Vaidila square and Oaks park. Public spaces as a tool to renew post-soviet housing neighborhoods
Vaidila Square and Oaks Grove Park are recently renewed public spaces of a prefab panel housing neighborhood. The new design kept qualities of modernist planning ideas but enriched the neighborhood with new qualities - spaces that encourage social inclusion, equity, community empowerment, active lifestyle and teenager occupation. The project stimulated overall district regeneration and became an example of how the post-soviet neighborhoods can change into modern and cozy spaces.
Local
Lithuania
Klaipeda City municipality
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ERDF : European Regional Development Fund
{Empty}
No
Yes
2021-07-01
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): PUPA / Life over space Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Justina Last name of representative: Muliuolyte Gender: Female Nationality: Lithuania Function: Founding partner Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: T. Sevcenkos 16F Town: Vilnius Postal code: 03111 Country: Lithuania Direct Tel:+370 687 90935 E-mail:justina@pu-pa.eu Website:https://pu-pa.eu/
Vaidila Square and Oaks Grove Park are recently (2021) renewed public spaces of a prefab panel housing neighborhood in Klaipeda, Lithuania. However, the project started in 2015 when Klaipeda city municipality decided to direct EU funds to renew outdoor spaces of a very outdated prefab panel housing neighborhood built in the 1970-ies. Urban vision was prepared, which encompassed solutions for the improvement of the courtyards, public spaces, parking lots, including some proposals for renovation of the houses. Key projects of the district's regeneration were identified as major public spaces - Vaidila square and Oak’s Grove Park.
The local community was invited to participate in the process of the vision-making through the series of workshops, discussions, the solutions were presented in situ (presentations, renders, models, moodboards), the website and other media. Collaboration of multidisciplinary teams helped to achieve comfortable, playful public spaces design, encouraging social interaction, improved biodiversity and environmental quality.
Vaidila Square and Oaks Grove Park project is an example of how the old soviet neighborhood and their public spaces can acquire a modern and cozy face. The renewal of public spaces stimulated overall district regeneration: value of the buildings around the spaces is growing and their owners are more willing to invest in renewal. The image of the district is changing as well – previously forgotten neighborhood becomes a desired place to live.
The project is innovative and successful in the Lithuanian context as it showed that housing neighborhoods, massively spread in all our cities, can be renovated differently. Drawing urban vision gives a direction on how to change the district, and investing in public spaces immediately changes the image of the neighbourhoods.
Public space renewal
Post-soviet housing
Community participation
Urban regeneration
Urban strategy
The project covers all three aspects of sustainability. From the environmental perspective, it is an urban regeneration project, where the existing urbanized areas are renewed, encouraging people to stay and live in the city, but not move to the suburbs. Furthermore, the green heart of the neighborhood - the Oaks Grove parks is of an important ecological value. The comprehensive study was done about the value of the old trees, removing damaged and adding new plantations, improving lake water quality, and overall creating conditions for new species to flourish.
The project is extremely important from the social sustainability perspective. The large-scale housing estate is one of the densest city parts and there are more elderly people than in other parts of the city. After active community involvement initiatives, objectives of the design were drawn to meet the needs of social groups who did not have their spaces in original park design - the elderly and the teenagers. In the new design spaces were created for active life for youngsters and for calm meetings, chatting, watching people or landscape more used by the elderly. The goal was to create an environment that encourages people to socialize and live healthier – spend more active time outdoors.
From the economic sustainability perspective, the project became an example of how a municipal investment can stimulate renewal of the district. The large scale houses in the estates in Lithuania are privately owned and their renovation happens very slowly, therefore, the only way municipalities can significantly improve life quality in these neighborhoods is to improve the quality of open public spaces. The renewal of Oaks Grove parka and Vaidila square stimulated overall district regeneration: value of the buildings around the spaces is growing and their owners are more willing to invest in renewal, new commercial activities are appearing around the square, new museum is planned in the old cinema building.
The large-scale housing neighborhood was built in the 1970-ies as an exemplary residential district: apartment buildings were spread around Oak’s Grove Park and the local center and its Vaidila square were designed as one modernist complex with authentic ethnic art elements. However, during the past 50 years without any renovation the neighborhood and its spaces have slowly deteriorated physically, visually and mentally. In 2015 adopted urban vision drew key projects for neighborhood revitalization – renewal of public spaces with its most iconic locations - Vaidila square and Oak’s Grove Park. The main objectives of the new public space design was to create liveable, attractive, cozy and comfortable spaces by keeping the character of the original design.
Vaidila square is the urban center of the neighborhood. New design kept its rectangular structure, but added new activities and spaces: there is significantly more greenery, trees and more playfulness: “dancing” water fountain, a stage for community events, children's playgrounds, urban furniture - modular benches for various relaxing opportunities - sitting, lounging, small gatherings. These benches are particularly popular among the elderly residents. The authentic fountain was renovated and the wooden folk art sculptures were restored.
