Key Findings: Where do we dance? Symposium in a PARK(Ing) Space

Cuba Street, Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington)

8 March 2019

Hillary Court Mural, Naenae, Lower Hutt

Symposium Organisation by Elaine Gyde, Elinor Thomas & Rebecca Kiddle

Special thanks to:

Tane Moleta and Mizuho Nishioka for the symposium set-up design

and the VUW Architecture workshop team for construction of set-up

and, Building Better Homes,Towns and Cities for their sponsorship of the symposium

and Blunt Umbrellas for lending us 40 umbrellas to keep out the sun and rain

and, to the Wellington Sculpture Trust for the opportunity to take part in PARKing day

Programme8am Meditation session – KatySimon 9am Welcome 9:20 Women’s Day Keynote: Dr Amanda Thomas - Whose streets?! Our streets: Feminism and Justice in the City10am Tane Moleta, Creative practices in public places10:20 Worser Bay School and Elinor Thomas, Children and 3rd Places10:40 Morning tea11am AProf Morten Gjerde, Street Perceptions 11:20 Dr Rita Dionisio, Streets made for Living11:40 Dr Maibritt Pedersen Zari, Wellbeing through urban nature experiences: biophilic Wellington12noon Geoff Hume Cook, Inheriting ‘modernism’

12:20 PARKing Day Keynote: AProf Bettina Lamm, The story of parking(day) and how small scale activism can have an impact on urban policy and planning1pm Lunch & Time to Explore2pm Sara Hirsch – Slam poetry on Women and Urbanism2:20 Prof. Marc Aurel Schnabel, Public Participation in Urban Design using Immersive Virtual Realities2:40 Dr Paul Blaschke, Urban green spaces for all your needs?3pm Nicky Karu, Te Tauihu The Reo Māori Strategy for Wellington City3:20 Dr Gradon Diprose, Urban farming, wellbeing and food security3:40 Afternoon tea4pm Sophie Jerram, Commoning: affective labour and the disappearance of public space 4:20 AProf. Ralph Chapman, Weaning ourselves off cars in Wellington4:40 Elaine Gyde, Whose park?5pm Sara Hirsch – slam poet

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Women’s Day Keynote: Whose streets?! Our streets: Feminism and Justice in the CityThe way people experience public space changes according to their identity; night time urban spaces as fearful for women, or the dangers of “walking while black”, are well documented. In this talk I explore differing experiences of comfort and discomfort. Comfort and discomfort are useful ways of asking whose streets – how are people made to feel like they belong or not. But the more pressing question is what next. Once we understand experiences of urban discomfort, how do we change spaces to be more equitable and fair for a range of different people? What ground needs to be ceded and by who?

Dr Amanda Thomas

Amanda is a feminist and political geographer and a Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Victoria University of Wellington

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practices can alter and inform the way we use public space. Working collaboratively with practitioners from architecture, photography, music, computer science and engineering to create a body of critical works. In this talk, Tane will speak of his work at the Victoria University Faculty of Architecture and Design and the 4 associated projects in this year’s PARK(ing)19.

Creative practices in public places

Tane Moleta

Tane is a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Digital Design Technologies and is the Faculty of Architecture and Design Curator.

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Children and Third PlacesPromoting active transport is a priority for many cities, however in many places there has been a decline in children’s active and independent mobility over recent generations. A factor associated with this decline is the increase in children’s exclusion from public spaces, including those of their neighbourhood. This research was initiated by Elinor Thomas as part of her Masters thesis. As part of the Where Do We Dance? project to explore how placemaking can increase children’s participation in public space at a neighbourhood level. The placemaking was undertaken with 30 primary school-aged co-researchers from Worser Bay School in suburban Wellington. The project aimed to add places to our neighbourhood which would increase community use and provide opportunities for social interaction. We used child-led Participatory Active methods and created successful places which have been well-used by the wider community.

Worser Bay School and Elinor

Elinor Thomas is working towards a Masters in Environ-mental Studies at VUW. The co-researchers are represented at this symposium by Pippa Smith, Adam Burns, Mitchell Morton, Greta Larson and Talia Taylor-Smith.

