Community engagement through the neighbourhood street festival: Between external simulation and local stimulation
研究挪威特隆赫姆一个由外部发起的街区街头节庆，通过访谈分析其如何影响社区参与，发现其在模拟本地倡议与激发本地行动之间寻求平衡，并提出一个概念框架。
While grassroots initiatives often involve extensive community engagement in response to external (un)desired development, there are also several ‘top-down’ initiatives where municipalities or external organisations strive to improve neighbourhood engagement. This article focuses on the latter, an externally initiated neighbourhood street festival in Trondheim, Norway. During this festival, temporary interventions and activities are implemented in public spaces to engage citizens in conversations on local urban development and enhance their sense of belonging to the area. Based on street interviews with neighbours and visitors at the festival and in-depth interviews with involved actors, we investigate what these actions contribute locally. We ask: How do neighbourhood-based festivals influence community engagement? How can we understand the organisation of such initiatives more conceptually? Our analysis suggests that the festival finds itself in a delicate balancing act between simulating a local initiative that does not exist and awakening a latent initiative locally by stimulating action. Based on this tension, we suggest a conceptual framework for neighbourhood initiatives relevant to research and practice in urban development and planning.