CIVIC SQUARE is demonstrating neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social and ecological transition, together with many people and partners in Ladywood, Birmingham UK.
Principally, we are working to share practically and openly how the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets can be designed, owned and governed by the people who live there now in systemic, tangible and participatory ways.
This is through organising around three interconnected neighbourhood system demonstrators: Neighbourhood Doughnut (a 21st century compass for ecologically safe and socially just neighbourhoods), Neighbourhood Transitions (street-based systemic demonstration of carbon, energy and ecological built environment transitions) and Neighbourhood Public Square (co-building and democratising access to the spaces, tools and resources for a distributed and regenerative transition, held in the common for the neighbourhood).
Co-building and democratising access to the spaces, tools, resources and infrastructure that neighbourhoods need to co-lead the social, ecological, economic and climate transition of the 21st century.
In this phase, we are deepening our focus on the capital project and the retrofit of the CIVIC SQUARE site in Ladywood, Birmingham UK — the Neighbourhood Public Square. This transformation of a 20th century industrial site into 21st century regenerative infrastructure will be a demonstrator for many layers of the deep redesign required, including finance, refurbishment, ecological building design and avoidance of demolition and retrofit, with the ownership and stewardship designed to be held in the common for the neighbourhood, with a covenant that brings social and ecological benefit into the legal steward, in perpetuity.
Together we are actively designing what it would take to create a power station for the neighbourhood through harvesting energy, what it would mean to create a building that cycles water and materials, and how to make spaces such as a microfactory fit for a neighbourhood retrofit movement in practice. What might a building designed and stewarded inside the safe and just space of the Doughnut, socially and ecologically look like? Let’s show it in the heart of Birmingham. The Neighbourhood Public Square is one of three interconnected neighbourhood system demonstrators, alongside Neighbourhood Doughnut and Neighbourhood Transitions.
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An early potential visualisation of the public square site in Ladywood, Birmingham UK.
The Neighbourhood Public Square will feature a range of deep code innovations, from finance, governance and outcomes design. It will be informed by the latest climate science, take a bio-material and bioregional approach amongst much more. An interest in these ideas will suit any potential applicants. The physical site design will also be broken down into a range of modular components including: