Participatory mechanisms and features of community participation in the regeneration of urban courtyards in Poland

Abstract

The growing need to support urban areas facing an accumulation of different problems has resulted in the search for solutions through the regeneration process. The current direction of the urban regeneration policy indicates the necessity for the local community to participate in the decisionaking process. For this aim, public participation is used as one of the crucial elements of the regeneration process. Until now, the regeneration undertakings have mostly concerned the development of public spaces, areas attractive for tourists or post-industrial areas. Unfortunately, in large urban agglomerations, access to micro semi-public spaces devoted directly to the local community is usually limited. The small semi-public spaces are the ones that have the potential to create a local network of places where recreation and neighborhood activities can take place. The community participation in the redevelopment of the urban courtyard spaces creates opportunities not only to improve the quality of their lives but also to renew the degraded urban areas. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to identify the occurring regularities and differences in the applied participatory mechanisms, as well as to indicate and explain the influence of the most important features of community participation on the achieved effects of regeneration of urban courtyards. The study was conducted considering 17 locations of courtyards in six Polish cities. The research primarily used qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews and field observations. The results indicate such mechanisms and features of the participation process that contributed not only to the achievement of spatial-functional effects, but primarily social effects such as integration and activation of the neighborhood community and the grassroots assumption of initiative and responsibility for the common space.