Great interest in creating inspiring places
For an innovation district to feel attractive, vibrant, educational, inspiring and inclusive places are needed. In Lund, this could become a place for academia, companies, start-ups, students and residents to come together to promote creativity, collaboration and innovation. But how can we create such places? Future by Lund initiated a feasibility study and a workshop to engage and inspire stakeholders, so that many actors together can contribute to the creation of the venues. In June, Maria Gimenez Grau gave an inspirational lecture and a workshop on the subject, and now the material is compiled in a report.
The two sites that were used as starting points have been chosen from a sustainability perspective, with a view to exploiting the potential that exists in existing possibilities for optimizing urban space. Case A looked at how the district can reuse underused or empty buildings, in this case in the form of some greenhouses, while case B looked at how we can make better use of underused land (a parking lot).
“The Greenhouse” is located in the heart of the Lund Innovation District, with extremely good connections and offers tremendous potential to complement the lack of inviting spaces that bring the whole community together and showcase the district's talent. “The Parking Space” right next to the E22 in Lund Innovation District has a suburban character with large buildings and a large parking space. It has significant potential for transformation and also offers it an opportunity to give new life to the area.
- The compilation of the results for both cases shows that the majority of participants were positive about the initiatives and, moreover, positive about contributing their time and content. At this stage, however, the responses still indicated low interest in financial support for the initiative, says Maria Gimenez Grau.
Following these two examples, participants worked on a roadmap as part of actively engaging stakeholders in jointly designing the next steps in the process. Participants stressed the importance of understanding who the stakeholders are and what their needs mean in order to generate an interest and support for the work. Several participants were positive about exploring how property owners can support, for example, testing “pop-up” operations. Some good approaches could be to be inspired by globally successful projects and best practices from other cities.
The responses also stressed the importance of forming an inclusive working group bringing together multidisciplinary, company-wide stakeholders, including representatives from the public sector, property owners and students. As for the time to start work, most people thought it was important to start right away.
- Some important ideas were to think big but start small, plant a seed and watch it grow and let the project evolve over time, says Maria Gimenez Grau. We saw that the upcoming inspiring sites can represent a wide range of initiatives, that they can encourage grassroots movements and broadly give everyone the opportunity to get involved in the Lund Innovation District. Here it can be a place for broad idea creation, where the selection and refinement process takes place at a later stage. The participants were also satisfied with the sustainable approach of using the city's resources, i.e. underused/empty buildings and empty land instead of building new ones.
Previous conversations
Lund Innovation District with the vision “Global impact within walking distance”
The proximity makes Lund's innovation district unique
How can we present the innovation district's capabilities?
Human Rights Design as a Foundation for Innovation
Great interest in creating inspiring places
You can read the full report by Maria Gimenez Grau here.
How do we create exciting meeting places in the innovation district?
Great interest in the work with Lund Innovation District
Packaging, financing and critical mass key components of Lund Innovation District
Creative spaces in Lund provide unique opportunities
“We need to get better at packaging and making the innovation district visible”
What does it take to take Lund Innovation District to the next level?
What makes the talents choose Lund?
New policy changes the playing field in Lund Innovation District
More about Innovation Districts
Link to the page about Lund Innovation District
GIID analyzes how successful innovation districts are organized
How is work organised with innovation districts in Lund?
Lund in international cooperation for the development of innovation districts
Survey of Lund Innovation District
Lund Innovation District survey — 10 interesting results
An inclusive innovation environment is an advantage to develop for Lund Innovation District
Collaboration, meeting places and networks develop Lund Innovation District
The big picture: Maria Gimenez Grau, architect and urban strategist, led the workshop on creating common places in the Lund innovation district.