The Green Wisdom Workshops brought together urban designers, students, community actors and senior citizens in Romania, Serbia and the Netherlands to rethink neglected public spaces as inclusive, green places where older people feel welcome, visible and active. In each country, the workshop combined design work with direct dialogue with the elderly, so that their everyday experience of parks and public areas shaped the proposed solutions. The results feed into the URBAN SOUL policy briefings and local NEB Labs.
In Serbia, the Green Wisdom Workshop was implemented by Helixconnect Balkans in cooperation with the Technical School "Drvo Art" in Belgrade as the DrvoArt Inclusive Urban Space Design Competition. Students of the 3rd and 4th grade were invited to develop a conceptual redesign of Topčider Park as a public space that supports elderly citizens while remaining attractive to all generations, with particular attention to accessibility, safety, calm zones, seating, shade and green elements.
A key part of the process was a focus group with senior citizens held in a public park in Belgrade, where older residents shared their daily habits, challenges and preferences in using green spaces. These insights were brought back into guided reflection sessions with students and educators, helping the young designers confront their assumptions and adopt a more empathetic, user-centred approach.
The competition ran from 17 November to 31 December 2025. Submissions, in AutoCAD or hand-drawn form with short explanatory texts, were evaluated by a jury from Helixconnect Balkans against criteria of creativity, social relevance, sustainability, feasibility and clarity. Two winning designs were selected, by Arijana Durmić and Teodora Gagić.
In the Netherlands, the Green Wisdom Workshop was implemented by BLOK 74 as a three-day participatory placemaking process in Breda, together with students of the Department of Leisure and Events at Breda University of Applied Sciences. The workshop focused on the Doornbos-Linie neighbourhood and explored how existing green and public spaces are experienced by different generations and how they could better support informal, everyday encounters between residents, treating green space as social infrastructure rather than purely as physical design.
Over the first two days, students carried out field visits and mapping exercises across the neighbourhood, identifying places they found attractive, underused, problematic or suitable for social interaction. They also interviewed local social organisations and stakeholders connected to the municipality and social work, who brought first-hand knowledge of intergenerational loneliness in the area. Participants then reflected on what makes a green space usable for different groups, from accessibility and seating to programming, maintenance and atmosphere.
On the final day, student groups presented their redesign proposals for selected public spaces in Doornbos-Linie to a panel of experts from Breda University of Applied Sciences and the municipality. The winning concept, "24 Hours Young", moved beyond a single physical intervention to propose a 24-hour intergenerational programme for the neighbourhood, showing how a place can become more active and inclusive through a combination of small spatial improvements and a carefully sequenced programme of activities shared by children, young people, adults and older residents. The workshop findings were later taken up in the Green Wisdom and roundtable discussions with local stakeholders.
As part of the Virtual Policy Days, URBAN SOUL delivered policymaking training to 60 participants across Romania, Serbia and the Netherlands, equipping urban designers, adult trainers and NGO staff with the knowledge to engage local authorities and translate the Green Wisdom results into policy proposals for inclusive green urban areas.
Browse through the Gallery below to see how the event looked like:
The URBAN SOUL policy briefings are the final output of the project's Virtual Policy Days. Building on the Green Wisdom Workshops, the policymaking training and the input gathered directly from senior citizens, the three partners developed one policy briefing per country, each addressing the redevelopment of neglected urban areas as a tool to combat loneliness and social isolation among older people. The briefings set out concrete recommendations for local and regional authorities on how to plan, design and maintain public spaces that are accessible, green and welcoming to all generations, in line with the principles of the New European Bauhaus. They were presented and discussed with local urbanism authorities at three policy roundtables, held online in Romania, Serbia and the Netherlands, with the aim of securing their support for the local NEB Labs and for greener, more inclusive cities. The policy briefings for each country are available for download below.
Policy recommendations: Serbia Policy brief: The Netherlands
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.