Approaching urban voids - Fostering common actions and knowledge (productions) as a resource for the redevelopment, reconstruction and revitalisation of urban voids and buildings

Urban voids and buildings are becoming both the causes and solutions of the current environmental and social crisis in urban development. In addition future cities will also have to deal with limited urban spaces and resources. In order to cope with this complex situation, a paradigm shift in conventional urban regeneration is essential. As the EU has entered the post-industrial age, decline of manufacturing industry, suburbanization, changing urban policies and planning systems, this has resulted in producing diverse spectrums of underused and abandoned urban spaces, so called “voids”. The radical restructuring of global economy in recent decades has resulted in an explosion in the number of such spaces. In many European cities smaller and larger derelict, vacant, underused sites can be found. In order to face this issue that involves in particular European cities, some questions arise: What policies and/or instruments need to be adopted or formulated to support the re-activation of large-scale vacant voids and buildings? How are these policies implemented in practice? Which opportunities offer city and the neighbourhood? How to involve the public authorities, the population, the stakeholders and the property owners in order to achieve a long lasting cooperation with the aim of regenerate the vacant area with benefits of both communities and the built environment? How to engage with property owner to achieve a lasting cooperation for mutual beneficial use of the property? Based on the experience of the URBACT III -Project_”Waking up the ‘sleeping giants’ - Activation of larger vacant buildings and building complexes for a sustainable urban development (EU Framework Project) that focuses on the reactivation of larger urban voids, including vacant buildings, that have lost their original purpose, this contribution aims to present the fact that these buildings present a great opportunity: the recycling and reusing of these abandoned urban spaces can be one pathway for greater resource efficiency and new, social and spatial interactive growth as important contribution for the development of the city. These urban voids can be strategic places for the redevelopment of cities and neighbourhoods. In particular, due to their size these vacant buildings can provide space for a variety of social, economic, ecological or cultural functions; all this within the existing building stock and the city limits. The presentation will focus on the key redevelopment incentives that the project has identified as to be able to bring the vacant areas and buildings back in use in the context of the city / neighbourhood development.