Welcome to Konstantina Vidou, new co-editor at the YA blog

2 minute read

Hello all,

My name is Konstantina, I am an Urban Planner and Development Engineer from Greece. I grew up in Luxembourg but returned to Greece for my studies, and I have also lived in the Netherlands for over a year. I am highly-motivated to enable environmental and societal change, which is why my career path has had a strong focus on sustainable and resilient development.

I was first introduced to the placemaking approach through my work experience at STIPO and  Placemaking Europe. The company works on making the human dimension more central in public spaces, while improving the quality of streets, squares and parks through participation and co-creation. In addition to many other projects, they have developed a series of publications focused on active plinths and inclusive cities, such as The City at Eye Level, and Our City? Countering Exclusion in Public Space. Due to my passion for environmental sustainability, in the context of my thesis, I explored the connection between placemaking and climate adaptation, through the implementation of an adapted version of the place game tool, developed by Project for Public Spaces (Image 1 & 2).

Image 1: The Place Diagram (Project for Public Spaces)

Image 2: Presentation of the Place Game tool, Stipo Office, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Eager to further deepen my knowledge on sustainable urbanism, I applied and was successfully selected as a Local Pathways Fellow at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) - Youth. This United Nations Initiative trains and empowers a cohort of young urban leaders from all over the world to localize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Throughout the fellowship my focus will be on SDG target 11.7, which is aimed at improving access to safe and inclusive green and public spaces in cities. More specifically, I am exploring how placemaking approaches can contribute to creating better quality urban spaces that are simultaneously safer, more accessible and climate adaptive.

I joined the AESOP YA’s blog as an editor and contributor, as I am passionate about creating, creating and editing content that is focused on spatial planning challenges and urban solutions. Sharing knowledge, tools, projects and best-practices within a network such as AESOP YA, can enable the use of the blog as a platform that makes information more accessible to policy makers, educators, academics and planners, further reinforcing their ability to generate change.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to share with our network your experiences, recent accomplishments, events you might have attended or thoughts you might have, so we can create a stronger community.

I am excited about the journey ahead :)