Environmental noise and health

Library of Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia,
Tuesday, 15th October at 5pm, lecture in Slovene language, free of charge

Sonja Jeram will present the topic of environmental noise and the importance of a good soundscape in residential areas. She will explain the position of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commission, as well as the role of the National Institute of Public Health in preparing opinions related to land use planning and action plans. She will present the level of noise pollution for traffic, industry, restaurants and wind turbines and highlight individual cases. As a contrast to noise pollution, she will also describe the role of quiet areas in the urban environment.

Environmental noise has several impacts on human health and well-being. Very loud sounds can cause temporary or permanent hearing impairment even in a short period of time. However, such sounds are not often present in the living environment. There is increasing scientific evidence of the negative effects of permanent noise in the environment even when it does not reach high intensities. Although, many people quickly get used to this noise and accept it as part of their everyday life, health effects are reflected in long-term cardiovascular disease. It is estimated that more than one million healthy life years are lost in Western Europe due to suffering from annoyance, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular disease, tinnitus and cognitive impairment in children. The data indicate the severity of the outcomes that we should not overlook.

Sonja Jeram is a researcher at the National Institute of Public Health in Ljubljana. She holds a PhD in biology from the University of Ljubljana in the field of neurophysiology in insect sound communication. She continued her work in the field of chemical safety and participated as a visiting scientist at the European Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods (Joint Research Centre, Ispra). For her outstanding work on alternative strategies for reducing animal use in experiments, she received the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation Award. For the last ten years, she has been working on environmental noise and health also being involved in Horizon 2020 European projects.

The lecture is part of a project »Expert basis for spatial planning of green areas aimed at promoting physical activities for citizens«.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow. More info at info@uirs.si.

An uklad-based approach to protection and sustainable development of cultural heritage in Chisinau, Moldova

Irina Irbiskaya

Irina Irbiskaya will discuss the uklad-based approach to preservation of cultural heritage in the Republic of Moldova. An uklad is a persistent way of life / mode of activity which has a spatial expression. The ways uklads exist in the city differ according to the size and the role of a city (e.g. capital city, a regional administrative center or a small town). An uklad is characterized by the prevalent family culture, by its attitude to the surrounding space, by the manner in which people belonging to the uklad are aware of their past and construct their future, by how they perceive their children, how they interact with their territory and their neighbors, how they own their property and treat others' property, and by how they work and spend their leisure time.
 
The uklad-based approach to preservation of cultural heritage is elaborated within the framework of the ‘Russian Experts upon request’ program in accordance with Partnership Framework Agreement between the Government of Russian Federation and the UN Development Program.

Irina Irbitskaya is an architect and urban planner. She is  the director of the Center of Urban Competence at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) with expertise in housing projects and urban development and planning advancement. She is a co-founder of the international project Doktor Gorodov.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow.

More info at info@uirs.si.

Ljubljana – My City project

Renovation of building shells of buildings with the status of cultural heritage

The lecturer Karl Pollak, an arhitect and urban planner, will present »Ljubljana– My City project«, a project that has been ongoing since 1989 and includes the implementation of the renovation of building shells of monumentally important buildings. The motivation behind »Ljubljana - My City project« was the preparations for the 1991 World Designer’s Conference (ICSID 91), at which time the Municipality decided that rather than contribute to the customary glamour of such occasions it would be better to contribute funds to improving the city itself. At that time, a complete renovation was already underway in Ljubljana, where several buildings were renovated and plans for the revitalization of the old city core area were being prepared. However, the renovation then stalled due to social changes and denationalisation, the abolition of systemic funding sources and high refurbishment prices. Simultaneous with the restoration of individual important mansions and other buildings as part of the project they were also arranging public areas. In addition to that, the City of Ljubljana is also doing away with architectural obstacles which prevent wheelchair users and other disabled persons, including the blind and partially sighted, from moving around the city and having access to individual buildings. The project is still active but is now known under a different name. By restoring facades and roofs, arranging an open urban space - squares, streets and embankments, and eliminating architectural barriers, the city of Ljubljana follows the development flows of western European cities - although not with a complete renovation, which is virtually impossible to implement in our environment due to the fragmentation of ownership and lack of system resources. Nevertheless, the city is becoming not only more friendly to the inhabitants, but also more attractive for investments, the development of tourism, congress industry, etc. There is also a growing awareness of the importance and value of cultural heritage buildings.

Karel Pollak is an architect and urban planner that works at the spatial planning department within the City Municipality of Ljubljana. He has been running the project "Ljubljana - My City" for more than 25 years, and has been involved in many other tasks in the area of regulation and use of public spaces.

You are kindly invited to the presentation and the discussion that will follow. More info at info@uirs.si.

Lessons in collaborative place making

Lecture in English, free of charge

Although there is growing support for the principle of citizens co-creating places together with local authorities and the private sector, there still seems to be a disconnect between the desire to engage the public, and the reality of the standard consultation procedures followed. It is time to change the way things are done and to bring communities genuinely to the heart of planning and placemaking. This lecture will present innovative methods of co-creation (i.e. collaborative place making), and how they can be applied at a local-level.  What new possibilities might open up if there was real co-creation in place-making (as to opposed to consultation, which is often only a step away from tokenism)? How should pre-event activities be fed into and help inform design-led events? How can the impact of outcomes from design-led events be tracked during the follow-on stages of collaborative community planning? What constitutes effective best practice for clarifying the level of substantive planning and design expertise a facilitator requires, if any, at any given community design event? This research presented by the lecturer provides an important scoping of the many components and steps involved. Its findings will aid understanding and ultimately enhance the output performance of community participatory design processes.

