It Takes Two

In the It Takes Two project IIUE worked in five European cities with local teams to improve the environment of post war residential areas. The cities are Antwerp (Belgium), Dublin (Ireland), Gothenburg (Sweden), Leipzig (Germany) and San Sebastian (Spain). The project title It Takes Two expresses IIUE’s conviction that for sustainable solutions at least two parties have to cooperate: citizens and experts. Local level participation is needed to ensure that the wishes of the people in the "here and now" are represented; otherwise the process will not get off the ground. The technical experts are necessary to ensure that any solutions proposed also take account of the interests of people in other parts of the world and future generations. Such an approach is essential in a world that will be home to more than nine billion people in fifty years time (a 50% increase on today's level) and in which natural resources will be scarcer than they are today. For many living outside Europe and other parts of the developed world, resources are already scarce enough today.

Because it is rather new to organise fruitful cooperation between both local stakeholders and (technical) experts, a careful method has to be applied. The It Takes Two method – developed and tested in cooperation with stakeholders in the five cities - seeks to find a way to balance the wider aim of sustainability through creating higher quality living environments in the short term. A brief description of the various steps in the It Takes Two method is given below. More detailed information on each of these steps, how they were carried out in the It Takes Two project and guidelines on how one can use the It Takes Two approach is found on a CD Rom published by IIUE.

Please note, the It Takes Two method is not meant to be a straitjacket that you have to follow to the letter. It does, however, contain a number of building blocks or stepping-stones that are essential elements in any process of sustainable urban regeneration.

The It Takes Two. method is made up of five main steps:

Step 1: SWOT analysis
Step 2: Technology Assessment
Step 3: Workshops
Step 4: Implementation
Step 5: Evaluation