Questioning the scale and the co-creation of the city, Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale is a project co-financed by the European Union’s Creative Europe/Culture program. It started with a concept created by Pro Materia in 2006 and is now led by the Cité du design Saint-Etienne. For four years (2014-2018), it brings 12 partners from 11 European cities : La Cité du design Saint-Etienne (FR) – Design Department of Politecnico di Milano (IT) – Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana (SI) – Clear Village, London(UK) – Zamek Cieszyn (PL) – Association Design Week Belgrade (RS) – Pro Materia, Bruxelles (BE) – Faculty of Architecture, Aalto University, Helsinki (FI) – FH Joanneum, Graz (AT) – Association of Estonian designers, Tallinn (EST) – Bilbao Ekintza (ES) – Culture Lab, Bruxelles (BE).

This platform of interdisciplinary exchanges explores how the inhabitants reclaim the constantly evolving contemporary city. It uses experiments in the urban space as ways of (re)inventing city life, a step to improve wellbeing and quality of life.  Human Cities’ network highlights 13 strong and shared values:

Empathy – Wellbeing – Sustainability – Intimacy – Conviviality -Mobility – Accessibility- Imagination – Leisure – Aesthetics – Sensoriality – Solidarity -Respect

These values are a common ground linking the variety of partners and actors taking part in the project.

During 4 years, the partners are following a rich programme of activities consisting in:

A design research investigation based on 85 case studies of European bottom-up initiatives; co-creation sessions to set-up a common experimentation metholodogy; Experimentations in 10 cities; 9 exhibitions in the main European design events;  Prototypes tested by inhabitants and visitors;  a digital catalogue; 11 international workshops; more than 10 international conferences; 5 master classes; 2 book publications .