Dr. Husam AlWaer (B.Arch, MRTPI, Ph.D, BREEAM AP, AoU, Recognised Practitioner in Urban Design RPUD) is an urbansit with a background in architecture, urban planning and sustainability, who writes and speaks extensively on making better places. He is an award-winning author and curator of events, focussing on issues of place making and urban design practice and their social impacts. He is an educator and facilitator and moderates events nationally and internationally. He is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Design and Evaluation in the School of Social Sciences (Architecture + Urban Planning), University of Dundee. Dr. AlWaer has a passionate interest in the future of sustainable places and towns, in particular the development of new thinking on processes and methods to unlock sustainable urbanism and the way these processes are facilitated and managed.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow.

Participatory Budgeting in Chicago

Lecture in English, free of charge

Library of Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Tuesday, September 18th 2018 at 5pm

Teresa Córdova will discuss Participatory Budgeting (PB) in the city of Chicago and describe the role of the Great Cities Institute (GCI) in facilitating this democratic process of determining public spending. The presentation will include a history of participatory budgeting and describe the process and partnerships for making this process a success. In addition, the lecturer will also discuss the challenges of PB and strategies for overcoming them.

PB is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. It offers people a fundamentally different way to engage with government. The United Nations has promoted PB as a best practice of democratic governance. In February 2012 GCI partnered with The PB Project and a broad coalition of aldermen, city-wide institutions, and community-based organizations to launch PB Chicago. PB Chicago aims to implement and expand PB processes and direct democracy throughout Chicago. GCI is the lead university partner on PB Chicago, responsible for providing overall project management, community engagement, and evaluation. Since 2012, PB Chicago has engaged over 13,000 residents in twelve different communities in directly deciding how to spend over $18 million in public dollars.

Teresa Córdova is the Director of the Great Cities Institute (GCI) at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She is also Professor of Urban Planning and Policy in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA) and an affiliate faculty of UIC’s Departments of Sociology, Gender and Women Studies, and Latino and Latin American Studies. Prof. Córdova received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She has received multiple recognitions for academic achievement and leadership including recognition of her role in infrastructure planning and in developing a small business incubator and commercial kitchen.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow. More info at info@uirs.si.

LUMAT project meeting

LUMAT project meeting, co-financed by the INTERREG Central Europe Programm is running at the Urban Planning Institite of the Republic of Slovenia in Ljubljana between 24th and 25th of May 2018.

Evaluation of the significance of open space in the areas of settlement heritage

Darja Marinček Prosenc

Library of Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Tuesday, April 24th 2018 at 5pm, lecture in Slovenian, free of charge

With the new legislation adopted last year, a new spatial act was introduced in the spatial planning process: the Decree on the regulation of the appearance of settlements and landscapes. This legal act states that the municipality regulates the urban and other spatial development in built areas of settlements, including the areas of protected cultural heritage. The emphasis is on the appearance as well as on harmonized and mutually complementary use of public and private surfaces. The decree regulates and protects the appearance of settlements and landscapes by listing specific conditions, including the conditions for the implementation of non-structural interventions in the area. The topics of the lecture will include: the definition of significance in the context of spatial planning of open space and the appearance of settlements, types of significance, the reasons for its evaluation and what exactly we are evaluating. Specific examples in several different locations will be presented. Valuation of different types of significance is one of the tools that will ensure successful implementation of the new spatial act.

The lecture is organized within the events of the Month of Landscape Architecture.

Darja Marinček Prosenc received her PhD at the Faculty of Architecture, she is a master of landscape architecture and a conservator in the field of preservation and protection of cultural heritage sites. She has worked in spatial planning since 1983. Since 1991 she has been managing projects in spatial planning and landscape architecture at POPULUS Prostorski inženiring Ltd.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow. More info at info@uirs.si.

PlurAlps international conference

PlurAlps international conference with the title Pluralism in Alpine regions: Migration as an opportunity for social and economic innovation will be held on 16th & 17th May 2018 in Torino.

More information on the webpage and in the attached file:
http://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/pluralps/en/home

My favourite Art Nouveau architect

A series of short videos as part of this year's Art Nouveau World Art Day.

The international Réseau Art Nouveau Network (RANN) is presenting a series of short videos titled My Favorite Art Nouveau Architect!, as part of this year's Art Nouveau World Art Day.

Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (UIRS) has been a member of Réseau Art Nouveau Network since its establishment in 1999. Within this network and with the financial support of the European Culture Program, UIRS carried out three major international projects presenting the key authors of the Secession heritage in Ljubljana, among others Maks Fabiani who stands out with his opus.

More information: http://www.artnouveau-net.eu 
                              https://www.facebook.com/ReseauArtNouveauNetwork

From roads to streets

Urban Regeneration for Street Conviviality – The Case of Suburbs of Ljubljana

Hosted by the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Ljubljana (FA) in collaboration with the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (UIRS) and the Slovenian Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning (MOP).

Programme, lectures' summaries and short introduction are avaliable in this file

Individual presentation are attached as .ppt files.