For several years he has been trying to create a new quality in the design of urban space. We can admire the effects of his work in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Szczecin or Warsaw. Pawel Jaworski, urban planner and creator of the experimental method, tells us what his method is based on, what is changing in Polish cities and what awaits us in the future.
Wiktor Bochenek: What is your method of experimental urbanism based on?
Pawel Jaworski: Let me first say what it stems from. It grows out of my many years of experience in participatory design. In the course of each process, I have observed that the desire, declared at the theoretical level, to discuss in kind with the users of streets and squares about their needs for transforming such places in practicepractice amounts to working with their fears, and in the case of extremely controversial and highly complicated changes - to blocking any interaction with conflict and defending the status quo. In the course of conducting workshop activities, I also realized that most of the people participating in them found it difficult to distinguish between what they really wanted as individuals and as a local community, and what they had become accustomed to over the years. The tools available did not allow for critical exploration of this issue. I looked to modeling with hope, but quickly realized that pitting individual concerns against abstract simulations was inappropriate and curmudgeonly (I leave aside the reliability of these micro-scale predictions, questioned even by their authors). Consequently, I wanted to create tools that are new, that make it possible to realistically incorporate the people who use the city into city planning, but at the same time are free of all the problems mentioned above. This is how I arrived at experimental urbanism combining design, research and participation.
In a nutshell: my work consists of actually testing different scenarios for the use and layout of public space, other than the status quo - together with the people who use it every day. First I try to identify exactly what I'm dealing with, so I conduct urban, transportation and social studies. Then I openly program and implement a prototype involving, for example, a change in traffic organization or furnishings. In the next step, I repeat the research, and put the results of this activity and diagnosis together to see what processes have occurred in the area I am dealing with. I make the collected information public and subject it to debate, which contributes to building knowledge about the consequences of implementing various design proposals. On this basis, each person determines which consequences are good and which are bad, to what extent and in what respect, and I develop a concept for sustainable transformation.
Pawel Jaworski
© Jerzy Wypych
Wiktor Bochenek: What makes it different from other research methods?
Pawel Jaworski: The most important thing is that the urban experiment is really happening and before our eyes. People participating in it can look at the real, not imaginary, results of the solutions adopted, and thus quite accurately assess the impact of these consequences on their functioning in the city. They can also get a better look at other people's perspectives, as there are different but very many voices when confronted with the prototype. Because of this, their views on change are more carefully considered and better justified, which often translates into their greater involvement and identification with the process. In addition, experimental design does not create a space for discussion with a high threshold of access, since everyone is able to find their way around the temporarily transformed space very easily - they just need to use their standard cognitive apparatus to do so. Thirdly, in such an approach, reality itself serves to sift out the good ideas from the bad ones, and not the hard-to-communicate intuitions of designers or unreliable expert forecasts. Finally, there is one more thing I would like to mention: the joint testing of sometimes very controversial assumptions in a provisional form tames us to change, which allows us to push further and further the boundary between what is possible and impossible to transform. This critical dimension of urban planning is really very important and should not be lost.
Wiktor Bochenek: In Poland, urban changes are often introduced, which are withdrawn after a few months. What is the reason for this?
Paweł Jaworski: This is a very interesting issue. In my opinion, most of the urban planning projects that are implemented do not really give rise to any significant changes in cities - they are mostly aestheticization, powdering of the existing state. I don't want to get into their legitimacy, but note in this context that non-standard and non-obvious transformations that interfere with our habits or interests generate conflicts, and under the weight of the negative emotions that accrue around them, additionally fueled by the local press or political feuds, the people responsible for implementing innovative ideas bend. Everything would be different if we could "learn" from short-circuiting, and that's what I'm trying to do.
Imagine a situation in which one of the downtown streets is closed to automobile traffic. After this decision, people who run retail and restaurant businesses in its vicinity thunder that their businesses will not survive the changes. They question all the arguments underlying the new concept, particularly referring to the effects of implementing similar ideas in other cities. Among other things, they claim that their place is specific and cannot be compared to other areas. What usually happens at such a point? The project is discontinued, or a huge expert-promotional campaign is launched to prove the opponents wrong. This is not a democratic process. No one wonders if there is some important design information behind the attitude of those who negate urban planning efforts. Maybe it's about inadequate supply logistics solutions? Maybe they are concerns that a motorized customer won't give way as quickly to a customer who walks, bikes or takes public transportation? If we want to get the people protesting on our side, we need to start talking to them about these and all other troublesome issues, and digging so deeply into their statements until we get to the real issues. Of course, in this way we will not resolve all the dilemmas, but we will certainly make our project better.
Examples of Pawel Jaworski's activities in Dabrowa Gornicza
© Marek Dziurkowski
Wiktor Bochenek: Is the quality of urban spaces in Poland improving or deteriorating?
Paweł Jaworski: In my opinion, not much is happening in the public spaces of Polish cities - with exceptions. The most popular method of action is inaction or sham action. I don't think that public space is a subject of real concern in any other aspect than aesthetics, and only in the visual layer.
