NEB Impact Model helps assess the impacts of new buildings

Members of the Participatory Planning and Design research team of the CTU UCEEB, in cooperation with the Prague city company Operator ICT and other partners, organized workshops focused on evaluating the impact of new developments on life in the capital city. Architects, urban planners, urban activists, artists, researchers, developers and investors gathered around a table and were the first in the Czech Republic to use the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Impact Model tool, created as part of the European CrAFt (Creating Actionable Futures) project, to discuss real investments.
   
The varied composition of the participants corresponded to the importance of the analyzed development projects Rohan City and Masaryčka, which had already become the subject of a lively media debate. The NEB Impact Model was presented by Annemie Wyckmans and Marjan Khaleghi from the Norwegian Technical University NTNU and Han Vandevyvere from the VITO Research Institute in Antwerp, who is also a visiting professor at NTNU. 

The presentation of the tool was enlivened by an interactive game that helped participants to evaluate various aspects of the impact of new buildings, from environmental and economic characteristics to quality of life and health, cultural and social dimensions, and aspects related to metropolitan governance. Thanks to the NEB Impact Model, they were able to become more aware of the interdependencies between the different aspects of the overall impacts of development and to participate in jointly designing ways to achieve the most desirable effects.

Due to the success of the workshops, we decided to continue working with this tool and offer the possibility of using it to representatives of other Czech cities. We are currently working on translating it into Czech and are planning a workshop for Prague politicians.