Co-creating a Greener Future in Łódź

0:02 Hello and welcome to Local Voices for Sustainability, the ECLA Europe Podcast. I'm Laura Schubert. Each episode we explore the sustainability transformations taking place in our member cities across Europe. Today, we're zooming in on the heart of Poland. Now if you've ever heard of it, think less postcard perfect and more post industrial Phoenix. Once a powerhouse of textiles, Hooch is now weaving something entirely new, a city fabric woven with Co creation. But what does Co creation even mean in an urban context? Under the Fair Local Green Deals initiative, Hooch has started reimagining 5 public green spaces across the city, not by distant planners and distant offices, but by the people who actually live there.

0:50 Residents, local organizations, and city actors have been brought into the process from the ground up to shape these spaces together. And reimagining these green spaces has meant more than just planting a few poppies. The solutions being developed are bigger and smarter. It's sustainable, it's local, and it's fair because it centers around the voices of those often left out of urban design.

1:14 Today on the show, we'll unpack what Co creation looks like in practice, how it's changing the way cities approach sustainability, and why justice and the environment must go hand in hand. To put it all into context for us, we'll be speaking with Alexandra Shduka, Deputy Director of the Environment Management Division at the City of Ooch. Alexandra, welcome to the show.

1:36 Thank you very much. To begin with, I'd like to hear what's happening in your city. What is the local sustainability situation and what are some of the challenges you're facing? I think that the biggest issue we are facing right now is water and deficiency of water in our city and we face the problem of desertification of our city. The thing is that which lies on watershed and there is no big river in our city although there are more than 20 little rivers and streams.

2:12 The problem is that all those rivers start in which and they totally depend on rainwater. So the source of the river is rainwater. Yes, because we are actually lying on small mountain and there is no water underground and Fast forward to today, we have no rainwater. The climate change for Poland is more like no winters, so no rain, no snow, no water in the rivers and very hot summers which start earlier than usual. So when the heavy rain comes, the ground is very dry, it cannot collect water from the rain, so all the water goes to the sewage system.

3:05 So 5 minutes after heavy rain we have flooded basements and no water in the greenery. Oh wow. OK. Again, the problem with lack of water is also the problem with our society telling us that it's our fault, like the city does not know how to manage the water. A lot of people forget that it's actually our common problem. It's our fault that we build more and more buildings, more and more parking lots and another playground with sealed surface.

3:45 So it's all comes to our wrong decisions. But maybe not from today or yesterday, but from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, when the city was developing faster. Yeah, you're. Suffering the consequences of your predecessors, I guess the people who were in your position before when maybe knowledge or perspectives about urban design were completely different. Which is one of the cities involved in the Fair Local Green Deals project, which is really centered around the concept of using Co creation as a tool to develop more sustainable and just cities.

4:25 Can you tell us why did the city feel like Co creation was the right approach to addressing some of its sustainability challenges? Well, first of all, in our city development strategy, we claim that the best city to live is the city created with its residents. And this is our main idea for next few years to ask people who live here, what do they want? What do they need?

4:54 Because we as the city of office, we are only 2000 in 600,000 people city. So we are just the percentage of ideas of perspectives. Hence the idea to ask what do you need now we need to analyze and find the balance, but we won't do it without their help. They go to school or go to work every day, the same path, the same streets.

5:30 They just see what we cannot see, not living in their neighborhood. So it's just natural right decision to go and ask them. Yeah. So it sounds like it's something that you're really building into. It's sort of the the planning approach for the entire city, not just in certain sectors, but it sort of sounds like you're really building it into the way that you manage things, the way that you the city is leading.

6:02 Well, we try, not every sector is successful in this approach, but I think that city planning is something that is, you could say people understand it, like you can always talk to them about their small neighborhood and using the example of their little space, explain something for the bigger scale of the city. But I think that after pandemic and after the lockdown, a lot of societies change their approach to the city. When you cannot go to the park and you need to explore your neighborhood.

6:42 And then you start to see what's wrong, what's not working, what should be done to to get better. When we started to talk with locals about planting trees or creating new green spaces, people were already aware that the small park in the neighborhood is extremely important for them. And can you give us an example of a sustainability challenge that the city is currently or recently tackling using Co creation? This would be deconcreting the city. The idea is to de seal all the pavements in the city center because a first heat island, second flash flats ferret. It's just doesn't look good.

7:34 So we analyzed the streets. We tried to point out places where there is a pavement, but it's not necessarily used. When we see that erasing this pavement in this this particular area won't be problematic for users, for pedestrians, for people with disabilities, we just change this scene with greenery. So we plant trees, traps and perennials. It's extremely important because when you see our city center, it's cramped, it's small, it has no open spaces, so there is no place to create new park or new square. Sure.

8:21 We had to work out something. We had those workshops with citizens, with with people and ask them where they need this kind of deconcreting. Yeah, We have one not very successful project where we created flower beds in front of the old factory building and it looked beautifully. Unfortunately, someone who works in this building, or maybe I don't know the owner of the building, asked us to to bring back the pavement because when there's a pavement, you can park their car. Yeah.

9:06 Well, in order to balance things out here, you just mentioned one of the sort of setbacks that you experienced so far. What about a success? Have you had any notable successes that you can share? I think that the project is definitely a success for the city. The project was this big revitalization of our city center. And as I mentioned earlier, we had some problems with poverty, with stagnation of our economy.

9:34 The situation in our city center was that there were a lot of old buildings and the people living there didn't have money for refurbishment. So after 10 or 15 years of stagnation, this part of the city looked terrible. We tried to get the money for refurbishment and we got a lot of money from European Union to revitalize the city centre.

10:05 And a lot of funds were consummated by buildings, refurbishment of buildings. But there were a lot of public spaces which were also, I can say, developed because it was creating something from the scratch. And there is a lot of success for the city, for our planners, for designers, architects. Heard of example is the realization of Freedom Square, in which it's very important to place for historic reasons. And it was just a square with 1 monument, one tram line and three or four little trees and nothing more. So that space all over.

10:55 And with the money from EU, we managed to transform it to what it is today, which is green square. There is a lot of trees, there is fountain for people to play when it's really hot. So I think that this is really our biggest success. I always wanted to ask someone who was visiting Cooch like 15 years ago and comes to which now how they see the change. So they can tell you how far it's come because it sounds like it has come very far.

11:35 I just want to jump back to what you were telling us earlier about the D pavementing of the city. I'm curious to know, are there any particular groups of, you know, stakeholders or individuals that you were trying to involve in the process and how did you go about trying to reach those people? Well, we tried to just be on the streets where the city life just goes on and ask people to to share their reflections about city, their ideas, their needs when it comes to greenery and public spaces.

12:14 Sometimes we had this sheets of questions and sometimes we just talked with them on the topics we needed to address. Sometimes we just were giving the invitations for the workshop. And at the workshop we had also a few walks, just like a group of people walking through the city talking about all of things.

12:43 And it was very fun thing to do because a lot of people would join us and it was not very institutionalized, if you know what I mean. You can join, you can say what you want and just go your way and nobody will ask you who you are, where are you from? It's your idea that counts, not you as the figure. It was a lot of those kind of activities that helped us see our projects from the perspective of local yeah of. Course.

13:25 And I imagine that as a result of their little tiny involvement in the big picture that they feel like they can support it more, like they're more behind it. Like, yeah, they had a voice. Yeah, I can see the value of that, certainly. So I understand that within the scope of the fair local Green Deals project, a really beautiful book was developed titled The Power of Many, which shows how Co creation can be used as a particularly effective Ave. to achieving more just and sustainable cities.

