Prototyping the city: goals and issues

As cities organizations are facing major urban and technological transformations, European citizens are taking possession of their cities, collaborating or acting for its the renewal . Which kind of tool are set up to think and produce the public space together ? How to make these bottom-up initiatives sustainable ? Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale is a European project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union 2014-2018. Gathering 12 partners from 11 coun- tries led by Cité du design Saint-Etienne, it explores how inhab- itants reinvent the contemporary city through experimentation and surveys. This publication is a collaborative research work, made from more than 80 case studies collected by the partners in Europe. They tell about actions led by creative citizens to transform their urban environment. Researchers from Cité du design Saint-Etienne, the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano and Urban Planning Institute of The Republic of Slovenia Ljubljana provide a state of the art of these initiatives. Analysing these multiple examples, they investigate how urban dwellers participate, get organized and collaborate with creative profes- sionals to prototype more liveable cities.