Limerick’s Georgian Neighbourhood is developing flexibly and through the use of prototyping and community participation, in close cooperation with stakeholders: citizens, companies, city administration and researchers.
Supported by the European Horizon 2020 programme and as part of the +CityxChange Project, Limerick is employing smart city development by co-creation in a public-private-people partnership bringing benefits to all stakeholders. One of the elements of this smart city development is accelerating through agile piloting – ie, ‘Urban Prototyping’.
The Urban Prototyping programme accelerates Smart City innovation by procuring new urban products and service prototypes to be co-created with citizens and wider creative networks. Solutions are tested in real life settings during a period of up to 12 months. The programme supports pilot projects and offers tools to innovate, co-create and experiment with new programmes, initiatives & changes to regulation, products and services etc. together with citizens, makers, creatives, startups and other stakeholders.
From 2019 to 2021, there will be three open calls for urban prototypes, focused on enabling the formation of a Positive Energy District in the Georgian Neighbourhood of Limerick City.
These calls are supported by the Limerick CityEngage Weeks, during which citizens engage in developing a vision for living in the historic core of Limerick City Centre. Through workshops, mapping days and events in these CityEngage weeks, stakeholders explore ways to make the transition to a positive energy neighbourhood.
The first CityEngage week was held September 23rd to 28th, 2019 and focused on the ‘Georgian Laneways’ and ‘Citizen Sensing’. During that week the +CityxChange team supported and assisted citizens in gathering information about what is valued, and to share their ideas, hopes and aspirations for the Laneways. In April and September 2020, there are further CityEngage Weeks planned in Limerick.
This Open Call will identify and support the first Urban Prototypes to be tested in the Georgian Neighbourhood and focused on developing solutions for Laneways and Citizen Sensing supports. The open call is looking for teams involving local community groups, supported by designers and makers to design, create and test solutions to common issues in the Georgian Neighbourhood area.
For more information on the Open Call, click here to download the original file.
