and restaurants around the park.
This project started in March 2020, in the midst of the new pandemic, so our ideas of how to include the community needed re-thinking. The normal group meetings and group workshops could be problematic to many people anyway, as many avoid these type of gatherings or just doesn’t feel empowered or listened to.
With this in mind and the new rules of social distancing we decided to send out postcards to every household near the park (around 1500 households). The postcard invited everybody to meet the designer and initiator of the project for 30 minutes in the park or on the phone. They were offered a small incitement in the form of a City Centre gift card of 15 Euro to also boost the downtown businesses that were struggling.
They could easily (through a link on the postcard) book a time that suited them (we had made most of our time for the next two weeks available. Also a few early mornings, some early nights and a day in the weekend as well to be able to accommodate everybody’s schedules. To our surprise, all of these time slots were fully booked! We had in total 30 interviews, and they were representative of the area in terms of gender, age and cultural background.
The interview questions were about the form, function and the social life of the park, based on our design principles of what makes a safe place.
This is exemplary because this was a great recipe of how to give the neighbourhood a representative and inclusive voice, giving everybody a fair opportunity to get involved, which is very hard to achieve. Having one on one meetings alone in the space we are working on created a bond and relationship that we have never felt in previous dialogues before.
The responsive involvement have resulted in a place that is perfectly suited for the neighbourhoods social needs, creating a vibrant place with social control and a sense of place and identity.
The most relevant stakeholders, beside the citizens, in this project was the businesses around the park. Especially the diner on the corner of the park. They were involved in all stages of the project about the design and programming, and also got to discuss their visions of their business with the Building Permit Department. They played a big part during the inauguration and served food to everybody. The impact of their involvement have been how they are caring of the park now, they tell me how they often go out and pick up garbage and add social control.
Many of the people I interviewed were concerned about the illegal bar next to the park and how many intoxicated people spilled out from there and hung around in the park next to the playground. The police were involved about this and today the bar doesn’t exist anymore, which has made a huge impact on the social life of the park.
The working group were put together with different people from the urban planning department and included:
- Traffic engineer – Initiator of the reduction of the traffic noise part of the project. Procured the sound consultant that came up with the brick wall ideas. Came up with the idea of the Sound Showers together with one of the landscape architects.
Urban Designer – the initiator of the refurbishment of the park. Lead the dialogue and designed and programmed the park together with the landscape architect.
- Landscape Architect – three different colleagues were involved; one to make a plan for the trees of the park and where to add new ones. And another more involved working together with the initiator to create new flower beds and designed the playground. She has also made dialogues with children in the area to learn about their needs in terms of play. The third landscape architect is our light expert and also came up with the idea of the sound showers together with the traffic engineer.
- Project leader – once budget and basic ideas had been created a project leader supported and started the official working group to make sure everyone that needed to be involved got involved. She procured the investment and led the project as soon as the design and programming had been decided.
- Landscape engineers – two persons were involved; the responsible person for maintenance in this area. Gave input on what type of materials that are sustainable and what works best in an urban environment. The other engineer made the technical drawing used in the procurement of the investment.
Procured experts to provide new ideas and expertise from their respective field:
Sound consultant – supported with their knowledge of traffic noise and their innovative ideas on how to solve them. They taught us a lot that also will help us in other projects.
Lighting engineer – helped us develop and find products that match our ideas and gave us new ideas
The main result is the park in a ”new costume” with added new values, identity and design. The people ask mostly for more types of seating, lightning, colour, play and flowers which we have included in the design.
- The playground was moved to be able to become bigger and all the equipment was changed to accommodate more ages with a climbing/balance track, which also encourages adults to get involved.
- The light poles were changed and fitted with luminaires with a wider light field, all painted in green.
- Four different types of seating were installed (sofa, bench, rotatable armchair and sun bed) depending on your social need, facing different parts of the park and the sun.
- New plants, trees and flowers were planted.
- The identity was improved with a historic sign and clear entrances with spring bulbs and green foliage.
