City of Strasbourg: “Streets and Squares of Possibilities”

“Streets and Squares of Possibilities” is an innovative participatory urban planning experiment conducted simultaneously in two neighborhoods in Strasbourg (France) and Montreal (Canada). In Strasbourg, a city of 520,000 inhabitants, the initiative was implemented in the train station neighborhood, which faces significant ecological and social challenges (urban heat island effects, conflicts of use, incivilities, etc.).

The objective was to design a new way of redeveloping public spaces by placing citizens at the center of co-creation and granting them real decision-making power. In this approach, citizens become the driving force behind the transformation of the spaces they inhabit. They work in shared responsibility with technical services and local stakeholders (businesses, associations, etc.). The municipality relinquishes full control over outcomes and commits to implementing citizen proposals.

By embracing mutual trust, the initiative sought to invent a more constructive and cooperative relationship between public authorities and citizens to address complex transition challenges. The learning process itself is considered as important as the quality of the redesigned spaces. The approach transforms territories by transforming relationships, fostering governance arrangements that move beyond confrontation and recognize the legitimacy of different forms of expertise. “The shortest path between our administrative silos is the citizen!”

Evaluated in collaboration with academic institutions, the initiative has been widely praised and is already influencing public policy design practices, which are often still based primarily on technical or regulatory expertise. By renewing the relationship between citizens and the municipality, the initiative addresses the challenges of the democratic crisis and enhances both the acceptability and ownership of public policies.

The initiative has also made it possible to:

• Resolve numerous on-site conflicts of use;

• Promote bottom-up design by sharing decision-making power and relearning how to cooperate. As active participants, citizens better understand the complexity of public policies and become ambassadors of these processes;

• Restore meaning and strengthen the engagement of all stakeholders;

• Create a local community that acts as a relay for public action and is willing to invest in maintaining these spaces;

• Demonstrate that the more complex a problem is, the more essential it is to co-create solutions with stakeholders.

Further projects are planned to continue this dynamic.

More information:
https://participer.strasbourg.eu/detail-participation/-/entity/id/498630858
https://www.oidp.net/docs/repo/doc1947.pdf