Contrast to the urban square is the natural Oaks Grove Park. Places responding to different residents’ needs are spread in the woody park landscape. There is an active cluster on one side of the park with various sport fields, fitness areas and playgrounds for kids and teenagers. The other side of the park has a calm and relaxing atmosphere. There are water ponds with local birds, small sunny or shaded islands with benches and flowers. Cycling and walking loop connects smaller paths and recreation spots. The loop path is a favorite place for residents not only to do sports, but also to go out, show themselves, look at others and meet the neighbors.
The project neighborhood, a prefab-panel housing district, is losing population and it is an aging neighborhood with a growing population of elderly and single family households. The district is physically and mentally outdated, therefore many well-off families are moving away. The municipal decision to direct EU funds not to the historical city center or other popular location, but to a less attractive neighborhood, shows that from the very beginning this project had a goal to pay attention to usually forgotten social groups.
During all the process and final design inclusion was taken into consideration. Eg. Public participation and communication activities were adjusted to the media, more accessible by the elderly: invitations, announcements were posted on the doors of the houses, phone calling was used more often than social media or web, events were relocated closer to citizens, workshop material prepared to be easy to use and understand.
The final design of public spaces focuses on creating spaces for all - elderly, teenagers, families and kids. There are active leisure and sport areas (usually used by teenage boys) and spaces for unplanned spontaneous leisure (more used by teen girls), kid playgrounds for various ages. Many calmer recreation spots are spread in the park and square. They are used for small gatherings and watching others. Modular benches in the square are very popular among elderly citizens, as by not going too far from home, residents can be close to other people, have a sense of belonging to the neighborhood. All spaces are connected spacious paths and are easily accessible by strollers, wheelchairs, bicycles.
Many post-soviet era spaces are very inaccessible; they feature stairs, small walls. Therefore the interactive and inclusive design of Oaks Grove Park and Vaidila square is an example that a large scale housing estate can be attractive, comfortable, modern places to live.
Regeneration of the housing neighborhood started in 2015 with preparation of the urban strategy. Many public participation activities were done to involve residents in the strategy and public space design. A series of public meetings were organized in the local library to present the analysis, discuss alternatives, and define concepts of the final design. Workshops were organized to create first ideas and understand the needs of the citizens and the municipality. Mood boards, inspirational cards and models of the courtyards and public spaces were used to communicate ideas. These tools are easy for citizens, especially elderly ones, to understand the proposals. Residents could interactively participate in the meetings: move the small houses or trees in the models, switch and combine cards of the proposals. Furthermore, a project website was created where all the material was always accessible, citizens could vote, react. There was a lot of communication.
Some important outcomes from the public participation activities was understanding the issue of elderly, a need to create spaces for them. In the meetings it became also clear that original modernistic (soviet period) design elements were valued by the citizeds.
It is important to note that above -mentioned public participation activities, so common in modern European cities, in 2015 were extremely new in Lithuania. Therefore the project helped the Klaipėda city municipality to develop public participation tradition and for the designers team to create new tools and methods that later were applied in Klaipėda, or other Lithuanian cities.
The neighborhood and its public spaces are mainly of a local importance, therefore only local stakeholders participated in the project: representatives of the Klaipeda city municipality departments (as contractor of the project) and residents of the neighborhood (final users). They were involved in all stages of the project: drawing urban vision, defining tasks for public spaces and designing public spaces. The project was partly funded by the EU Regional Development Fund, therefore representatives of national institutions curating the funding participated by reviewing the process, phasing, implementation, and results.
The primal disciplines of the project were urbanism and architecture. The supporting disciplines were - landscape, design, economy, history, arts, dendrology and community management.
Teams and experts from various disciplines involved in the project, and their impact:
Urbanism - new spatial structure of the neighborhood, overall vision, new functions, private and public space organization.
Community management - involving citizens in public participation activities - meetings, workshops, presentations, communication.
Economy - calculating cost and impact of the project.
Architecture - proposals for housing renewal, extension, new construction.
Landscape architecture - design of public spaces, routes, functional layout, revealing genius loci.
Design - design of playgrounds, modular furniture, stage, fountain.
History and arts - renovation of valuable, wooden ethnic art sculptures.
Sports - sports community designing and consulting about sport fields design.
Dendrology - evaluating condition of all trees (old oaks), proposing new species, creating new habitats.