A few years ago, the standards were set by investments made with EU funds. At that time, the transformation of areas that didn't need to be changed began on a massive scale. Today we are amazed by the effects of these design struggles, such as the proliferation of automotive infrastructure or the widely reported disappearance of greenery. And what does it look like today? An ecological or sustainable approach is most often reduced to the issue of planting trees. I am not saying, of course, that this is irrelevant. However, equally important in this context is the discussion of mobility and equitable use of public space, which has developed significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic - in Poland more theoretically, but in many cities outside our country also practically. Just look at the temporary bicycle infrastructure in Bogotá, Berlin and Paris, or the interventions under the Open Streets label in the US. I think we will see more and more of such flexible design based on temporary solutions in the future. On the other hand, sustainable mobility and green-blue infrastructure solutions will develop, which are, after all, integrally connected at the value level. They are part of EU strategies.
Prototyping at the Free Square - Kazimierz
© Wojciech Maga
Wiktor Bochenek: It is very common for local governments to reject ideas for change in urban space through financial considerations. Is such an argumentation reasonable?
Pawel Jaworski: At the outset, I would like to point out that behind the slogan "we lack money for this" there is no state to which this phrase seemingly refers us. Local governments always have some budget, but of a finite size, and they have to deal with countless public tasks in many sectors, so it is obvious that they will not implement all the urban planning ideas suggested to them. When local authorities raise that they don't have the resources to implement an idea, they are actually signaling that they have a different distribution of emphasis than the person they are discussing it with. This in itself is not a bad thing, it simply shows the structure of the political prioritization and decision-making process.
However, the economic argumentation in urban planning has some deep dimension and meaning. Some solutions are costly because of their scale or complexity, making the amount needed to make them a reality impossible to reduce, and indeed should not be done. Other projects are expensive and poorly prepared, for example: scaled down in relation to needs, based on needs not properly identified, or mismatched to their transformation over time due to the low flexibility of the proposed development. It may also be the case that some ideas are simply less strategically relevant to the urban community than others, something that designers locked into their field of expertise will find difficult to discern. In particular contexts, specific concepts may be replaced by cheaper and equally effective ones, or related to another, more important area in the city.
Examples?
Let's look at concepts related to enhancing security in urban spaces. More than once we find that traffic engineering measures or temporary solutions that can be quickly implemented and changed are just as effective as permanent reconstruction, though perhaps less aesthetically spectacular. We may also face a situation in which the implementation of a project based on such solutions reveals that costly investment transformations are unnecessary because the design problem is ill-defined. Something like this has happened to me many times: my task was to prepare a concept for an inner-city streetbased on elaborate and constantly fueled expectations in public debates, and the experiment brought everyone down to earth and showed that actually a small intervention in the architectural layer is enough, and more important is the structural transportation intervention in the surroundings of the analyzed area. In these cities, it was possible to redirect resources to other tasks, and save them globally. It was enough to abandon the fetish of grand scale and the pressure to design every place to the highest imaginable standard.
Żabkowska Street in Warsaw - the site of Pawel Jaworski's intervention.
© Emilia Oksentowicz
Wiktor Bochenek: You were involved in the prototyping of the White Eagle Square in Szczecin. What did the work on this place look like and what will happen to it in the past.
Pawel Jaworski: This square was discussed for several decades. It was dreamed that it would become the market square of Szczecin, but none of the design activities could be finalized. An architectural competition was held in late 2018 and early 2019, but it was eventually cancelled due to public criticism of the outcome [proj. Orłowski-Szymański Architects - editor's note]. People discussing the development of the city accused the winning work primarily of perpetuating the automotive degradation of the cited section of the Old City. One idea to resolve the impasse was to test the opening of the public space to pedestrian and bicycle traffic and at least partial closure to cars. At the beginning of 2019, I came into the process, and my task was to program and conduct the experiment, and thus find answers to the question of what this space should be used for and how it should be developed to fulfill its function.
Accordingly, with the office's team, I conducted research and prepared a test scenario. I built the temporary pots together with a group consisting of people living or working in the Old Town and other parts of Szczecin, then together we planted plants in them (we called ourselves "People of the Square"). We used the urban furniture to block access to the roadway and parking lot excluded from use. After they were set up, a conflict developed, which, of course, concerned the issue of automobile transportation. During this time, I carried out a series of participatory and research activities, which ultimately allowed me to prepare guidelines for permanent transformations, not only in the square and its immediate surroundings, but also in the entire neighborhood. This was the first time in my career that a larger urban planning and mobility concept grew out of a small-scale experiment.
Changes in the White Eagle Square
© Szczecin City Hall
Today we are finishing work on the construction documentation, which envisages a complete reduction of vehicle traffic in White Eagle Square, partial reconstruction of the historic pavement, but also enlarging the green area and increasing its retention capacity. Importantly: all of these ideas were developed in the prototyping process together with the people who use the place.
Wiktor Bochenek: Thank you for the interview!
