In 2022, an urban development plan for Eastern Aalborg* will begin, aimed to strategically shape the area in the coming years. Before that the municipality decided to do a massive involvement process, in which the more than 30.000 people in the district were invited to voice their concerns regarding the future development plan. In this preliminary debate arki_lab designed and facilitated an ambitious involvement process in collaboration with the municipality.

An ambitious involvement process
With an array of different engagement methods such as postcards, stakeholder workshops and a digital postbox arki_lab aimed to enable as many people as possible to participate in the debate. Most notably, we used an old caravan as a mobile pop-up workshop with which we toured the different parts of the district during the month long involvement process. The caravan was a huge success as the colorful and festive setting peeked the interest of both young people and adults.

Empower the young
In a separate effort to involve the young people we designed a half day course for all the 5th and 8th graders in the district. Equipped with a pamphlet and the ArkiCity app the school kids analyzed their local areas. Through collages they described their hopes for the future of their local neighbourhoods. The collages were exhibited at the caravan workshops and, thus, became a "can opener" for all the conversations we had

In the end we managed to create an impressive amount of knowledge that illuminates the potentials, conflicts and qualities of the heterogenous district of Eastern Aalborg. All this knowledge will create the framework for the future development plan of the district.

*Eastern Aalborg covers Gug, Universitetskvarteret and Aalborg Øst, as well as the villages Øster Uttrup, Øster Sundby, Nørre Tranders and Sønder Tranders.