15:00-16:30 CET, Online
The 2020 New Leipzig Charter (NLC) introduced the Productive City as one of the three main programmes. Despite common perceptions, production has far from left European metropolitan areas and remains a vital part of the economy. There are plenty of reasons for cities and metropolitan regions to embrace production and protect urban conditions to make physical things.
In the shadow of unreliable supply chains, war, pandemics and geo-political instability, local forms of production must urgently be re-explored. This includes attracting high-tech companies and talent, retaining craft and cultural related activities, creating space for local innovation, providing diverse and accessible employment, ensuring that cities can be maintained and developed with local skills and materials, addressing waste and resource flows and so forth.
The public sector can play the vital role of gatekeeper in protecting spaces for production and as a champion in ensuring that production activities remain both valued and visible in cities. But for many policy makers and planners, the Productive City remains conceptual. Decades of modern planning, with separated economic activities from living areas, increased environmental regulations, increased tension between residents and ‘places of production’, increased land prices and speculation, all render local production a complex challenge.
In this expert group, we will be addressing a series of questions:
- Considering limited resources and available land, what activities should be prioritised?
- Where should production happen?
- What can public authorities do?
This meeting will discuss and adapt the proposed Expert Group programme to prepare for the METREX autumn conference.
- Exploration of specific lectures and presentations for external guests.
- Definition of the handbook.
- Discussion regarding guest presentations (define focus on topics such as data and statistics, urbanism and architecture, circularity and resource management…).
This Expert Group is open to all Members of METREX. To attend, please contact stephen.gallagher@eurometrex.org.
