Developing Public Spaces in the Context of Climate Change: Insights from the Regeneration of Undervalued Areas in Czech Cities through Urban Living Labs

Developing Public Spaces in the Context of Climate Change: Insights from the Regeneration of Undervalued Areas in Czech Cities through Urban Living Labs

Abstrakt

This contribution focuses on the potential of Living Labs to support the planning and development of public spaces during the climate change era, using selected case studies from Czech cities. It also explores how underused and neglected urban areas – particularly city squares dominated by parking, remnants of railway corridors embedded in urban fabric, and poorly maintained riverfronts – can be transformed, allowing them to support ecosystem processes and enhance the quality of everyday urban living. Our work integrates elements of the Living Lab concept into studio-based teaching to engage students in addressing contemporary urban challenges, including overheating, public spaces of poor quality, social displacement, and automobility. The analytical framework combines surveys, geographical data analysis, and environmental measurements (e.g., air temperature and quality, humidity, heat accumulation, and vegetation cover) with subsequent design proposal consultations through participatory workshops involving residents and municipal representatives. This multi-source approach provides essential feedback from communities and local authorities and establishes a robust basis for responsible design while facilitating the transfer of knowledge beyond the academic setting. Moreover, this type of collaboration enables the development of small-scale, low-cost, and reversible interventions like opening sections of brownfields with spontaneous vegetation to pedestrians, greening and furnishing city squares, or creating modest riverside promenades. Such interventions reveal the latent potential of underused spaces and allow observers to record how gradual, reversible transformations respond to actual patterns of use, thereby generating valuable data before municipalities choose permanent solutions. The combined analysis of microclimatic conditions and pedestrian accessibility further helps identify healthier, more pleasant routes within the urban environment. Currently, the implementation of our proposed interventions is at various stages. One proposal is competing for funding within a participatory budgeting program. In another case, a new satellite parking facility has been established, although it is not yet fully utilized. The riverside-access project remains at the conceptual stage. Preliminary findings indicate a need for increased communication during project preparation to secure broader public support for interventions before attempting their implementation. Living Labs in studio-based teaching are serving as a platform for generating evidence-based spatial concepts to help architects integrate undervalued areas into broader planning processes. This has strengthened interdisciplinary collaboration, linking academia and research institutions, and is helping incorporate empirically grounded analyses into design development. Furthermore, the approach reinforces multigenerational public engagement, enhances urban landscape resilience, and enables students to apply data-driven and IoT-based methods in real-world design contexts. In so doing, we aim to fulfill the university’s role as a partner in disseminating knowledge and supporting regional development while advancing efforts to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on our cities. It is with this hope that we engage the next generation in the processes of creating the cities of tom

This contribution focuses on the potential of Living Labs to support the planning and development of public spaces during the climate change era, using selected case studies from Czech cities. It also explores how underused and neglected urban areas – particularly city squares dominated by parking, remnants of railway corridors embedded in urban fabric, and poorly maintained riverfronts – can be transformed, allowing them to support ecosystem processes and enhance the quality of everyday urban living. Our work integrates elements of the Living Lab concept into studio-based teaching to engage students in addressing contemporary urban challenges, including overheating, public spaces of poor quality, social displacement, and automobility. The analytical framework combines surveys, geographical data analysis, and environmental measurements (e.g., air temperature and quality, humidity, heat accumulation, and vegetation cover) with subsequent design proposal consultations through participatory workshops involving residents and municipal representatives. This multi-source approach provides essential feedback from communities and local authorities and establishes a robust basis for responsible design while facilitating the transfer of knowledge beyond the academic setting. Moreover, this type of collaboration enables the development of small-scale, low-cost, and reversible interventions like opening sections of brownfields with spontaneous vegetation to pedestrians, greening and furnishing city squares, or creating modest riverside promenades. Such interventions reveal the latent potential of underused spaces and allow observers to record how gradual, reversible transformations respond to actual patterns of use, thereby generating valuable data before municipalities choose permanent solutions. The combined analysis of microclimatic conditions and pedestrian accessibility further helps identify healthier, more pleasant routes within the urban environment. Currently, the implementation of our proposed interventions is at various stages. One proposal is competing for funding within a participatory budgeting program. In another case, a new satellite parking facility has been established, although it is not yet fully utilized. The riverside-access project remains at the conceptual stage. Preliminary findings indicate a need for increased communication during project preparation to secure broader public support for interventions before attempting their implementation. Living Labs in studio-based teaching are serving as a platform for generating evidence-based spatial concepts to help architects integrate undervalued areas into broader planning processes. This has strengthened interdisciplinary collaboration, linking academia and research institutions, and is helping incorporate empirically grounded analyses into design development. Furthermore, the approach reinforces multigenerational public engagement, enhances urban landscape resilience, and enables students to apply data-driven and IoT-based methods in real-world design contexts. In so doing, we aim to fulfill the university’s role as a partner in disseminating knowledge and supporting regional development while advancing efforts to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on our cities. It is with this hope that we engage the next generation in the processes of creating the cities of tom

Urban Living Labs; Climate-resilient public spaces; Regeneration of undervalued urban areas; Participatory urban design; Microclimatic analysis; Evidence-based spatial planning

Urban Living Labs; Climate-resilient public spaces; Regeneration of undervalued urban areas; Participatory urban design; Microclimatic analysis; Evidence-based spatial planning

PALACKÝ, J.; DOKOUPILOVÁ PAZDERKOVÁ, K.

09.12.2025

AMS Institute

Amsterdam

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https://registration.floq.live/ams-scientific-conference-2026