The community enterprise Vrienden van Vlaardinger-Ambacht (friends of the neighbourhood Vlaardinger-Ambacht) asked us to make plans to activate the neighbourhood park “Park ‘t Nieuwlant”. Three years ago the municipality renovated the park, but  the park still lacks activities. The community enterprise wants to boost that people meet each other to stimulate the involvement and social cohesion in the neighbourhood. They see the park as engine for these meetings. The idea is to add new activities and program to the existing park to seduce the local residents to go to the park. Plans to do so will be made together with neighbourhood organizations and local citizens.  The main question will be the wishes of the  residents, what do they need (spatially) and in which way they’ll be involved.

We are responsible for the participation process and making a sketch design. We started with an inventory of the involvement and needs of the various stakeholders in the area, such as the shopping centre association and schools. . This gave us a first insight into the activities that could be possibly added. During a gathering, all residents can contribute their ideas and wishes, look where activities could be located and tell what role they would like to play in the process. With this input, we made a sketch design which is again discussed with the residents.

The final plan is a design an a strategy. The design focusses at enriching the actual situation by adding more sport, playing grounds, meeting places and elements to strengthening the natural area of the park. The strategy has two anchors: the first is dividing the plan in smaller areas and actions that group of citizens can easily develop themselves, the second is playing with temporarily materials to test the demand of the local citizens.

The plan was presented in May 2015 and the community enterprises has started directly with forming groups to realize the plan.