New project: Young Innovators 2021

Illustration: Pınar Balat

What makes a public park socially and ecologically just?

Every year College van Rijksadviseurs organises the “Young Innovators Program” to give several teams of architects, urbanists and landscape architects the opportunity to look beyond daily practices and come up with new perspectives in their professions. This year, Zuzana Jancovicova and I are selected to be part of the program together and are focusing on the topic of spatial justice. We are asked by the City of Dordrecht to work on Dordwijkzone, which they aspire to transform into a big city park that will be ecologically healthy and socially inclusive.

Making an attempt to define what ‘just space’ means is not straightforward since it might be influenced by our personal and professional backgrounds, and it might need to be adjusted as the way we understand the world changes. For now, we define just space as the space where all social groups and life forms can exist and thrive together. We choose this definition because we want to highlight the social and ecological components of spatial justice. We argue that in our world today, it is not possible to achieve social justice without also achieving ecological justice and vice versa. In our research we learn from the writings of Susan Fainstein, Kate Raworth and Bruno Latour. We look for ways to translate the existing theory of spatial justice into spatial design solutions and strategies, in order to better understand our role as designers in increasing urban justice in today’s cities.

Read more on this project here.

Read more about Young Innovators Program here. (Available only in Dutch)