Written by Stephanie Edwards, ARB RIBA, Founding Director at Urban Symbiotics What if? What if…
Matthew Morgan23 November 2022
What did we do?
We used our urban room for a number of activities: it acted as a base for our local neighbourhood engagements and in the room we ran an exhibition explaining local place plans and 20 minute neighbourhoods.
Our room was also a base for communities to run events and sessions, and over four weeks we had initiatives launched, exhibitions held, workshops run, meetings conducted and markets hosted.
We provided a range of equipment, furniture and fittings and set the room up each day as our visitors would like. We are now working on a series of 3d visualisations showing how the urban room was configured for each event.
We were particularly interested in the relationship between where people live and the places people value
What’s happening now?
We are sifting through the data and information we gathered from the 1200 visitors to the urban room. This includes 500 map pins and 344 surveys, as well as the findings from interviews we conducted through the process to understand what worked best.
The data from Our Edinburgh Neighbourhood is giving us some interesting insights about the relationship of our city centre to local neighbourhoods.
We will share all of this in a stakeholder report that reflects on our experience of the urban rooms, the survey activity and what we’ve learnt.
Following this, we are working on a national report along with our four nation partners. In it we will explore our urban room and the data we collected in the broader national context, especially as our planning frameworks and policies develop in Scotland.
How can people get involved?
We’re still talking with our collaborators and new groups including heritage organisations and housing associations interested in how our urban room worked.
Our survey is still open, so we welcome any more contributions about how Edinburgh works for you as a city and how effective you think your voice is in participating and engaging in the planning process.
You can access the survey on the Commonplace platform.
