Pop-Up City Lab Hillesluis

In our second Pop-Up CityLab we zoomed in on issues of (dis)trust, exclusion and voting with a group of women in the Rotterdam neighborhood of Hillesluis. It was very insightful to hear about how they experience this neighborhood from a ‘migrant’ mother’s perspective. These insightful meetings enable us to dedicate more research to the raised issues and think about possible interventions in co-creation with students. This was a direct follow-up on the design CityLab in which we identified the issue of local (dis)trust. In this City Lab we aimed to create an inclusive conversation to understand better how that (dis)trust can be better understood. During the CityLab Festival in Liege, we will shared our experiences and insights in more detail. The most valuable insight was that giving space to the personal narratives of the participants in the beginning of the session can be very fruitfull in the end. It enabled the particpatinginhabitants of this neighborghood to describe the local challenges from their point of view. This gave the academic staff a better understanding of what matters to them and how they perceive the local government and its services.