Unlocking the Power of Crowdfunding with Moldovan Municipalities
Ten municipalities in Moldova joined a crowdfunding training programme to gain skills in creating and running effective crowdfunding campaigns for local projects. When one thinks […]
Cities in Europe and Central Asia are adopting a systemic design approach to urban development. The shift is being spearheaded by two UNDP initiatives – Mayors for Economic Growth and the City Experiment Fund. These multiyear programmes are starting to generate urban effects that go beyond what we can measure in traditional ways, broadening our understanding of how various city sub-systems interact. This blog explores some of these interactions and effects – the visible and invisible – that cities in the region are experiencing.
In the aftermath of COVID-19, our sense of reality is shaken in a way we have not experienced before. Environmental crises are unfolding just as we were warned they would over the last few decades, and we are very likely living through the hottest year recorded in history. As the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural and human-made systems become more apparent, we are also facing a new kind of crisis – a deficit of social imagination. Geoff Mulgan, Professor at UCL, refers to this as an imagination crisis, in which we are stuck, unable to move from ‘what is’ to ‘what if.’
Imagination is defined as way of seeing, sensing, thinking, and dreaming that creates the conditions for material interventions in, and political sensibilities of, the world (Yusoff & Gabrys, 2011). In our current reality, we are simultaneously breaking into a new world, marked by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and other technologies, whilst still healing from the aftermath of ongoing crises and wars. In this complex landscape, ‘how we look’ can affect ‘what we see,’ which begs the question: where is the infrastructure that nurtures and supports social imagination – the imagination infrastructure?
Historically, urban spaces have shaped ‘what the city could be’, including our local identities, and they continue to do so. Take public squares in their varied shapes and forms across the globe – beyond just being places to gather, they have served as places for protests, revolutions, celebrations and more. Such spaces act as crucial imagination infrastructure by providing a physical and symbolic arena where people can envision and enact social change, offering a stage for public expression and allowing diverse groups to interact and share ideas that can shape our future.
Other examples abound. Over the last two decades, cities across the globe have seen the rise of makerspaces and fab-labs – a result of the maker movement that was born in the 1990s. A melting pot of art, craft, innovation and technology, these spaces are where creative individuals with ideas come together, imagine and create. This imagination infrastructure has lowered the barrier of access to space, technology and community, and has led to the prototyping and testing of some of the innovations we use today (from phone cases to tap-payment systems).
Urban spaces such as these have shaped history but what is it about them that inspires and evokes such powerful responses in cities?
Cities operate within a vast complexity of interrelated systems – social and economic to ecological and physical – without any centralized coordination. They also largely function without seeing their full impact on surrounding ecological systems. With dense populations and growing digitalization, imagination infrastructure in cities like makerspaces have the potential to bridge some of these gaps – giving us a moment to pause, listen, connect and tap into a sense of community at a time where transformation is pivotal.
But it is more than that – imagination infrastructure also has the power to shape our narratives and identities and vice versa. It is through our collective narrative imaginations that we are both anchored and transported (Andrews, 2016). Narratives in a city or any social system are shaped, formed and molded by such spaces and inversely, the stories we share about them and how they evolve over time also mold the space. As Winston Churchill for once aptly said: “We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.” These spaces foster change by providing a platform to discuss shared challenges, reimagine societal structures, and innovate everyday products and services to shape our lives.
Take public libraries and coffee shops for instance – both have long served as imagination spaces for creatives, writers, and storytellers. With the advent of digital transformation, the future of these traditional havens for imagination hangs in the balance, prompting us to reconsider and reimagine their value and potential in nurturing the creative spirit of our communities. Public libraries are remodeling themselves into community centres and maker spaces, becoming more flexible even in their architectural design. Meanwhile, coffee shops have paved the way for co-working spaces and innovation hubs. Our evolving discourse about these spaces has not only shaped how others perceive them but also how they perceive themselves, influencing their role in fostering creativity and intellectual exchange. These spaces, along with other forms of imagination infrastructure – the physical manifestations of our values, novelty, and exchange – play a crucial role in shaping our sense of hope and aspiration for the systems we live in.
