Hey everyone and welcome back to the course. Today we have a very special, special guest with us. Kim Carlotta Von Schonfeld, who is actually the author of the paper that we're studying in this module. Kim is a researcher at Wageningen University, and her work focuses on Social Learning and Participatory Planning, which we will hear all about how that relates to this paper. Hey, great to see you Kim and thanks for joining us. Hey. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for that introduction. We got a few questions for you here today, and for the first one, let's just kick it off with, what inspired you to write this paper? Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. Thanks for the interest in this particular paper. I actually have quite a lot of reasons to have been inspired for this paper. But I think I've identified two key ones. First of all, my experience of the Minhocao in Sao Paulo, which is one of the cases actually in the paper. This case is actually a highway for private cars mainly. That cuts right through the city center of Sao Paulo, and has been used as a main traffic archery for quite a long time now since the 70's. But it was built extremely close to housing. One of the things that happened quite close to its even being built was that it was closed to car use to use technically at all at night and during weekends or especially on Sundays to not bother the residents in the area so much. But in almost immediately, spontaneous public space use occurred on that highway. Basically, I was fascinated by that. I was there myself a couple of times before I wrote the article. Yeah, people were just so creative and how to use that space without anybody telling them what it was for. In a way that as triggered me to think about how streets in general could be claimed more for public space uses without necessarily using their function for car users as well. I also was thinking about what effect such uses had on the perception of streets as public spaces and as variables spaces. Spaces that could be for cars, but also for public space to use. In terms of their potential for people looking at those streets in more sustainable terms even as well. Then the second factor that inspired me was basically a talk with my co-author Luca Bertolini and who was extremely inspirational, had other case studies that he was passionate about himself and that we could discuss both of them in this paper. Yeah, that was basically the key inspirational points. Thanks Kim. That was very succinct. I want to ask you about how this paper relates to your professional and academic background. We brought it up a bit previously. You've been to quite a few places around the world. Tell us how does this relate to your professional and academic backgrounds? Yeah, thanks. Well, I was trained in my Bachelor's as a human geographer and planner. I think that's already where it starts. I grew up in Latin America and Europe. Obviously that helped with contexts and cases. But also in particular, that background helped me to look at how, for example, especially in Latin America, you really see alternative use of space, as well as a discussion of participation as something that comes up a lot and that people are passionate about and that infected me, if you will, throughout life and throughout my case studies before. I was particularly interested in mobility through, I think my connection to the urban planning and mobility group at the University of Amsterdam, very inspiring people. Which you and I are both part of. Exactly and a lot of speakers of this MOOC, I think are. See for yourselves, guys. But it's mobility is really a key element in addressing issues of sustainability, social inclusion, and so on, which I think are very pressing, always will continue to be very pressing, I think, in any context until they have been solved, which is probably not going to be very fast. Yeah, I think that is it. In terms of my PhD research on social learning, it basically also is related to that participatory element and to actually critically looking at how does social interaction impact what can happen on the ground and what we understand and whether we participate in urban planning or not. Whether we do so with passion or whether we do so because we have to, or whether we don't do so at all. Well, I've continued to use mobility case studies as well because, as I said, I find that an important key factor. But also I really think that this participatory element and understanding, critically reflecting on it and what people do there, is really a key motivator. Future avenues for research will probably look into those things as well. Very cool. One of the privileges of writing and being an academic is, of course, go around the world, but also the opportunity to help people change the way that they see the world through both our experiences and through the research of others and ourselves. How can this paper help our readers, who are students, see the world through a different lens? Well, I mean, I don't want to give too much credit to one single paper. I hope that it can inspire. Just say your body of work, or kind of that. Thank you. [inaudible] Yeah. You hope so in any case. Now, I think that one of the key things I was hoping for at least is to inspire and challenge people to think outside the box a bit, to try to see something that we have designated from a planning perspective as something very specific, it's a broad or highway and it's supposed to be used by cars, may be a bus, a taxi, but not for, I don't know, selling popcorn or skating around, crisscross anywhere you like, or cycling even, in some places that's not so common. Thinking outside the box about, who can use the space? When can they use the space? How can they use the space? Thinking in terms of questions. I think the article ends with providing a number of questions that we, Luke and I suggested that would be interesting to explore in any kind of contexts because we agreed. Luke also often emphasizes this, Luke the co-author, is this idea that it doesn't make a lot of sense to prescribe or to provide a lot of solutions directly because they will not probably make a lot of sense in any context. But if you ask questions, they will likely always help you to see certain things wherever you go. I think you generate more reflexive and critical stance perhaps by looking at things in terms of questions. I think those two things mainly. Cool. Then we get to the most important part of this course. Then this about action. This course is a course about trying to inspire people to take action on their local streets and their local environment. What action do you seek to inspire with your paper? Thanks. By extension Luke Ventolin who will appear elsewhere in this course as well. You're there for them. Well, I mean, again, I think it's actually in terms of action. It is about thinking outside the box and it is about claiming perhaps your own space, your own streets, thinking about how can you use and how can you challenge yourself to use spaces in different ways than they were intended. Even as an Urban Planner or Regional Planner, how can you be relatively flexible about how a space can be designated for one thing, but perhaps might also have a different function at a different time or in a different moment. Ask yourself those questions. Let's throw in a bonus for our students here. What are you working on at the moment because I know you have a project ongoing and it is October of 2020. What's going on in the research world then? I'm not sure which project you're referring to. There's actually quite a few. One of them is about COVID-19 mobility, which I'm doing in relation to or in collaboration with [inaudible] and some mellow and into We're all exploring qualitatively what kind of the experiences, stories of change, where people in relation to COVID-19 lockdowns in particular and what effect it had on people's perceptions of mobility. Time will tell how that turns out. Thank you. For now, I just want to thank you for taking time out of your day. Kim has quite a bit of published work. You can find her through a Google Search, her academic papers. If you find the Kim's work interesting, be sure to take a look into her academic work and also at her linkedIn if you desire. Take care. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot.