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Streets are the most prevalent form of public space in any city and also important as places to meet people and socialise in. We know that people choose to visit streets they find attractive and to avoid those they find unattractive. And yet the visual quality of our streets is left largely to chance, the result of many uncoordinated efforts by individual landowners over time. The research addresses questions of which building and streetscape characteristics people find most attractive, and are therefore most likely to spend time in. Using data from surveys and focus group discussions, the key findings are that people expressed strong preferences for buildings that vary in height within a relatively narrow band along the length of a street, that building facades articulated by individual windows are strongly preferred over those that use glass as a form of cladding and that the use of spaces within a building affects preference. Findings from projects such as this could be used to direct the design and ongoing management of buildings to better meet public preferences.

Street PerceptionsAProf. Morten Gjerde

Morten is interested in how well multi-unit housing and urban spaces meet the needs and desires of those who use them, particularly those not represented in the design phase.

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pace•The design of streets and public spaces plays a key role in creating an

optimal environment for social interaction and community wellbeing: this needs to be considered in future urban intensification in NZ cities.•Urban intensification needs to be designed at the neighbourhood and street scale: the neighbourhood unit, urban structure for participation, evolutionary homes, and the mixed-use neighbourhood are all urban design concepts with relevance for the housing affordability debate.•The Neighbourhood Unit was conceptualised by the urbanist Clarence Perry as autonomous residential areas to accommodate all the daily need of residents. Although the concept was created before the car (1920s), it is a neighbourhood walkability model.•Urban structure for participation was conceptualised by the architect Herman Hertzberger in the 1970s. Hertzberger believed that the role of planmers was not to provide a complete solution, but to provide a spatial framework to integrate the participation of users and residents in filling, creating, and completing their own spaces.•In the 1970s, architect Siza Vieira conceptualised and tested evolutionary homes, based on modular architecture to encourage families to expand, downsize, and transform their houses throughout generations.•As argued by Jane Jacobs and others, mixed-use neighbourhoods can provide ‘third places’ for communities to look after each other, interact, play, relax, and exchange values, resources and knowledge. This promotes social wellbeing and community resilience.

Streets made for living: considerations for urban intensification in New Zealand Cities

Dr. Rita Dionisio

Rita is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Canterbury. She has a background in architecture and urban design.

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Increasing evidence shows the importance of creating and maintaining relationships with nature for human wellbeing. Humanity has however become a mostly urbanised species where people typically spend most of their time indoors. It is important then that strategies for deliberately bringing aspects of nature into urban spaces are explored. Design that leverages an understanding of people’s innate connection to the living world can be termed biophilic design. This research defines a framework for analysing and mapping biophilic urban elements. Thirty characteristics of biophilic cities were identified and then used to map Wellington, New Zealand. Key findings indicate that while access to wild nature might be an important characteristic of a biophilic city, planned design interventions are equally important. When identified biophilic elements form part of a larger interconnected spatial expe-rience through time, positive effects may be enhanced. This can enable identification of strategic locations for biophilic interventions in the wider urban fabric to facilitate more ef-fective urban nature experiences. This suggests that biophilic urbanism must encompass a wide range of human sensory information, and should be designed from a four-dimensional (i.e. including time) perspective. Wellington Nature Map: https://wellington.govt.nz/recre-ation/enjoy-the-outdoors/wellington-nature-map

Wellbeing through urban nature experiences: biophilic WellingtonDr Maibritt Pedersen Zari

Maibritt is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Architecture. Her research seeks to redefine sustainable architecture and urban designthrough mimicking ecosystems, changing the goals from sustainable to regenerative development, and integrating complex social factors into design.

