Simon Nielsen 6/21/21 Simon Nielsen 6/21/21

How To Cook A Community: An Interview With Trine Hahnemann

All developers and urban decisionmakers (and everybody else), please listen to chef, writer, and local entrepreneur, Trine Hahnemann, as she elaborates on the importance of understanding cities through food and reconnecting health, culture, and community. Reconnecting city and countryside; production and consumption; real estate value and biodiversity; democracy and commerce.

By The Empty Square

*Trine Hahnemann. Photo: The Empty Square*

This is an essential conversation.

If we want strong communities and living cities, we need to nurture the underground. The soil, the soul, society.

“Food might be the ultimate catalyst to improve places”

— Trine Hahnemann

Food might be the ultimate catalyst to improve places, says Hahnemann. If we can make a sustainable plan for how we eat, the rest will change, too: the landscapes, animal well-being, our health, social relations, public spaces, political structures etc. All connected.

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

The Invisible Partnership

Millions of cities are facing the same challenge: How can we make this place more attractive? In the Scottish town of Dunfermline, we met a Community Planning Partnership, that caught our attention. To our surprise, the leader of it told us that “the more invisible, the partnership and I can be, the better.”

By The Empty Square

Millions of cities are facing the same challenge: How can we make this place more attractive?

Public-private partnerships seem to be one of the good answers. When local stakeholders agree to invest in their own neighborhood and create a common vision, things happen, and places improve. Dozens of variations on Business Improvement Districts and Town Center Management have long proven that.

In the Scottish town of Dunfermline (pop. 50.000), 20 kilometers from Edinburgh, we met a Community Planning Partnership that caught our attention because of its organic and voluntary, yet very strong, structure. A structure based, not on rules and regulations, but on the individual freedom that lies in contributing voluntarily to the whole. In other words, a structure based on culture.

The art of creating such a partnership lies not in formalizing, much less forcing, but in coordinating.

A strong bottom-up involvement has grown due to the leader’s understanding of the fact that most people really want to do an effort when it comes to things that occupies them on a personal level. By fanning the flames of existing passions and combining related people and interests – all within the same overall framework – lots of ideas have grown into projects that together shape a more prosperous and sustainable future for the city.

The culture of involvement builds on relations and trust. Positive changes happen simultaneously on both a personal and a place level while people take small steps towards a joint venture.

Is a non-formalized partnership fragile? Nobody signed a contract and nobody gets paid.

It could be fragile. On the other hand, nothing is stronger than culture. When people are inspired to contribute to the whole, knowing that what they do matters and makes a difference, something very resilient is taking shape. Results inevitably follow.

The art of nurturing such a partnership lies in listening, combining, coordinating, and letting all involved share the honor.

As the leader said: The more invisible, the partnership and I can be, the better.

While all other partnerships fight for visibility, this one dresses in an invisibility cloak.

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

Magic Places (1)

This note is about a restaurant built on the love and memories of a city. It reminds us of the powerful potential of great third spaces. Welcome to Dishoom.

This note is about a restaurant built on the love and memories of a city. It reminds us of the powerful potential of great third spaces. Welcome to Dishoom.

By The Empty Square

This note is about a restaurant built on the love and memories of Bombay, the most cosmopolitan city of India, so “startlingly full of accumulated difference”.

Chaotic may be the word that spontaneously comes to mind, but “once you have found your places of refuge, Bombay first becomes human and then – without you noticing exactly when – it completes the seduction and becomes delightful.”

Building a business on delightful memories of human, even seductive, places of refuge is an inspiring idea.

And remembering the magic of great shared spaces is valuable.

As the founders explain, “shared spaces beget shared experiences and shared experiences mean that people are more likely to tolerate each other’s differences, less likely to hate and less likely to explode into violence towards one another.” When people break bread together, barriers break down. Simple and true.

For the founders of this particular restaurant, the Irani cafés of Bombay were a significant part of the seduction. From the beginning of the 20th century onward, the cafés were set up by Parsi immigrants. They quickly became an irreplaceable Bombay institution.