Ultimately, urban spaces that stimulate our imagination can be powerful catalysts for shifting perceptions and enabling change. By encouraging us to pause, observe, and reflect, they inspire action towards reimagining existing complex challenges and building momentum for transformation to create new possibilities for people and society.
Take a look at some of the imagination infrastructure emerging in our cities:
Pljevlja, a city in Montenegro, houses the country’s only coal-fired power station, which supplies a third of the nation’s electricity. While the livelihood of a large part of the local population depends on the power plant, the country is also embracing a green transition. The city of Pljevlja, in partnership with UNDP through the Slovak Transformation Fund, recently opened a Creative Hub that aims to transform the city to a place for the development of start-up projects with green business ideas that have the potential to create new jobs. Further, the hub is becoming a meeting space for young people to explore the possibilities of using innovative technologies and to acquire skills and knowledge. Read more about Pljevlja’s Creative Hub here.
An audit of the waste in Skopje, North Macedonia, found that nearly 50% of the municipal waste is biowaste. This city of Skopje and UNDP wasted no time in setting up a biohacking lab, with the support of the Slovak Transformation Fund, to change the perception of biowaste from garbage to a valuable resource. The space now not only hosts biohackathons, supporting innovative startups, but also conducts workshops with students to inspire circular thinking and brings together researchers and academics to experiment. Interestingly, the emergence of the lab has also amplified the voices of environmental advocates and circular economy proponents, lending weight to their causes. Read more about Skopje’s Biohacking Lab here.
Batumi, a resort city in Georgia, grapples with a dual challenge: the emigration of talented youth seeking better opportunities elsewhere, and an economy heavily reliant on seasonal tourism, which creates instability throughout the year. In reinventing itself as an entrepreneurship hub to retain talent and diversify its economy, Batumi aims to create a physical space to promote youth interaction through the EU-funded Mayors for Economic Growth. It is envisioned as a youth hub and a co-working space, which will offer additional services and opportunities for learning and networking, aiming to become a meeting place for young minds with ideas to create innovations for the city. Read more about Batumi’s approach here.
The city of Ceadîr-Lunga in Moldova has embarked on a critical journey towards energy resilience since the Russia-Ukraine war drove up energy prices sixfold. The city, in collaboration with UNDP through the EU-funded Mayors for Economic Growth, piloted a project to retrofit kindergartens – reducing energy consumption by 90% and cutting the cost to a tenth of what it was before. The kindergarten became a symbol of change, inspiring both children and the local community to envision a renewable energy future. Showing ‘what could be’ sparked conversations around energy resilience both inside and outside the classroom with students, their parents and teachers. The resulting energy and cost savings were made public, encouraging wider acceptance of adaptation measures and shifting perceptions to make energy efficiency more desirable. Read more about Ceadîr-Lunga’s Kindergarten retrofit here.
What are we seeing as the common thread connecting these spaces in these diverse contexts which we are collectively calling imagination infrastructure? They are spaces that bring people together: they are sparking new conversations, creating room for forming new relationships, kindling new thinking, enabling a shift in mindsets, strengthening partnerships, helping articulate values and triggering many more emerging effects.
Imagination is critical to transformation and as cities play more active roles as connectors, collaborators and orchestrators, there is an emerging need to reimagine the spaces where we can connect, play and imagine. To break away from legacy thinking and embrace more flexibility in adapting to the changes the future demands, UNDP is working together with cities across the Europe and Central Asia region to reimagine how we can design and bolster imagination infrastructure. As we envision a future of inclusive development that instills hope across generations, a crucial question emerges: How are institutions adapting to nurture the imagination infrastructure needed to catalyze transformative change in our cities? And as our cities adapt and transform, how are we listening and learning about the changing narratives that these urban spaces are driving?
Read more about our community listening practice here
Illustration credit: Mark Wang for TheGreats.co
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