civic space

Stará Tržnica: Breathing life into an old market hall

Stará Tržnica (Old Market Hall) is a historical building in the centre of Bratislava. After years of unsuccessful attempts by the municipality to keep the market alive, a redevelopment plan with the input of the locals was realised by the Alianca Stará Tržnica combining a food market, cultural events, cafés, a grocery shop, a cooking school and a soda water manufacture. The space has helped to rebuild the community and runs in an economically sustainable way.

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Cascina Roccafranca – The Public-Civic Governance of Space

Cascina Roccafranca is a multi-functional community centre operating in a building owned by the City of Turin. The centre is managed through a cooperation between public and civic actors: a scheme that offers a valuable governance model while providing a wide range of social and cultural activities.

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Cascina Roccafranca: The journey from farmhouse to community centre

Cascina Roccafranca is a multi-functional community center located in a former farmstead in Turin’s outskirts. After 30 years of vacancy, Cascina Roccafranca was bought by the Municipality of Turin and requalified with the support of the European Union Urban II program. Today, Cascina Roccafranca is a public asset managed through a cooperation between public and civic actors and it provides a wide range of social and cultural activities. Since 2012, Cascina Roccafranca has been part of a network of similar community centers in Turin which was formalized in 2017, and today collaborates with the City Council in the management and the regeneration of urban commons.

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Largo Residências: Transforming a community through responsible tourism

Largo Residências is a hostel, hotel, artist-in-residence and café in Lisbon’s fast-changing Intendente neighbourhood. Largo Residências, run by a cooperative, uses its revenue from tourism and events to develop projects to support the cultural and social inclusion of the most vulnerable groups. In the past years, Largo has become a social net for many of the area’s residents and a community as well as a community hub, leading the discussion about Lisbon’s touristification and gentrification. Endangered by the tourism-driven real estate development transforming the city’s historical areas, Largo has been working on opening new spaces for its activities.

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De Besturing – From tenancy to collective ownership

De Besturing was founded in 2006 in an industrial area of The Hague and over the years it has been transformed from a temporary studio complex into a sustainable collective of artists and designers. Initially rented out for free on a temporary basis from the municipality, the community nevertheless collected the rent from tenants, constituting a capital that made possible the building’s purchase in 2017.

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Müszi – Public functions in private spaces

MÜSZI Art & Community Centre was a cultural space operating on the 3rd floor of a socialist-style department store in Budapest. Müszi stands as an unprecedented venture in Budapest, a venue that positions itself as an independent, self-sustaining “house of culture,” and offers affordable space and activities to a wide range of age groups, while combining its artistic and social mission with business principles in a sustainable manner.

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Bottega Artistico Musicale – Public-civic cooperation for independent culture

Bottega Artistico Musicale is an experimental centre of independent cultural production in Sapri, Southern Italy. BAM’s space encourages open sharing of uses, resources and skills, in order to promote mutualistic, cooperative and supportive production. The building was offered by the municipality for free and was renovated by students, temporary employees, unemployed people, graduates, musicians, activists, artists.

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Casa Netural

Casa Netural in Matera works as incubator for innovative and experimental projects. It includes a co-working space, a playroom, a kitchen, meeting rooms, relaxing rooms and bedrooms. Casa Netural’s objective is to create new business models and networks between communities and citizens around issues of social development and regional planning.

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ZOHO – Development with a hundred investors

ZOHO is a former inner city business area in Rotterdam, that gradually witnessed a loss of attractiveness. Stipo, an Amsterdam/Rotterdam-based urban regeneration office stepped in and cooperating with the area’s owner and various creative and social companies redeveloped the area step-by-step, through rethinking its empty buildings and public spaces.

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ExRotaprint – Community ownership against speculation

ExRotaprint was founded by tenants of the Rotaprint industrial complex in Wedding, a traditional working class district in Northwest Berlin. When the complex was put up for sale by the Berlin Municipality’s Real Estate Fund, members of the ExRotaprint began to look into the possibility of buying the area.

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