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Inheriting ‘modernism’, uncovering pre-colonial histories and sub-urban diversityThis talk is about how a public space project panned out, in a Lower Hutt Town Centre. This summary of a research project in Naenae, Lower Hutt, shares the preliminary findings of a ‘Cultural-landscapes’ approach, to local understandings of (and access to) public and semi-public spaces. Post-WWII governmental responses to housing needs of a growing population were led by notions of European civic design. Green fields development allowed ‘planned’ Modernism to free reign. Aotearoa’s first pedestrian mall was built into Naenae’s town centre and contemporary architectural historians point to the preservation of this centre as a matter of national ‘heritage’. Earlier histories of tāngata whenua are little recognised in the townscape, however recent moves to transform key community assets, may address this deficit.

Geoff Hume-Cook

Geoff Hume-Cook is a community researcher and writer, living in Naenae.

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Paking(day) started as an activist happening in San Francisco in 2005. Not only did the event kick start a global movement, it also stirred planning policies in San Francisco and beyond. In this presentation i will share anecdotes about the parking(day) impact and other stories from primarily Copenhagen of how small scale initiatives can create agency for large scale thinking.

Keynote: The story of parking(day) and how small scale activism can have an impact on urban policy and planningAProf. Bettina Lamm

Bettina Lamm, associate professor, University of Copenhagen.Lamm’s research addresses the interaction between urban environment and lived life in the public realm. She studies through practice and theory how temporary interventions, play design and art installations can facilitate social interaction in public space and reframe the urban landscape.

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Sara is a poet fascinated by place and people. During her Master’s degree in creative writing and education she wrote a collection of poems that explored architecture, urbanism and the female experience. This obsession with cities, buildings and what they can allow us to say about gender has continued to pull Sara’s creative focus and she hasn’t stopped writing about her relationship to space, feminism and the intersection of the two since she graduated in late 2017. Her poems are sharp, witty, accessible and often performative and exist in London, Wellington and the space in between.

Sara Hirsch - PoetSara Hirsch is a London-grown poet and educator currently based in New Zealand. Her debut poetry collection Still Falling was published in 2016 with Burning Eye Books and she has since released her second collection Louder Than Words, with their imprint, BX3. Sara’s poetry has been published in four continents - in journals such as Poetry New Zealand, The Shanghai Literary Review, Red Flag, Iron Horse Literary Review, Salient Magazine and The EAL Academic Journal and in antholo-gies from The Emma Press, Spoken Word London and Burning Eye Books. She is a TEDx speaker, was third ranked in the world poetry slam championships and is the co-founder of Motif Poetry. www.sarahirsch.co.uk @sarsbars89

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Immersive Virtual Reality offers novel ways for public participation in urban design. The ease of use and the accessibility as well as high fidelity of the immersive simulation closes the gap between high-level design visions of urban designers and the practical daily concerns of citizens.

Web: www.dara.digital

Public Participation in Urban Design using Immersive Virtual RealitiesProf Marc Aurel Schnabel

Prof Marc Aurel Schnabel is the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design, Victoria University of Wellington. He taught and worked in Germany, Australia, and Hong Kong for over twenty-five years and since then has become highly recognised for his work in the areas of computational design and participatory- and social virtual environments

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Urban green spaces for all your needs?

Look around you and think about your immediate environment. Do you see any greenness, in the form of parks or spaces with living plants? Would you like to see more?

Let’s think in the next ten minutes about what sort of green spaces we would like to see around us in the central city. What do they need to provide for you and for others? What are the opportunities and barriers to us having the sorts of places we might want?

I will discuss some ideas arising out of analysis of green spaces in the central city my team recently undertook for Wellington City Council.

Dr Paul Blaschke

Paul is an ecological and environmental consultant who also teaches environmental studies at Victoria University. He is rather passionate about the many benefits of urban parks and other kinds of urban green spaces.

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Nicky Karu

Nicky is Ngāti Tamaterā and Tara-Tokanui. She is Manager of Tira Poutama - Iwi Partnerships at Wellington City Council. Their goal is that Pōneke will be a te reo city by 2040 - te reo will be visible, heard and felt across the cultural capital landscape.

Wellington City Council’s Te Reo Māori Policy approved in June 2018 aims to be become a te reo Māori city by 2040; a bilingual capital. The action plan was approved this month. So far this has included developing bilinqual ward names and giving key public spaces such as Civic Square and Frank Kitts Lagoon te reo names (Te Ngākau and Whairepo Lagoon respectively). Guy Fawkes fireworks have been ditched in favour of Matariki celebrations. Te Reo Māori will be a core part of Wellington’s identity. 94% of policy submissions from Wellingtonians supported the policy.

Te Tauihu – Te Reo Māori Policy for Wellington City

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Urban farming, wellbeing and food securityMental health services are under increasing pressure in Aotearoa, and many urban researchers argue that cities need to develop greater food security and resilience. In this project a research team led by Dr Kelly Dombroski and Dr Gradon Diprose worked with Cultivate, an urban farming organisation based in Christchurch. Cultivate convert vacant urban space into farms, employing youth interns to collect green waste and composting it to create the soil for the farms, and then growing food which is sold back to local customers. The key findings demonstrate that Cultivate’s urban farms are having positive effects on youth intern’s wellbeing and development, while simultaneously improving local food security and composting urban waste. Cultivate provides an inspiring example of how to address multiple and related issues - fostering more communal and sustainable urban spaces and in the process building community connectedness.

Dr Gradon Diprose

Gradon is a human geographer who works as an environmental social science researcher at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.

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Commoning: affective labour and the disappearance of public space Sophie Jerram

Sophie Jerram, curator and co-founder of Letting Space and Urban Dream Brokerage, PhD researcher, Landscape and Governance at Victoria University with Copenhagen University Division of Land-scape and Planning

The concept of commons breaks the ‘duopoly’ of public and private space according to P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens. This Parking Day symposium moves access to this space from a singular legal entity (a car) to many figures. The ability to create transformations has been widened. We are commoning the space - albeit temporarily. Since 2010 Letting Space and the Urban Dream Brokerage service has negotiated space for 95+ art and community projects in five locations around New Zealand. This work requires the pressing and suspending of spatial boundaries with both private and municipal land owners. Negotiating for the change of use in space without money requires personal charm, gall, persuasion, curiosity and persistence. These are dimensions of often unregarded labour - what Hardt and Negri term affective labour. It takes substantial effort in persuading institutional power to shift notions of public space. Contracts, trust, thick skin, reputational and financial risk are required. Commoning requres these labours. What is also revealed by the negotation for space is that nowhere is truly open or ‘public’; every space has a set of explicit and implicit rules, principles and tikanga to negotiate.

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Climate scientists tell us we have to cut carbon emissions by almost half within 11 years (by 2030). So we need to act fast. We also know that being dependent on a car means we get physically less fit. Car use damages air quality, is noisy, causes congestion, and wastes space in the city. So this project is about smart ways of cutting back on cars in our cities, and improving our lives. I’m starting with Wellington, looking at fast ways to wean ourselves off cars in Wellington CBD. How might we best do that? What do people think about it? What are better ways to get around that are climate friendly but would also improve our lives? What are the pros and cons of scooters, including electric ones? Walking, cycling, e-bikes, public transport? How can we make those alternatives better, and at the same time discourage driving in the inner city? Should we allow for taxis? What about car sharing? Let’s find out how a step-by-step plan to wean the CBD off cars could help the climate – and work.

Weaning ourselves off cars in Wellington CBDAProf. Ralph Chapman

Ralph is an economist, and director of environmental studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He’s been thinking and teaching about climate change for over 30 years.

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Elaine Gyde

Elaine is a masters student in environmental studies, a green space enthusiast and an accidental lawyer. She can be tweeted at @gydlaine.

Our parks are unequal spaces. This research has found that the public feel unsafe, can’t access them, and don’t feel comfortable in them. With the rapidly increasing central city population and transport links bringing more people into Wellington, our parks are going to be put under more pressure. In contrast this study also found that when people are given the chance to overcome these barriers - through design solutions, community engagement, and activation -our public parks become places that people relax in, socialise, people watch in, and enjoy. Third places, places where we can come together and socialise outside of our homes or work, emerge where there are good quality parks. This talk will step through and examine this dynamic.

Whose park?

Mauri ora!