Having seen Margaret Wilkinson, Head of the Planning for Real Unit, speak at the DiverCity Conference in Wroclaw, Poland, the Unit were invited by the Reykjavik City Planning Office to deliver our 2 day Planning for Real Training Course.

The City Planning Office had a project which required a good strategy for involving the local community.  Their project, to be delivered over 3 to 4 years, was to re-plan all 10 of their “District” areas.

District Planning was a new approach in Reykjavik’s planning history and work had begun on 2 of their 10 “Districts”, with a further 3 to come on stream shortly after.  There are on average 10-15000 residents in each “District”.  The Officers felt that the Planning for Real approach would be a good method for involving local residents and stakeholders.

Margaret flew out to Reykjavik in October 2015 to deliver the training.  Participants on the course represented the following disciplines:  Planners, Architects, Landscape Architects, Highway Engineers, and Community Involvement.   Since the training the Reykjavik Team have put their newly acquired skills to great effect and have created 3D models with local school children, taken these models out and about to gather views, and held follow up workshops to develop detailed plans.

The images below show the Planning for Real training in Reykjavik, including the Model building and Using the model to generate ideas.

Update from Bjorn Ingi Edvardsson, Landscape Architect, Reykjavic City Planning Office:

Things have been going very well. We have started the consultation program in three district. We are using the schools, 6th grade kids, and have been going to 3-4 schools in each district, Breiðholt and Árbær district were the first and now the third district has started and the fourth very soon. The kids are doing the models and we guide them, and give them introduction to the planning process and general knowledge about the neighbourhood and what is expected of them. The kids have been very excited to do the models, and introduce it to the parents in special arrangement meetings one week later after they finish the model. Then the parents and other local people can use the pre-arranged cards to mark what can be done better, etc. Now I think we are getting to put them in an excel database which will help us figure things out and it will be used in the project, for the planning proposal of the District.

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