Urban vision and architectural design of public spaces was done by one team (applicant of the award). However, many experts have joined. Economists and external urban planners participated as experts consulting the project, reviewing and doing economic calculations to validate the proposals. Landscape designers team and dendrologist worked on park proposals. Impact of dendrologic was very valuable, as oaks in Lithuania have a strong symbolic value in relation with heathen gods, therefore it was extremely important to keep as many trees as possible. Artists and historians worked on restoration of wooden sculptures, collaboration with them helped to incorporate old public space elements into new design. Sportsmen joined with consultations and designed skateparks.
The results of the project are - neighborhood regeneration vision and renewal of major public spaces. The urban vision (attached in the documents) was adopted in 2015. After several years redesigning of public spaces started. Vaidila square and Oaks Grove park were opened to the public in summer 2021. Vaidila square in 2022 was awarded by the Lithuanian Landscape Architects Association as the best public space.
The major impact of the project is the neighborhood transformation - from an old, neglected district into an attractive and cozy place. It's an aging and shrinking, not a very prestigious neighborhood, however the image has changed significantly after the public spaces were renewed. Residents could feel proud that their district is nice and attractive. The park and square became a destination for all Klaipeda citizens. The community participated in the development of the concept, therefore the urban vision and design were well supported by the people. Furthermore, different activity zones in public spaces were designed according to the demographic reality of the district.
New public space design enhanced the qualities of the neighborhood. The green character park, diverse landscape, valuable oak trees and peaceful spaces around the water became more accessible. While the urban square became a playful, new, modern space, keeping the identity of valuable 1970-ies design.
In Lithuanian (and East-Central European context) this project is innovative from the process and approach perspectives. Process - preparing urban vision with public participation and only then designing public spaces. Approach - focusing on improving the public, outdoor spaces of post-soviet housing estates, but not the buildings.
In Lithuania over 60% of the population lives in large scale housing estates built 40-60 years ago. Majority of the neighborhoods are very outdated. The dominant regeneration approach is renewing housing stock and improving insulation. The project in this context is exceptional in that the urban structure of a district was rethought and outdoor spaces were renewed. Important to mention that 9 years ago urbanism was a very new discipline in Lithuania. For the municipality to formulate such a task was an unconventional approach. Furthermore the tender was won by a young urbanism studio (applicant of the award), who came back to Lithuania after studies and work experience in Holland. Public participation activities and methods were very creative and extremely new at that time in Lithuania (sometimes not easily approved by older generation architects, who thought that just the architect is the main designer, not the folk). And the last innovation, but the most significant one, is making big public space investments in old and less attractive neighborhoods. Therefore improving life quality for usually more socially vulnerable residents.
The approach of the project was to zoom in: draw big and ambitious district urban vision, split into smaller key projects, and develop each project according to community needs.
Methodologies for urban vision were:
- In depth territory analysis of the history, urban structure, functions, housing stock, demographic situation.
- Research by design. Trying out solutions for outdoor spaces (courtyards, park, square, street) by using alternatives, combining them, comparing.
- Community involvement and public participation activities: public presentation, discussion, playful meetings with moodboards and models, project transparency and all process communication.
Methodologies for public spaces:
- Multidisciplinary team: architects working with landscape architects, urbanists, dendrologists, art historians, sport consultants, economists.
- Programming activities in public space design for different users and their needs.
Replicated or transferred elements of this project are two fold: (1) rethinking urban structure of post-soviet housing estates and investing in outdoor spaces, (2) developed public participation methods.
Very big part of the Lithuanian population is living in housing estates built from 1960 till 1990. All the estates were massively constructed using the same design principles - the smallest urban unit called “mikrorayon” had a specific number of apartment blocks, social services, and public spaces. The usual renovation focuses on the apartment blocks, while the award applicant project in Klaipeda focuses on outdoor spaces. This approach of preparing urban vision, separating public and private spaces and focusing municipal investment in public spaces was very successful and is now being implemented more and more often in Lithuanian cities. The so-called “complex renovation” approach is adopted by more municipalities, guidelines are being prepared, public tenders appear more often.
The second transferred element of the project was public participation methodology. As mentioned in previous chapters, public participation was very new in LIthuania, therefore designers team together with municipality representatives developed a system on how to work with people: planning how many meetings are needed, goals of each of them, playful and interactive methods, communication strategy. These participation methods are already used by us (applicants), Klaipeda municipality (the client), and can be transferred to any case, any municipality, any project.
The global challenges addressed in the project are climate change and shrinking European population. Regarding climate change, the project has a focus on environmental sustainability: physical transformation of urbanized areas (large housing estates), preventing urban sprawl and unsustainable car oriented living (neighborhoods became more attractive, no need to move out), encouraging living in the city, close to services, moving by public transport or cycling. Furthermore, improving green quality, planting more trees, collecting water in ponds, improving biodiversity.
Regarding the second challenge, shrinking and aging population, the project focused on improving the life quality of elderly residents. They participated in public events, were heard, involved, and designs responded to their needs.
