In the new Designing Cities For All: RE-generation series ( Re)designing Connection, DCFA partnered up with Shibaura House , a community hub in Tokyo as its next fellow. In this fellowship, we delve into the multifaceted concept of connection on three different scales: humans & non-humans, communities and cities. Our modern urban existence led us to disconnect from ourselves, our communities, and the cities we inhabit. How can we reclaim and (re)design these connections through personal practices and grassroots initiatives? This series aims to explore practical strategies and innovative approaches for reviving the lost essence of connection on both individual and collective levels, fostering a more inclusive city for and with all.
In the 2nd episode of Designing Cities For All: Re-Generation series (Re)designing Connection with DCFA fellow Shibaura House we look into connected communities in over-populated cities. In today’s dynamic urban life, fostering community connection is essential. In this sense, Shibaura House serves as a model for community improvement and brings examples of their in-field practices. During this evening, we aim to understand how we can overcome challenges in densely populated cities and develop connected communities. Speakers explore improving the sense of communities using Tokyo and Taipei as compelling examples of our discussion.
About the DCFA Fellow
SHIBAURA HOUSE is a unique building with a completely glass exterior built in Shibaura, Minato-ku, an area in Tokyo, Japan undergoing redevelopment. It is a community space, but also the headquarters of a 70-year old company. The company’s business has changed enormously to keep in harmony with the changes in the times and in the social environment. Today, it simultaneously operates the original creative business, along with a new cultural creative projects that are rooted in the local community.
About Designing Cities for All: RE generation
Over the first two years of Designing Cities for All (DCFA), we’ve learned about exclusion by design and the (re)design of inclusive cities. Along the journey, a certain question kept popping up: what exactly does ‘for all’ entail? After focusing mostly on the ‘who’ over the past two years, DCFA is rebooting as Designing Cities for All: RE-generation . This way around, the series is also incorporating the ‘what’ by looking through the fresh lens of regenerative design. This emerging field might very well be a promising answer to the challenges of our time, as it focuses on the design of products, services, systems, and processes that lead to both social and ecological recovery and that keep the systems healthy.
About the speakers
Minouche Besters is a partner at STIPO. She graduated as a political scientist from the University of Amsterdam (1999). Her work focuses on creating better places, neighborhoods, and cities, with a lot of attention to human scale, the diverse needs of people, and plenty of room for ownership. Minouche is an experienced process designer and facilitator of transformation processes. She is active in complex inner-city transformations, in which, in addition to creating high-quality urban quality with an eye for growth, economic developments, and opportunities for sustainability, urban problems such as crime, nuisance, and social anonymity also play a role. She is strong in connecting the lived and the planned world, knows how to make these worlds tangible and thus enables clients and partners to jointly gain new insights. Her toolbox contains numerous working methods around placemaking, participatory research, tactical urbanism, design thinking, and strategic vision formation. STIPO works from a clear view of the rapidly changing city, both the major interests that play a role there and the changing needs among residents and other users of the city. Minouche likes to work with the board and senior management to jointly understand with the partners in the city what these changes mean for the street, neighborhood or city, both for the physical layout and for the socio-economic impact. The result varies from a development strategy for an area, an economic opportunities map or a long-term vision, such as a housing vision. Always linked to the pressing questions of our time, more focused on affordable housing, energy transition, or climate adaptation. Minouche is very experienced in participation processes. Her position is that there are no unreachable target groups. It does require that we take a broader view than the standard residents’ evenings and that residents are involved openly and honestly. This also includes residents’ cooperatives, neighborhood energy companies, and other forms in which residents themselves take the lead. Minouche Besters is a partner at STIPO with the following organizations or temporary teams: Placemaking Top Sector Urban Energy program: senior advisor on energy transition & private individuals Member of Q team Capelle aan de IJsel, Rivium: social spatial expert/city at eye level
