Placemaking Week

Sign-up links for all off-sites will be sent by email to conference registrants only in late September. Advanced registration required. Capacity: 30 (FULL).

In this workshop we’ll take you back 500 years to the beginning of a Dutch design tradition: the Dutch stoop.

A design tradition exported to other countries around the world such as the USA and South Africa, the stoop, a private space, was meant to create some distance between the house and busy street life. But it also became a place for social interaction. Over the years, however, car-oriented traffic engineering has diminished the prominance of the stoop. The stoop became the sidewalk, a place to walk safely from A to B.

Now it’s time to reinvent the Dutch stoop to give it back to the people of cities. In the inner city of Groningen, the municipality is on the brink of giving the stoop back to the city, and enriching and reactivating our streets. Think along with us on how to actually give it back and strengthen public space in the meantime.