13:58 It shows how ambitious policy frameworks such as the Paris agreement and the European Green Deal can be translated to the local level in a more fair and participatory way. Which is experience in the project is documented in the book alongside a message to fellow city officials. But this particularly stood out to me that the quote that was in the book was Projects with undefined frameworks may be challenging, but we ask you, colleagues and parentheses to trust the process. This quote gives me the impression that you may have experienced some difficulties with the undefined project framework that is needed for Co creation process to happen. Could you tell us about that and about your suggestions for other cities experimenting with the

14:45 idea of Co creation? Well, I think the first thing to say is that when it comes to developing a project, we always say that we need to analyze the data, we need to sketch some points which are very important and will not be changed in the process of developing the project. And during the workshop in Berlin, there was this discussion that sometimes those points or those ideas turn out to be useless or maybe wrong. And then you face the challenge to either drop the project or drop the idea and start anew.

15:36 And this is the most challenging because when you start with some ideas in your head, it's hard to let them go. And then I think someone said that this is the power of Co creation, that we do not work on the project alone, we always work in a group, or at least we should work with with group, with other people, because everyone can bring to the project something different, equally valuable.

16:08 And those ideas may as well come from people who you invite to the process. Citizens, locals, NGOs or maybe local politicians. They all can bring something new to the project and you should not fear this unknown process. Nice. Yeah, Well said. So we're nearing the end of the show, But first I have a few more little questions for you. So this is a segment of the show that we like to call hot takes. I'll read you the question and I'm looking for a brief instinctual response.

16:46 OK. So which is the third largest city in Poland? Do you feel the city faces sustainability challenges similar or different from Warsaw and Krakow? Definitely different because every city in Poland has different background, different history, different urban plan and different problems. So, well, Warsaw is also another category because they have different financial support and Krakow is also our old capital city. So they have financial support from the government every year for refurbishment of monuments.

17:30 So it's totally different. Which is home to the longest commercial St. in Europe. I probably am not going to pronounce this correctly, but I will try Pyotr Kovska. Pyotr Kovkovska. Street, Thank you. Which is a stunning 4.2 kilometers long. I understand that the street has gradually been pedestrianized since the 90s, and I think that this kind of people friendly artery right in the city center is something that a lot of cities dream of having, but can still sometimes be a point of conflict or tension among those who would perhaps like to see it be used and said by cars. I'm curious, how is the street perceived by the city today? Well, it's our heart.

18:20 You could say a lot of cities have their hearts in the square. We don't have in this typical historical square. We have Kyodoska St. and it's more or less the same as the square. It was the center of all the business in which there were a lot of shops, a lot of restaurants, and it's still has this vibe of touristy attraction. And we tried to change the image of the Kyodkovska street by introducing trees, making spaces greener and providing all that people living in the city center should want. Wow, I, I got a visit.

19:08 It sounds really interesting. So my, my final question for you today is I'm curious to know what was one of your main takeaways of being involved in the Co creation experiment within the fair local green deals project? And is there anything that you're going to bring along with you to future projects? Definitely I will bring to the future project, I will bring one idea which popped out from our discussion in workshops that we all, as we work with city structures, with urban planning, and we all face the same problems, the same hardships. We all work with the same people and with the same problems, after all.

19:58 And at one point someone at the workshop in Berlin said that we are something like failure ship. And it sounds really negative, but the idea that springs from it is really positive because from every failure you have. When you learn the lesson, you will not do this same mistake again. I mean, when you put it like that, it definitely sounds like a great perspective to bring with you into the future for your professional life, your personal life.

20:35 It sounds like just you can learn something from everything and that's it. We've reached the end of our show. Alexandra, I would like to thank you very much for joining us on the show and for giving us a real insider's perspective into the possibilities of Co creation. So thank you. Thank you very much. Listeners, if you'd like to learn more about the fair local Green Deals project or about Co creation in general, I urge you to check out the Beautiful Power of Many book which we've hyperlinked in the show notes.

21:06 That's it for today's episode, and until next time.