Contrary to other eateries at that time, they welcomed all kinds of people and earned a fond place in the hearts of Bombayites, regardless of caste, class, religion, or race, by providing a cheap snack, a decent meal, or just a cup of chai and cool refuge from the street.

The Irani cafés played a significant role in enabling women and children to participate in eating out by incorporating family rooms or cabins (which also had the unintended benefit of sheltering illicit liaisons). In this way, these cafés set up by immigrants became Bombay’s first real public eating and drinking places as well as meeting and relaxing places for the great number who lacked the luxury of space at home (or even those, like prostitutes, who were shunned elsewhere).

The Irani cafés became “places for growing up, and for growing old, whoever you were.”

On the beautiful memories of these places, the Indian restaurant, Dishoom, was established in London (2010) – by immigrants, who have taken the idea of great, welcoming, and bonding third spaces to a new global level.

Among other practices of charity, for every meal they serve at Dishoom, they donate another to a hungry child. A meal for a meal. Millions of meals have by now been donated to children in the UK and India.

Quotes are from the inspiring book “Dishoom – From Bombay with Love. Cookery book and highly subjective guide to Bombay with map” by Shamil Thakrar, Kavi Thakrar & Naved Nasir (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). Hereby recommended.

Simon Nielsen 6/15/21 Simon Nielsen 6/15/21

Shops, Digitization, And Human Warmth

Digitization has long been a buzz word for retailers. According to Doug Stephens, one of the world’s foremost retail futurists, many owners of (physical) shops seem to believe that digitization is what will save them in the future and they see (almost any kind of) digital development as a ‘strategic investment’. But the fact is, says Stephens, “that no one needs a digital experience at all”.

By The Empty Square

Digitization has long been a buzz word for retailers. According to Doug Stephens, one of the world’s foremost retail futurists, many owners of (physical) shops seem to believe that digitization is what will save them in the future, and they see (almost any kind of) digital development as a ‘strategic investment’. But the fact is, says Stephens, “that no one needs a digital experience at all.*

What people seek are memorable, meaningful experiences. Inspiring surroundings and conversations. Super competent guidance, knowledgeable staff and human contact. Planning for unique experiences, not digitization, is what retailers should be setting out to do, according to Stephens.

Likewise, it won’t be what you sell but how you sell it that’ll make the difference. We can order any product in the world, but we can’t order the smile, the greetings, the dialogue, the surprise around the corner, the smells, the inspiration that come along with a real life experience.

If retailers succeed in responding to the social and sensuous needs, shoppers can be looking forward to an era where physical shops will again be magic places providing great everyday experiences and meaningful relations.

It’ll also mean that retail workers in the future will need special professional, creative, and social qualifications that will heighten their position, status, and wages. Working in the retail industry will again be a profession that you can be proud of – not ‘just a job’.

See Doug Stephens: Reengineering Retail – the Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World (Figure 1 Publishing Inc., 2017), p.239.

Simon Nielsen 6/9/21 Simon Nielsen 6/9/21

Learnings From A Garden: An Interview With Beata Engels Andersson

This story of a famous garden in Sweden is not about horticulture. It’s about life and death, human needs and capacities, and the power of opposites.

This story of a famous garden in Sweden is not about horticulture. It’s about life and death, human needs and capacities, and the power of opposites.

By The Empty Square

*Beata Engels Andersson. Photo: The Empty Square*

This story of a famous garden in Sweden is not about horticulture. It’s about life and death, human needs and capacities, and the power of opposites.

It’s told by Beata Engels Andersson, the daughter of the world-famous Swedish landscape architect, Sven-Ingvar Andersson (1927-2007). We met her at Marnas, the family house and garden since 1967.

It made us reflect on the role of death and decay. The balance between structure and chaos. The importance of generosity, openness, and meeting places.

Not only in our towns and cities but also in our everyday lives.

This masterclass (duration: 17 min.) offers a personal story as well as universal reflections. We hope you will enjoy it.