Citizen-Led Place-Making for Encounters Across Diversity in Rotterdam

Abstract

While citizen-led semi-public spaces have been regarded as the alternative and better approach to increase social interactions between people who are mostly unknown to each other with organized encounters, little has been empirically shown how grassroots initiatives activate and establish the social connections through certain codes of conducts in the shared places in a mixed neighborhood. This research examines the socio-spatial conditions of the organized encounter by examining (1) the interactions between strangers in a semi-public space, where people of different backgrounds encounter, mutually recognize and build connections with each other and (2) the interactions between citizens and local governmental agents for reinvigorate a previously vacant site into the semi- public space for the organized encounters. Drawing upon the fieldwork in both het Wijkpaleis and de Spoortuin, two shared places mainly developed by citizen- led initiatives in Rotterdam, I suggest three crucial codes of conducts to trigger interpersonal contacts in the citizen-led semi-public spaces: regularly tactile engagement with materials, sharing materials and knowledge, and multiple space use. Moreover, I illustrate that place frames, which citizen-led initiatives use to make their claims over the meaning and the use of the specific place, are continuously affected by the strategic agendas for enrolling politically powerful actors in the processes of place making.