- Illuminated brick walls in the street and on the border of the park that protect the park from traffic noise
- New sound showers that give you a calming soundscape
Normally these types of smaller neighbourhood parks are not shown any extra love when it comes to «lifting» a neighbourhood, you focus on the bigger parks that have a bigger target group.
The impact on the neighbourhood that has been mentioned by the interviewed reference group has been:
”A new sense of pride of the neighbourhood, it’s now a place with one of the nicest neighbourhood parks of Helsingborg”. Having a park that’s infamous or derelict can damage the identity and the property values of the whole neighbourhood.
”Finally my children want to play in the park and stay there for hours”.
”Now people have taken the park back from the drunks that used to sit here, you see your neighbours and people from your neighbourhood you have never seen before”.
Check attached pdf for more details about the results, before/after compared to for example Jan Gehl's 12 Quality Criteria.
To be able to explain the innovative approach we need to start with a city-wide perspective. We have since a few years back had a goal in Helsingborg to become the most innovative city in Europe. Many measures have been taken to reach this goal, but the movement towards a creative bureaucracy has had the most effect on this project. This means that we as civil servants on the bottom of the decision-making chain can take decisions about creating and shaping the project in terms of what the park and community need, not what the organization allows us. We have the mandate and budget and work within a horizontal organisation.
This had led us to the working methods and tools for improving safety in public spaces that we are using in our projects today, including this project. The chosen toolbox for Eneborgsplatsen can be seen in the attachments.
The other side of the innovative approach is the new developed “products” to reduce traffic noise, that are one of a kind.
We have tried as many different ways of measuring safety as we have done projects over the past 6 years (since we started our Action Plan of Safety in Public Spaces in Helsingborg 2018-2023). Our conclusion is that you can’t ask a general question about someone’s safety in a place and use it to proof that we have made a place safer. You can determine the effect on a neighbourhood basis if you take into account many types of data from different types of surveys that are made over a long period of time.
What we are doing instead is to measure how we have improved the different factors that we know improve the safety (based on CPTED, a proven methodology). We measured this before and after the project was done and also used the before interview as an analysis of the needs.
Our design and approach are a mix based on:
- 2nd and 3rd generation of CPTED
- Jan Gehl’s theories, fx 12 qualities of public spaces
- Placemaking, fx power of 10
The most important parts of this project that are easily replicated is the method of how to work with safety in small-scale places and the two products used to protect the park from traffic noise.
The method for working with safety is the mix between the three methologies mentioned above; CPTED, 12 Qualities of Public Spaces and Power of 10. They are all attached to this application.
The description of the sound-deterrent brick wall and the sound showers are also attached.
Gender equality and to end discrimination against women and girls
- The main target of this project was partly to improve the feeling of safety in the neighbourhood and in the park. The reason behind this is because it is a gender equality problem. It is mostly women and girls who feel vulnerable so we focus a lot on them in our projects.
Ensure full participation in leadership and decision-making
- One way to focus on women was to invite the neighbourhood to participate in interviews, which our decisions were made from. We can see from different types of dialogues that for example some women don’t participate depending on the type.
Reduced Inequalities and equal opportunities
- The same goes with other grounds of discrimination. We did for example manage to reach Indians in this dialogue, something we haven’t done before, to ensure their voices were heard in the process. In fact, when checking how the interviewed citizens were represented, it was almost a perfect match of the demography of the area (gender, origin, age). Type of dialogue is hard to copy+paste without asking yourself questions about what you want to achieve, who you want to reach and who do you want give extra focus because they are often not included? And what are the biggest barriers for them to participate? These questions are more important to use than to simply copy our way of doing this dialogue.
Good Health and Well-Being and access to green areas
- Having access to green spaces that are good for your health are vital, which is why we had to address the traffic noise problem. Our solution with a noise barrier that doesn’t take up too much space and still ensures sightlines into the park is easy to replicate and build anywhere.
Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization
- We have shown in this project how it is possible to have a sustainable participatory process even though it's an "unsignificant park" in a city-perspetive.
