Urban lifestyle points and lici project : A way to re-create live in the cities

It has been several decades now that actions of urban renewal or urban revitalisation represent important investments in our cities.  Despite these repeated efforts, many city centres remain punctuated with fragmented spaces of deserted places because they have not been devised for people. These renewals and revitalisations aiming at dynamizing urban areas, in fact generate empty spaces, underused, misused or simply not used at all.  The result is thus spaces not appropriated by the users.

The objectives of the LICI project (lively cities project – a European project) is to re-create a dynamic of life in the cities by creating links between the different identified targets (workers, inhabitants, local authorities, visitors,…).

The methodology implies analyses of the spaces concerned by the project’s partners (swot analysis; qualitative (interviews, focus groups) and quantitative surveys) in order to define a positioning of the space regarding the users needs.  Once positioning is defined, different activities are tested on the various spaces to lead to the identification of “best pratices” which can be definitively developed in a long run way.  During the various steps, traditional marketing tools are used and adapted to this specific context of non commercial environments. Those tools are also used in order to realize control of the various implementations.  This can allow adaption to the propositions.

As a result, it seems evident that the long-term success of the space depends not only on the communities’ involvement from the very beginning of the process but also throughout the metamorphosis of the space. The changes achieved must answer people’s needs, expectations, and should anticipate their desires. To remain attractive overtime, the transformation must be continuous and the space must keep on evolving according to new calls, requests and wishes. In order to do so, there is the need to address the quality of what has been set up on the defined public space, assess and improve it. A space’s worth can be valuated through a series of indicators such as: the quality of its environment, the services and/ or animations proposed, but above all through the activity, the feelings of pride, respect and belonging the space generates, all these being closely linked.